"The story is: there is no story." While this isn’t exactly a journalist’s dream response, these are the words of Patrick Dennis, who will take the Avaya CEO hot seat in September.
Yet, those words are not surprising. After all, Dennis is not an Avaya newbie, with the former Aspect Software (now Alvaria) CEO joining the Avaya board as the company emerged from bankruptcy in May 2023.
Since then, the signs have appeared surprisingly promising. Reports of 1,000+ net new customers in a quarter and a 97 percent enterprise retention rate are somewhat incredible, given where the company was little more than a year ago.
Of course, there is an element of: why would those customers leave now if they withstood that bankruptcy ordeal, and all the bad press that ran alongside it?
However, from Dennis’s perspective, Avaya’s "innovation without disruption" vision is resonating, and now the departing CEO Alan Masarek has steadied the ship, Dennis has no desire to rock it.
"The strategy we set when we emerged has been followed consistently," said Dennis.
"Some of Alan's work focused more inside the company, upgrading the team and stabilizing operations. Now, we're pivoting to ensure customers are well taken care of, and innovation without disruption has been crucial to them. Moving forward, we'll start to see the benefits of this strategy.
In a sense, we’ve tackled our disruption issue first, and now we can focus on bringing innovation to our customers.
Dennis remained coy about what that innovation may look like but acknowledged his vast experience in the cybersecurity space.
Indeed, Dennis spoke warmly of his time as the CEO of Venafi – which he recently sold to CyberArk for $1.54BN - and promised that this security-centric “mindset won’t change.”
Yet, whatever way Dennis will take Avaya’s roadmap, it’s likely that it will start to try and build more excitement around its innovation cycle.
Until now, Avaya has prioritized press statements that underline its strengthened financial health to build confidence in the brand. That's despite releasing several savvy innovations - including a "Bring Your Own Bot" framework, an agent-assist package, and a GenAI-powered Journey Map Builder.
As the new CEO takes charge, that may change, especially as voice platforms - which Dennis refers to as Avaya's "secret sauce" - come back into fashion.
Avaya’s Secret Sauce Is In Vogue
Over the past few years, CCaaS vendors have meandered away from their core voice capability, adding emphasis to new channels, self-service, and digital engagement.
CRM vendors now do a lot of this. What they are much less likely to do, however, is invest in building and maintaining global voice networks – aka. Avaya’s secret sauce.
Given this trend, Avaya senses that the contact center market is "swinging back into its favor", with the vendor recently bolstering its voice automation capabilities to flaunt this differentiator.
Meanwhile, it’s also investing in areas like journey orchestration – via its Edify acquisition - to expand the definition of what a CCaaS vendor does in a way that reduces the CRM overlap.
In doing so, Avaya seemingly recognizes that CCaaS vendors could ultimately become marginalized as voice plugin providers and is perhaps prepping its roadmap with respect to that trend.
While Dennis didn’t directly acknowledge this, he stressed the value of Avaya’s voice system.
"AI is transforming customer interactions, and there's a growing interest in efficient, voice-based solutions," he said. "We excel at this, and our recent acquisition of Edify enhances our orchestration capabilities, making us well-positioned for future success."
However, while voice is back in vogue, perhaps the most notable reason Avaya's post-bankruptcy revenues have exceeded expectations is in the deceleration in enterprise cloud contact center migrations since 2022.
There are several reasons for this, but few doubt that the cloud is ultimately the future. For enterprises, that future is just further away than many first anticipated.
Recognizing this, Avaya has worked hard to solidify its relationships with its on-premise customer base – which includes 90 of the Fortune 100 – over Masarek’s tenure.