Yet radical transformation is exactly what will be needed if Alcatel-Lucent is to succeed in the North American enterprise market. The company is fighting an image of late-mover, a point that Hubert de Pesquidoux, president of Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise business group, worked hard to dispel in his keynote. Pesquidoux hammered home how Alcatel-Lucent's holds or vies for market leadership in contact centers, voice, and even edge routing.
The company will push this leadership envelope this year by focusing on customer satisfaction. "Our competitors talk about unified communications in the sense of increased productivity, but in a survey with Bain and Company we found enterprises are most worried about customer satisfaction, said Oscar Rodriguez, the company's chief marketing officer, "That's where we'll focus our efforts."
A SMART MOVE
Alcatel-Lucent is spot on to focus on improving customer satisfaction. Contact centers are a critical touch point for owning the customer relationship and determining customer satisfaction. With Genesys' leadership position in contact centers, Alcatel-Lucent has a competitive advantage in any discussion about customer.
However, Alcatel-Lucent hasn't been as effective in managing the sales interface to leading and mid-tear companies. "The CIO of Nestle doesn't want to deal with different sales teams for each of our products," said de Pesquidoux. Now he won't have to. Alcatel-Lucent has reorganized its sales teams so that major enterprise will gain a single interface into the company.
