Beijing Welcomes You… Viavi Velocity Greater China Channel Conference

This year we held our Viavi Velocity Greater China Channel Conference at the JW Marriott in Beijing. It began with a pre-conference day of Elite Partner Business Reviews with our three Elite Partners: Beijing New Highlight, Zhongtong Information, and Beijing Comtest, and a special review with our Premier Partner Taiwan Synchronous. During these interactive, personalized sessions, our channel and regional leadership team of Sergio Bea, Russel Taws, Gegs Jones, Sung Jae Lee, Jun Xiang Wang, Shirley Lim and local channel manager Dr. Liu Bo met with each partner to discuss their business, opportunities, and challenges. Key takeaways from these sessions included learning details about the market in China, where to focus marketing efforts, and regional challenges our channel partners face.

In the afternoon, we held a leadership meeting with our 15 top channel partner management team members. Dr. Liu Bo informed the partners about the Viavi business in China, reviewed the FY16H1 sales performance, and reinforced our commitment to channel partners. Sergio Bea then further demonstrated our commitment with an overview of the global channels strategy. Shirley Lim gave a training session on the Velocity Partner Program’s Marketing Development Fund (MDF) Policy, its benefits, and how to access MDFs using the Velocity Partner Portal. The day’s sessions ended with Zhao Jianming giving a deep dive into services.

The main conference began on the on the second day and we were thrilled that more than 70 enthusiastic partners were in attendance to learn about our products and solutions. Our goal for the 3 days was to arm partners with the best possible knowledge and skills to help them push their own sales, technology, and marketing boundaries. Here are some highlights from the agenda:

• Market Development Fund training was given for partners to understand the Marketing Development Fund (MDF) program details and how to use the funds. This was one of most talked about topics at the conference. One of our Elite Channel Partners said: “We really like the Velocity Program, especially the MDF component, as it has a big impact on how we will do sales and marketing development moving forward.” ― GM Zhou Hui Ling, Beijing Comtest.
• A sales course on leveraging the Viavi story and portfolio was presented in Mandarin by JunXiang Wang. This course addressed the biggest challenges customers and prospects face in the Chinese market.
• Product training sessions delivered by Viavi product managers who presented several in-depth, detailed product-specific training sessions.

Here’s a more detailed look at what our partners experienced in Beijing:

The third day kicked off with Dr. Liu Bo talking about our strategy and the critical success of our channel partners. Sergio Bea continued by emphasizing how important channel partners are to the success of our business. Russel Taws then talked about the converged instrument and virtual test market updates, including the fiber, metro, and access markets. Sha Huijun gave a market update on 100 Gbps, 400 Gbps, and beyond. Sung Jae, Lee gave an LTE market overview and discussed LTE trends and pain points. The morning session wrapped up with Jun Xiang Wang giving a sales course on Leveraging the Viavi Story and Portfolio to address the biggest challenges customers and prospects face, which was presented in Mandarin and adapted for the Chinese market.

Breakout sessions were offered in the afternoon:

• A wireless breakout introduced a new CellAdvisor and RANAdvisor product and roadmap.

• A fiber optics session provided a Get Fiber Smart overview of the key FY16 H1 and H2 fiber product launches, FVA/FVDi passive production inspection solutions; the FTTH portfolio SmartClass Fiber OLP-88 and SmartOTDR portfolio, cable-SLM, and FTTH success story; plus the fiber monitoring SmartOTU.
• Another session covered the high-speed ecosystem for lab and manufacturing, which consist of network topologies and market trends, high-speed transceiver evolution and testing, 100 GE/25 GE/400 GE and testing, an OTN technology update and testing, plus introducing and giving value propositions for the ONT product portfolio.
• A metro session discussed mobile fronthaul/backhaul test solutions, including value propositions and TrueSpeed VNF and virtualization.

After a long day of training, the partners were treated to a sumptuous dinner which included mingling and toasting.

The final day was dedicated to various technical sessions where partners received hands-on training on key and new Viavi solutions, including the ONMSi, SmartOTDR, fiber, metro-Ethernet/access portfolio, WiFi Advisor, and more.

Even though the agenda was jam-packed, we managed to take advantage of our time together to hold customized one-on-one meetings with several partners. Beijing Shengda Tongcheng Technology, AimTeck Technology, Tianjin Hengfeng Network Co., Great Engineering Technology, and Beijing Rongxi Times all participated in these executive meetings where we gained a deeper understanding about the channel partners’ role, learned how they go to market, and discovered where Viavi can help close gaps and escalate challenges that arise. For example, partners now understand how Viavi can help them close business faster by getting them demo units, opening new markets, holding trials and pilots, offering more seminars, and giving technical support for proof of concepts, and more.

We had another great channel partner conference this year! Many partners in this region are new―80% have been partners with Viavi for less than 3 years. These conferences give our new and time-tested partners unique opportunities to receive valuable training, network with colleagues, and learn best practices from others’ experiences. We hope that everyone returns home armed with more knowledge, ideas, and inspiration to more successfully solve challenges.

Here are a few more photos from the conference showing great engagement from our partners: