Stronger Together | Our 2019 Partner Conference in Amsterdam

We’re delighted to say that the conference lived up to its wonderful surroundings!

Glorious Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a city packed full of history, culture and diversity – a bit like our Alliance, you could say. To make the most of that, we selected the magnificent W Hotel – a former telephone exchange building and bank. Located at the heart of Amsterdam, the hotel was the perfect base for our team and partners to explore this wonderful city.

Our exploration of the city started on Sunday afternoon, when we boarded a beautiful canal cruise taking in Amsterdam’s best sights from the iconic waterways.

Next up? The Conference itself…

The biggest event yet

The Aura Alliance continues to go from strength to strength, which was certainly highlighted at our Partner Conference. This event was our biggest and most successful to date, with more than 40 senior executives representing 21 partners across 20 countries. Between them, those representatives accounted for five of the world’s continents, showing just how well-established we are across the globe.

It was a great opportunity for partners to get familiar with our newly established leadership team, who were all present as part of a 15-strong team of Aura Alliance representatives:

• Tony Parish – Chief Executive Officer
• Niall Anderson – Chairman
• Tony Alveranga – Chief Operations Officer
• Tarun Bose – Chief Financial Officer
• Jonathan Harris – Chief Strategy Officer

With our fantastic leadership team on hand, it was also the perfect occasion to reaffirm our priorities around our three main areas of expertise:

• Global Managed Services
• Transformation
• Customer Experience

Multi-vendor presence

As our first conference without the presence of Avaya, it’s fair to say our journey to becoming truly multi-vendor is well underway. We had a total of seven external speakers, including Cisco’s Vaughan Klein discussing collaboration and some fantastic success stories from some of our biggest customers.

That also included captivating presentations from our four main sponsors:

• Ribbon Communications
• Nectar
• eGain
• Hortium

Partner of the year

Of course, it wasn’t just about presentations and networking. There were also some awards to be won. At the 2019 Conference, we were delighted to name ConvergeOne as our Partner of the Year.

“ConvergeOne has been a pillar member of the Aura Alliance since inception, and the continued engagement and advocacy of the ConvergeOne team with the alliance has made them an extension of our team,” said Tony Parish. “We’ve achieved a lot together and are excited to see our successes continue to new heights. This is just the beginning of our exciting journey.”

Stronger together

A consistent message was carried throughout the conference, emphasising three key messages for partners to take away:

1.    We are a global managed services company

This highlights the huge transformation we’ve gone through over the past few years. We’re no longer limited to one vendor or region. We work globally to meet each customer’s requirements.

2.    Sell with us, we’re stronger together

As a member of the Aura Alliance, partners can offer their customers global reach, unparalleled flexibility and the best prices through vast economies of scale. We provide bespoke contracts, tailored for each location with the best local project managers and service providers.

3.    We’re in it together, it’s a two-way street

Each of our partners adds value to the Aura Alliance, and – as highlighted above – we add huge value to them. It’s a two-way street and our best successes land when we work together as one.

Over to you for 2020

As with every Conference, one of the most important elements is the feedback we get from our Partners. We can’t explain how proud we are to see that 100% of attendees rated the conference as Very Good or Excellent.

The Partner Feedback survey also had plenty of constructive comments, which we’ll be sure to take on board for next year’s event, due to take place in the Americas. But where will it take us?

That’s up to our partners to help us decide. After all, we’re in it together so their opinions count too. Wherever we decide, we can’t wait to get started!

Want to know more?

If you want to find out more about the Aura Alliance, take a look at our video…