Santa Clara, Calif. – September 2, 2020 – Avaya (NYSE: AVYA), a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration, today announced a key, strategic addition to its executive management team as Stephen Spears joins the company in the newly created role of Chief Revenue Officer.
Reporting to President and CEO Jim Chirico, Spears will be instrumental in delivering new levels of client success for Avaya customers and partners by overseeing the strategy, performance, and alignment of revenue operations for Avaya. In this role, he will have full ownership of the company’s revenue generating organizations, customer lifecycle and go-to-client functions, including global sales and marketing, partner management and all channel related activities to help to accelerate execution on the company’s overall growth strategy, directly benefitting Avaya’s customers.
“Stephen has a keen understanding of what it takes to drive customer success, making him an ideal fit to help lead execution on our very deliberate strategy,” said Jim Chirico. “The re-imagined Avaya has never been more relevant to our growing base of customers and partners globally, and the way we are executing shows the winning mentality, expanding commitment to our customers, and strong culture of Avaya. We could not be more excited to have Stephen join our team.”
Spears’ management career spans nearly three decades and includes extensive go-to-market experience as well as deep expertise in the SaaS and Cloud arena. He has spent the previous 17 years in a variety of key senior leadership roles at SAP, most recently serving as Chief Revenue Officer of SAP SuccessFactors. In this capacity, Spears helped redefine the HCM category to Human Experience Management (HXM) and was able to grow annual revenues by approximately 30 percent with more than 7,000 customers in over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
“Joining Avaya at this critical juncture in their long-term strategy demonstrates Avaya’s continuing commitment to their extensive customer base and vibrant ecosystem. Putting people at the center of communications is at the heart of every successful business worldwide, and Avaya’s unwavering commitment to this goal will help drive a customer-centric approach that will generate top-line growth and sustainable solutions for decades to come,” said Spears. “I am thrilled to be joining such an experienced and passionate management team.”
