On May 13, AT&T announced that Aisha Umar would join AT&T Global Services Canada as the new Sales Centre Vice President for Canada.  Ms. Umar joins the Regional Sales team led by Mary Livingston, Vice President Canada, Caribbean and Latin America.  Telemanagement spoke with Ms. Umar about her new role and the future of AT&T in Canada.

Telemanagement. You are AT&T’s first-ever Canadian Director and Sales Centre Vice President of Global Services Canada. What kind of growth opportunities do you see for AT&T in Canada?

Aisha Umar: Certainly the financial sector – Canadian banks are significant multinationals, and they are continuing their global expansion. We are seeing manufacturing going through a recovery as well, and we are seeing some capital infusions from US companies with large Canadian operations. And retail, too, because so many US firms have announced an expansion of their footprint in Canada.

TM: You have quite a lot of experience in the Canadian market, having worked for IBM, Microsoft, and Avaya.

AU:  Avaya was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed it. I was lucky to be there when the company had just gone private – it was an exciting and fast-paced environment.  And then when Nortel came over there was immense pride, to integrate a company with such a committed, talented workforce. And now here at AT&T I have an opportunity to stay involved in the Unified Communications (UC) space, which was my area at Microsoft Canada.

TM: What technologies are changing the Canadian market, and how will AT&T participate?

AU: One of the applications that has really taken off is telepresence. It’s an amazing technology: you really forget that the person is not there – it’s as if you can reach out and touch them. When you look at events like the ash cloud in Europe, we are seeing a lot of our Canadian customers saying that this technology will reduce travel costs.

TM: This ties in to UC.

AU: Yes, and companies are ready for UC now. I have been involved with UC for many years, and it’s really great to see things take off. So many things are rolling out of UC, it’s exciting to be in the middle of it, to see capabilities extending to devices like BlackBerrys. This includes contact centre technology.

TM: Is this a growth area?

AU: It is. In the contact centre space the advantage that AT&T has is that we can be a trusted advisor because we can look at different offerings. We partner with Cisco and Avaya, and also have our own technology. Instead of looking at one technology we can leverage best practices from around the world. Specific to contact centres, we are seeing more self service and use of technologies like SMS – it’s much more interactive. We can also make sure the agent has everything to satisfy the customer, like background information and history.

TM: You mentioned Cisco and Avaya. What other companies are important to the Canadian channel?

AU: We do a lot of work with the large outsourcers that have a big presence in Canada, and a company like IBM is important to us – they are a customer of ours as well as a partner. We also do a lot of work with NCR .

TM: How big is AT&T’s footprint in Canada, and will it expand?

AU: We have 400 employees in Canada. This includes sales, technical sales, and data networking specialists. We have the one data centre in Toronto, but more are planned – we are always looking at expanding the data centre footprint. You are seeing us expand our presence; our offices are growing.

TM: Any exciting examples?

AU: I was just in Calgary with Shell, one of our largest global clients. We have really increased our presence in the Calgary market, because oil and gas is a key vertical, and Shell is a key client. Shell now has the largest UC deployment that AT&T has ever done.