Nice promotes Russell Jones to A/NZ head of channel

Russell Jones (NICE)

Nice has promoted channel sales manager Russell Jones to lead the software vendor’s partner approach in Australia and New Zealand.

The move to promote Jones to the new role as A/NZ head of channel, comes as Nice claims to have “prioritised the development of high-quality relationships with strategic partners that possess deep customer experience (CX) skills and a close cultural fit.”

“The power of the channel has helped Nice achieve significant growth in A/NZ in the past couple of years and presented the company with an ideal opportunity to deepen and strengthen its trusted partner relationships,” said  Rod Lester, the vendor's A/NZ managing director.

“Nice is committed to helping its partners deliver Nice solutions to joint customers effortlessly and in a manner that meets the needs of a rapidly changing marketplace.”

Russel has been channel sales manager with Nice for over three years prior to his promotion. Prior to this, he had held similar roles with SAP, Alcatel-Lucent Abaya and SDX Business Systems.

In addition to Jones’ promotion, Nice has also hired former IComm Australia senior account director Ben Eldridge as channel sales manager, who will report to Jones.

“The appointment of Ben Eldridge to the channel team will support Nice’s ongoing growth in A/NZ with Russell Jones also promoted to the newly created role of head of channel for A/NZ,” Lester said.

Jones added that Nice has grown rapidly in the A/NZ region due to “deep engagement with business partners,” and the way to continue that growth will be to further invest and expand the vendor’s channel team.

“I am excited to welcome Ben to NICE as he has considerable industry experience that will add immediate value to the channel team and to Nice’s goal of providing industry-leading support to its partners,” Jones said.

“In his new role, Ben will interact broadly across Nice’s partners’ businesses to build capabilities and to ensure that NICE and its partners are always closely aligned. Focusing on quality rather than quantity will lead to better outcomes for joint customers which, in turn, will favour future success.”

Nice's CXone product was recently used by Australian Microsoft specialist Generation-e to transition Wodonga TAFE's contact centre to an upgraded platform, which was announced in February.