RingCentral Connect: Partners Key to Innovation, Growth
Customer partnerships drive RingCentral's innovation engine.
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Customer partnerships drive RingCentral’s innovation engine, president and COO Anand Eswaran said.
“Our partnerships with Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) and Atos Unify, where we are the exclusive path to the cloud for the on-premises PBX systems, is a huge validation of the strength of our UCaaS solution,” he said. “Our partnerships with Verizon, AT&T, BT, Vodafone and many more are a reflection of the enterprise-and carrier-grade platform and solution we are. We believe that enabling our partners’ successes is key to our success.”
There’s no question the world has changed over the past 18 months, and “we’ve changed along with it,” Eswaran said.
“Our expectations have changed, our hopes have changed and technology is going to have to evolve to support these changes,” he said. “We all want to be able to work from anywhere at a moment’s notice. We are looking for ways to fight isolation and fatigue, monitor stress, hone mindfulness techniques to attain a healthy balance, and harmony between working and life in general. We believe at RingCentral that these five defining factors are essential to achieving that balance in this new world of hybrid work as a leader. Ringcentral is up to the challenge.”
Zane Long is RingCentral’s senior vice president of global channel sales. He said the theme of RingCentral Connect 2021 is “hello to human connections.”
“Coming off what has been a very isolated 19 months, we are focusing on people, inspiring human connections that bring out the best in all of us through creative collaboration,” he said. “A lot of companies are still struggling with how to keep their people engaged in this new era of work. They want to maintain a genuine connection within their teams. And when used to its full potential, that’s what RingCentral can do. We’re in the business of connecting people, and this new message speaks to the human element behind everything we do.”
This focus on people extends to RingCentral’s channel partners as well, Long said.
“When it comes down to it, the channel has always been a people business,” he said. “So we say hello to partnerships. It’s not just saying hi. Rather, this recognizes the full scope of our relationship and the work we do together. It’s bigger than any single deal or quarter. It puts the focus on the people behind all that success. A lot of discourse in the channel during the pandemic has been about boosting remote productivity, or ensuring business productivity, stiff business talk like that. And while those things are important to provide to our customers, we can’t forget that at the end of the day, it’s all about human connection.”
RingCentral has taken steps to give partners greater freedom of choice, providing options so they can run their business their way, Long said.
RingCentral recently unveiled new capabilities for its flagship Message Video Phone (MVP) platform. The new features are designed to address the challenges faced by workers and teams in a hybrid world.
“Some of these include live transcription, which leverages AI to enable entire meeting conversations to be automatically transcribed, ensuring those who join late can easily catch up without disrupting the meeting,” Long said. “This creates an accessible environment, democratizing the video experience for everyone. Additionally, meeting summaries give users a recap of the conversation and an auto-generated short-form summary, video highlight reel, and keywords. And lastly, our whiteboard feature where users can visually illustrate ideas through free form drawing, virtual sticky notes, uploading images, and annotating over content that can then be shared after meetings.”
RingCentral partners know their customers better than anyone, Long said. They are the valued consultants to their customers, and “we see our job as empowering our partners so they can help their customers make the best possible decision for their business.”
“We have always been a customer-first and partner-first organization, and that philosophy continues,” he said. “It is what drives our strategy to constantly evolve our programs and make it easy for partners to win with RingCentral.”
RingCentral has rolled out a new platform, RingCentral Rise, designed for service providers globally. Service providers now have the means to create differentiated cloud communications offers that help customers to rapidly move to the cloud with an integrated end-to-end managed service with the latest joint innovations for UCaaS.
A number of major service providers globally are already deploying RingCentral Rise, including AT&T Business, Ecotel, MCM Telecom, Telus and Vodafone.
Rise is a platform built on the RingCentral cloud that integrates with service provider technology, provides co-branded applications that are updated with the latest innovation, and unlocks opportunities for co-creation with an open platform. In addition, RingCentral is offering a full go-to-market program built for service providers, including a service provider portal, a channel harmony program, and a dedicated service provider team.
Homanyoun Razavi is RingCentral’s executive vice president and head of global service providers.
“RingCentral has a vision of bringing the very best cloud communications capabilities to businesses everywhere,” he said. “We’re excited to jointly innovate across 5G, mobile edge computing (MEC), IoT and AI to bring differentiated products to market that humanize cloud communications with blazing speed and new ways of working.”
RingCentral has rolled out a new platform, RingCentral Rise, designed for service providers globally. Service providers now have the means to create differentiated cloud communications offers that help customers to rapidly move to the cloud with an integrated end-to-end managed service with the latest joint innovations for UCaaS.
A number of major service providers globally are already deploying RingCentral Rise, including AT&T Business, Ecotel, MCM Telecom, Telus and Vodafone.
Rise is a platform built on the RingCentral cloud that integrates with service provider technology, provides co-branded applications that are updated with the latest innovation, and unlocks opportunities for co-creation with an open platform. In addition, RingCentral is offering a full go-to-market program built for service providers, including a service provider portal, a channel harmony program, and a dedicated service provider team.
Homanyoun Razavi is RingCentral’s executive vice president and head of global service providers.
“RingCentral has a vision of bringing the very best cloud communications capabilities to businesses everywhere,” he said. “We’re excited to jointly innovate across 5G, mobile edge computing (MEC), IoT and AI to bring differentiated products to market that humanize cloud communications with blazing speed and new ways of working.”
RingCentral has an opportunity and responsibility to help power human connections going forward.
That’s according to Anand Eswaran, RingCentral’s president and COO. He gave the opening keynote at the start of this week’s virtual RingCentral Connect conference.
Eswaran outlined five defining factors guiding RingCentral. Those are: participant equity; systems of experience; the composable enterprise; artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence augmentation (IA); and your work, your way and your pace.
RingCentral’s Anand Eswaran
“It starts with participant equity,” he said. “Everyone is created equal and must have equal access. No matter where anyone chooses what is required to work, their experience should not be impaired in any way. It shouldn’t be preferential. It shouldn’t be unfair or unjust. Rather, digital technology means we can provide equal opportunities for all and level the playing field for both in-office and remote employees in a hybrid environment.”
Linking Employee and Customer Experience
Systems of experience pertains to linking employee experience, and therefore employee productivity, to customer experience, Eswaran said. Doing so creates agent efficiency, increased customer support and increased revenue.
The emergence of composable enterprises means all connections matter, no matter where they came from, he said.
“It is the era of the open, composable enterprise,” Eswaran said. “No-code, low-code and pro-code communications APIs can no longer be ignored. It is a mix-and-match integrated world where companies want to create custom solutions that perfectly fit their needs. They’re spending strong and they are using the best of breed to differentiate themselves from others.”
The future is unified communications platforms as a service, and that future will draw on the potential of AI and IA. They will help facilitate human connection.
“Look at the customer experience through the contact center,” Eswaran said. “AI is already reducing complexity for customer queries, and it’s already creating incredible outcomes like reduced call time and better problem solving, freeing up agents to connect with customers in more meaningful ways. Similarly, for sales teams, IA can qualify leads over chat, connecting the lead to the best subject matter expert for the customer’s needs, while also providing the expert with the right level of information to address the lead really quickly and efficiently.”
Your Work, Your Way, Your Pace
Finally, your work, your way and your pace means making each individual’s communications journey seamless and successful, Eswaran said.
“No matter where you are, a true partner can offer support at every point along the way,” he said. “And that’s RingCentral for you. That is how we think about these few five future defining factors. We have been listening to our customers every day, and they tell us two things every day. We expect you to help us to run our business and grow our business.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Eswaran and RingCentral Connect 2021.
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