RingCentral's New Channel Program Connects Partners with Subject-Matter Experts

CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO — RingCentral (Booth 249 and a Premier Sponsor) has launched its new Channel Harmony: One to Infinity Program, which awards partners 100 percent commissions on all deals while allowing them to work alongside a vertical-and segment-specific subject-matter expert.

The announcement is being made during this week’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo. RingCentral also is announcing a new premier master-agent partnership with PlanetOne Communications that extends its market reach to U.S.-based agents and MSPs looking to migrate large enterprises from legacy on-premises systems to cloud-based communications and collaboration offerings.

The One to Infinity program builds on the Channel Harmony initiative RingCentral introduced in early 2016. With One to Infinity, partner deals under the management of a channel manager qualify for the assistance of RingCentral-dedicated, subject-matter experts to help with or close a deal. Both the partner and the subject-matter expert are made whole on every deal, receiving 100 percent of the commission, according to the company.

Previously limited to deals of more than 50 users, RingCentral’s Channel Harmony now applies to all deals. The carrier has more than 4,000 active channel partners.

Zane Long, RingCentral’s vice president of global channel sales, tells Channel Partners his company recognized that the “49 users and below deserve the same kind of treatment because all customers matter, so we’ve extended that.”

“Our product is not a la carte; it’s all-inclusive with all the services that our customers require,” he said. “So that part of the equation is customers need to have an education or a presentation, or proposal process to truly understand the value that RingCentral provides. So the partner can then reach out to RingCentral, utilize the subject-matter expert to be their direct sales rep, to go out and make sure that customer makes an educated decision on their UCaaS decision. Certainly our partners have found it to be very beneficial because we have had some terrific success in our midmarket and enterprise space in particular.”{ad}

Even with a 10-user opportunity, “everything remains equal,” Long said.

“It’s still 100 percent for each party, so you can imagine from a partner perspective the benefit,” he said. “We’re assigning a subject-matter expert to that customer to close that customer on behalf of the partner, and that partner gets all the benefit. And it even goes a little bit further. Even after the fact, when that customer decides to add additional services, we have another division inside the company that will upgrade and upsell that particular customer on behalf of the partner, and that partner gets full compensation for that effort.”

Partners can use this benefit to close “a lot of customers, even the small ones, the big ones, the midmarket, the majors, it really doesn’t matter,” Long said. The indirect channel contributed 25 percent of RingCentral’s revenue in the fourth quarter and it continues to grow quarter over quarter, he said.