Welcome to the tech in 20 minutes podcast where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven't heard of before. Hi. I'm Max Clark.

And today, I'm talking with Mike Day, who's the senior director of partner sales and distribution for RingCentral. Mike, thanks for joining.

Max, it's so good to have a conversation with you again. I miss seeing you, man.

It's been a while. So what does RingCentral do?

So RingCentral is the global leader in unified communications and contact center as a service. What does that mean? We find ways to take your old outdated legacy means of communication and making it more applicable in today's world by allowing you to communicate with your colleagues, your customers, your friends and family, any device, anywhere, anytime.

So you say today's world. I'm gonna unpack that a little bit. Right? So, you know, pre March of 2020, what would that have meant for a company looking at a phone system or communication as a collaboration tool? Like, what are the actual services that RingCentral, you know, provides in that in that set?

And then let's talk about post March.

You know, Mats, those ways of legacy communication, that box that was somewhere in a closet, in a building that all your phone systems ran in and out of, it really tied that employee, that company, to only being able to communicate with their customer base when they were in that physical location. What we've done is taken that concept of the PBX, the box in a closet, and moved it to the cloud where you can be anywhere in the world and have the seamless experience just like you were sitting at your desk in an office.

And, randomly, I saw Jessica Alba is a RingCentral customer because she posted to her Instagram the other day. So that's a pretty cool use of here's a modern company, and they're they're working remotely. I mean, it's it's here it is and it works.

How cool is that? She is still able to run from her couch an outstanding business that she's built by using our technology all over the world.

So we talk about communications. I mean, classically, people think of that as like their phones. You know, I had a phone on the desk, but I don't want the phone on the desk. I just wanna use my cell phone or I wanna use a computer. But communications is really more than just voice and phone.

I mean, there's other pieces of that. So how does RingCentral enable additional forms of communication, and what else is available with your platform?

I mean, it's crazy to think that 10 years ago, the amount of conversation that would take place by using something as simple as text messaging or means of communication through social media, and it's not the voice piece anymore, but the omnichannel omnipresent multiple ways that you would want to communicate with your friends, colleagues, and your customers that it isn't tied into that hardware on a desk, but it's on your phone. It's on your it's on your mobile phone. It's on your tablet. It's on your computer. It's on pieces of technology that we use every day, and now we can seamlessly communicate whether it is voice, video, text messaging, SMS, MMFs, MMSS, using GIFs, those little items that are the way that the consumer, that's the teenager, all the way up to the older people in our society want to communicate.

In addition to like voice and text or, you know, inside to outside, I mean, you have video collaboration tools and you have chat tools too, right?

Video collaboration chat, making it so easy to share documents live, ways that we can have a conversation and really quickly flip it to video so that we could share visuals or see each other, see that we're all in this thing together, sitting somewhere in an office at our house that used to be a bedroom, maybe it's a kitchen table. But, you know, the the feeling of still being with each other even though we may be distanced apart through the high quality video.

So, I mean, now we're post COVID. Right? So let's talk about this from a transition of of companies, you know, going through the initial stay at home or lockdown orders to, you know, now in some places it being lifted and and, you know, what what the new world looks like. And then going into the future, I mean, how does RingCentral help businesses, you know, adapt and change as the world has changed?

I was reading an article through Global Workplace Analytics where they reported that about 75,000,000 people in 150 different countries found themselves working at home in the month of March. Now the data that came out of that beyond was when they started talking to different CIOs, the increase in productivity, the increase in continued business, but at better hours throughout the day, have led about 85% of them to say, we're going to keep people working from home. We're going to keep people remote because we've seen the high levels of productivity we want. Now in that sense, that's where we have to have the response to the global demand for the ability to work remotely or work from home by providing them the high quality tools that allow the consistent and continued interactions as if you and I were sitting next to each other in a workspace.

You know, if a customer if a company was already a RingCentral customer and, you know, before, you know, the pandemic hit and we had shut down orders, their transition to a remote or distributed workforce or work from home, I'd imagine was was relatively straightforward from a communication standpoint for companies that were not there already, but then came and and looked to RingCentral. I mean, how are you helping those businesses adapt and and what have you done and and what are you seeing now for them going forward?

You know, before we even started talking to them about communication systems, we started helping them understand some basic requirements. If you're gonna put a workforce at home, some little things that they're gonna need to remember. Is that employee at home able to access Internet? And if they are able to access Internet, how many other things are going on at the Internet at the same time? Oh, are you teaching your kids from home who are now doing schooling from home?

Or are they streaming something on the TV or on the computer? And do you have the ability to have the bandwidth to run your little business from home or your massive business from home? So some of those items that we took into consideration of how do people need to access this? Should it be a device that can run on Wi Fi, a device that has to be plugged in? Can I just use it on my mobile phone?

So little items that we started to talk about with businesses of what they need to have in place, whether it was the laptop computer, the mobile phone, the access to the Internet, and how they can optimize those systems for people to work seamlessly and remotely. And then as they got into that, people started to see, holy cow, that phone used to tie me to my desk. Sure. I could forward my voice mail or whatever that feature was, but I couldn't really communicate effectively and efficiently if I wasn't sitting in the workplace. And now that I can do that at home, I'm finding that just by eliminating that commute that I had, how much used to be lost in productivity that's now not lost in productivity because I'm able to more efficiently and effectively work remotely using this platform of RingCentral that keeps me commune keeps me connected with voice, with video, with file sharing, with collaboration tools.

And it also integrated into a lot of the other things that I use from a software perspective, whether it was my email, my CRM, even my ticketing system to make sure that we never missed a beat.

So you've made a comment about little businesses to massive businesses. I mean, what is the range of of sizes that you support? I mean, you know, how small are your customers to how, you know, how big are they on the other side?

You know, the thing that I love about RingCentral is that there's no customer too small. There's no customer too big. We can scale globally for the largest of the large enterprises versus the single proprietor that operates from their home, from their kitchen table running a business. Now, it's the beauty of the platform is that it's flexible for all sizes and all shapes of organizations and also specialization in areas of certain verticals. If you need to make sure that you're in the retail, the education, the healthcare, the government sector, that we have tools that are applicable to help you do your job.

So, I mean, example, you said education, and this has been pre COVID. It was a year or 2 years ago, you announced a very large deal, with it was at Columbia University in New York, I believe. And that was for the university staff itself as well as students. And that's an interesting that's an interesting solution being purchased and being deployed. And, I'm curious if you could tell me more about what exactly RingCentral is providing and and how you won that deal.

No. What an exciting time that was. Columbia University, the outstanding work they do as an educational institution, and how they were easily able to take an application that started in one of the colleges as part of that university and expanded it to the entire campus. It increased things from them, student engagement, ratio of students to teachers or professors, how they could do it from their tablet, their computer, their mobile phone, continually stay connected. So that for them, when this happened and students were no longer on campus, it was a seamless transition where they didn't miss a beat in the ability to have high level and effective education.

It expanded though just beyond the interaction between student and teacher. It was the way that university communicated with everybody in the world that relies upon them. Maybe it was a donor. Maybe it had to do something with their athletic department. Maybe it was something in the research area.

It was the total transformation of multiple different systems for an entire university that now went to one unified system that interacted with every piece of the business they needed it to.

If I were to say, you know, why RingCentral versus somebody else? What is your what is your unique flare? What what are you better at than other people?

You know, there are so many great options out there, but I think I would be remiss if I told you why RingCentral because you expect me to tell you why RingCentral. I love it, what we're doing over here. But when I look to groups like Bartner, Synergy, IHS, Frost and Sullivan, Baird, they're continuously ranking RingCentral ahead of our competitors for a couple of items. It's the ability to execute and the completeness of the vision, seeing where customers want to be and how do we help them get there quicker, ensuring things that if you're a small independent one, 2 person business or a global enterprise, that we have the ability to support you anywhere in the world. It goes back into our security.

It goes back into our ease of use, the seamless transitioning of how we will help you move from hardware to software. A lot of little areas that allow us to be agile and nimble. Sometimes just the simplicity that we own our own platform. And by owning our own platform, it allows us to keep open APIs so that integrations can be built for applications you use every day or applications you're trying to develop to make it a holistic one stop shop for everything you need to be able to do to effectively communicate with yourself, your customer base, and your colleagues.

What do you think is going to happen here in the next, you know, weeks months years as as the, you know, world reacts and adapts to, you know, the COVID pandemic and and the changes in workforce and and locations of of workforce.

Man, Max, I wish I had that crystal ball you and I used to think about to be able to tell the world what's gonna happen here. But I think we will continue to see a change in employee experience, things of how it used to be versus how it is now. I think we'll continue to refer to things as pre COVID versus the COVID world that it's developed and turned into. I definitely anticipate there will be an increase or a higher demand for the work from home. Jobs that employers used to say could only be done in the office.

Now you are able to do them remotely, and we just showed you that we could do that remotely as everyone went and was put up on this work from home order. I think it'll change from things that there was many siloed systems that are now moving more into open platforms and APIs. Things that were fragmented from business from a reporting standpoint, we'll see an increase in intelligent analytics. Things that were tied into a specific office will now move to a global scale. Items that were office based are now moved to an any device, anywhere type of model, whether it was for your collaboration, your communication, your video.

You know, the the biggest reason I believe so much of that, it it again is gonna harp back to that the amount of time that people were able to transition to a work from home, how they can how they can take something like your commute. The average commute was about 26 minutes a day. One way a person traveling to that place of business. Take that 26 minutes times 2 times every person that saved that and the 1,000,000,000 of dollars that is not lost or was gained in the productivity. I think another side of it is applicants.

Applicants going to jobs. If you have one where they say you're required to be in the office versus another company that says you're you have the ability to work from home, more applicants are going to pick that option with the work from home. And again, going back into that number of people that are going to say, because there's greater flexibility, I'm going to see an increased productivity. And now that building that I used to have to rent and pay for the services, the air conditioning, the electricity, etcetera, if a business doesn't need that cost anymore and they shifted people to a work from home transition mode, kept the same level of productivity, I think we'll start to see a more permanent change in the remote workforce. You

mentioned earlier that you also offer contact center solutions. How would somebody know, you know, if a contact center solution is appropriate for them and what that actually would mean for their business?

Max, you know, we used to think about contact center. You'd say, hey, what does in your mind, what do you think of of a contact center? And it was always that conjuring of it's people somewhere outside of the United States huddled into a room, multiple phones. How may I help you? But I think what we transitioned from the contact center is it's no longer just a one way phone call into a service center, but truly transforming it into every possible way someone may choose to contact your business.

That's how I see a contact center. Now a lot of the things you would want in a contact center, routing based on the option someone picks on a menu, press 1 for sales, press 2 for service. A lot of those basic features can now be accomplished in a unified communications platform. But when you want to get up into the contact center, it's the speed and the experience. Customer experience will become synonymous with contact center.

And I really hope that through this COVID pandemic moving forward, the role of the contact center will change because, again, it it is focusing on that experience, that that service level that increases it, but also the experience of in the medical industry. And I called and here are my symptoms. How can I be routed to the correct doctor? If I'm in the financial services, you know, I wanna know that the items that I'm talking about are safe and secure as I go through and talk to that agent about things that might be my my credit report. Also, the other aspects of a contact center is using it from a social media platform.

More and more businesses are contacted using things like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Now think of all the different social platforms that are out there. By using a contact center, you could probably take 12 of those social platforms and communicate it from 1 vehicle, a 12 to 1 ratio using the RingCentral Engage Digital piece so that you're finding every possible way that you could be contacted by a consumer, you have the ability to respond to them.

So I would imagine that there's some impact based on your size, you know, how big your company is. You say, like, 1 or 2 up to 1,000 of, you know, employees. Can you give me an idea of, you know, pricing range? Like, you know, how much you know, what would somebody expect to pay for RingCentral, and how would they qualify and understand that for themselves?

Yeah, Max. And I I'm always hesitant just to blurt out a price because we like to tailor every opportunity to the needs of the customer. Now the same side of it, though, we want to be transparent in ballpark items. So at any time, you could go to ringcentral.com and look at plans and pricing to get an idea of what the services are that we offer. But most consumers are going to find themselves paying for this more in the subscription as a service as it's not just viewed as I'm buying a piece of hardware, I'm plugging it in, and here's my phone bill.

But this is more of a software application where it's a monthly charge for the number of users you have on the system. I think it's safe to say in the US dollars, you're somewhere around $20 a user on a monthly average.

So what's the process to get activated and use RingCentral? I mean, what what did somebody have to do? I mean, you're shipping phones to them or they download an application? Like how how do they transfer their phone numbers?

You know, those those items that used to be the hardest part about switching your phone system are the areas that we love because of how easy you're able to transition those items to the cloud. When you move to a cloud communication or cloud phone system, that system could be up and running in 15 to 20 minutes. It's nothing more than activating a software license. If you choose to use a desk phone, a hard phone up at the office, or even one that you can take and plug in at your house, sure, we'll ship it to you and we'll have it provisioned so that it's ready to work. But you can get your system up and running in a matter of minutes simply by running it on your iPhone, on your Android phone, by downloading an app.

You could run it on your tablet. You can run it on your computer. And then as it comes to items of moving phones over, moving phone numbers from your previous carrier over to RingCentral, we are a local exchange, which allows us to have the ability to have that number at RingCentral. Move it from your past carrier to us. It's not a forwarding service.

It's nothing along those lines. Now how do you get there and how do you transact with us? Two options. We have an outstanding partner community worldwide, trusted advisors in your local market that can help you determine what's the best system I need to be part of. Now we also have the ability to come and work with us directly even though I would advocate going through the partner channel because they truly are the ones that understand other business needs.

Some of those things we talked about earlier, do you have the bandwidth? Do you have the security? Do I need an SD WAN application? But you can I would say first, call Max? If you're listening to this podcast, call Max.

He's gonna take you on a path that's gonna be customer experience like no other.

Well, Mike, I appreciate that plug. Thank you so much for your time today. It's always a pleasure.

I miss you, man. Can't wait to see you, but great job on this today.

Likewise. Thank you. Talk to you soon.

See you.

Thanks for joining the tech in 20 minutes podcast. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven't heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visit us at clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.