With a 15 year track record in cloud communications service provision, RingCentral are no strangers to transformational shifts in the communications technology landscape. Expanding at almost double the rate off their nearest competitor), the company is championing innovation for the workplace, and continually evolving its product suite to meet business needs. And it’s those business needs which are driving new partnerships - such as that just announced with value-added technology distributor Westcon.
I caught up with RingCentral’s MD of EMEA, Sahil Rekhi, to explore this shift, and the impact of the new partnership:
“Westcon are joining forces with RingCentral as a key channel partner, and they will be working as a master distribution agent - initially in the UK and Ireland - to bring the RingCentral service portfolio to their clients"
"The richness of the whole portfolio brings together UC and CS and collaboration services into a single unified market experience for end customers. And we’re bringing a really rapid pace of innovation to that market, as these products are evolving fast with 5 maybe 6 major releases every year - driving additional value to the end customer, which for 99% of the time is at no extra charge”.
Harmonious partnership
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Sahil Rekhi[/caption]
RingCentral have pioneered a truly partnership approach with their distribution agents through their Channel Harmony programme, which actively collaborates with them both to make the sale and to monetise it throughout the life of the contract. With over 9,000 partners globally it creates an unusually close relationship, which works for providers, resellers and users alike.
As Rekhi explains, “Typically, you find a reseller signing up to a service, then all the sales marketing activities are done by that partner or reseller themselves. RingCentral works in a slightly different way: we bring on Westcon as a master distribution agent, we then spend a lot of time and resources in driving channel-based marketing activities and enablement for them and their partners within their ecosystem. What we are requesting them to do is actually register business opportunities and introduce us to their new customer acquisitions that they're looking to make. We then have a direct sales team who interact with the end customer to close the service contracts.”
Everything the customer needs
Being able to offer clients a complete solution makes it easy for the partnership model to meet every arising need for internal and external communications.
