Technology has always been a driver of innovation and improvement in business communications, and beyond that, of processes and workflow in general.
Imagine how revolutionary the mass adoption of the telephone must have been in the worlds of commerce and industry. For the first time in history, you could actually talk to someone who was not sat in the same room as you in real time. Arranging orders, payment terms, meetings and so on could happen in an instant, rather than having to wait for snail mail or decipher a brief telegram.
We continue to live through the same processes of change today, with communications technology both driving forward and responding to changes in wider business processes. Keeping ahead of the trends is essential for both end users and vendors, the former so they don’t fall behind the competition, the latter so they are meeting market demand.
As a pioneer first in the cloud PBX market and then UCaaS, RingCentral has always prided itself on riding the wave of technological progress. It also believes it is in exactly the right place to adapt to, meet and indeed drive forward these changes - the Cloud.
In a white paper it published this year, the company cited collaboration, mobility, BYOD and the growing importance of text among the next wave of trends shaping business communications. There is no caution or concern in RingCentral’s tone as it sets out these drivers of change. These are not so much challenges to meet as opportunities to be grasped - and you get the impression RingCentral is very confident it is already most of the way there.
In this review, we will take a fresh look at RingCentral’s Office platform, and some of its related products, through the lens of these shifting trends the company itself identifies. We will ask just how adaptable a UCaaS service like RingCentral Office is to changing work patterns and market demands, and what role cloud communications in general is playing in shaping the future of work.
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RingCentral Review - What Can It Do?
RingCentral Office started out as a hosted PBX solution, taking the infrastructure for running a business phone system off premises into the Cloud. Although the range of features added has grown significantly since, that core PBX platform remains, providing a full range of business telephone and call management functions.
The big benefit of a cloud PBX is scalability. As long as you have an internet connection, you can connect any number of devices into the network - you just need to have the requisite number of user subscriptions. And that also makes a cloud PBX perfect for mobility and for using different devices.
RingCentral Office allows users to connect any device to the business network, simply by logging in online. If they are out and about, or working from home, they can use their mobile and use the same phone numbers, same contacts, same storage as they would get on their office phone. The full functionality of an office system - auto-receptionist, automatic call recording, IVR, voicemail, call forwarding, even reporting functions - is always available, accessible from anywhere.
RingCentral argues that people are increasingly expecting to be able to work wherever they want, but what is critical for businesses is ensuring that doesn’t affect service. With RingCentral Office, it doesn’t matter where staff are located. Because everything is based on the internet, you can still set up and use local or non-geographic numbers for your customers to use.
If staff want to bring their own device to work, not a problem. Via a softphone app, they can use their own smartphone, tablet or laptop to plug in and use it as their fully functioning office phone. All without a dedicated server to install or management software to download on your data centre - you just need a WiFi connection.
But as RingCentral itself acknowledges, expectations around work communications have evolved beyond voice, and even email. The company long ago added video and free conferencing to the Office mix, with HD video meetings for up to 50 attendees worldwide. As the company says, work is no longer a place but a way you connect.
