RingCentral have been the cause of a lot of buzz within the Unified Communications industry over the last couple of years. When I was given the chance to sit down with the experts behind RingCentral at UC EXPO 2017 in London this year, I was exhilarated with the opportunity to learn more about what’s coming next for one of the world’s most disruptive cloud communications vendors.
RingCentral Have Been Growing
The first thing I asked RingCentral when we sat down to chat about UC, was what’s going on for the company right now in terms of evolving and disruptive technology. Of course, the team was keen to draw attention to their recent development of RingCentral Office, the worldwide cloud communications solution that’s allowing businesses around the world to expand their global footprint.
With RingCentral Office, countries across the globe can offer more personalised and localised experiences to their customers, with local billing and currency, and a range of new solutions that help to connect businesses and end-users from a range of different angles. The company told me that the next step in their plan, after the implementation of 13 new countries came into play on the 26th of March, would be to introduce new languages and resources too. The solution is currently available in French, German and English; Italian and Spanish are expected to be added by the end of the year.
Right now, RingCentral have things like team collaboration, contact centre capabilities, and virtual meeting rooms under their belt. They have team messaging and collaboration solutions that connect with unified clients, and give their customers the same cohesive view regardless of which device or endpoint they’re using. The interesting thing is that RingCentral solutions aren’t limited to internal communications, offering external options too, making them a very powerful proposition in the UC market.
The ethos behind RingCentral is to connect people, with people:
“Our business model is enterprise communications and any applications that might need to integrate with Comms. We’re solving the problems of enterprise communications, providing our customers with a completely inter-connected solution for UC where all the tools they need are in one place.”
Putting the “U” in “UC”
One of the points that RingCentral were keen to get across to me during our interview, was the fact that they feel they’ve been able to truly start putting the “U”, into “UC”. Everything that happens on their app can take place within the same, streamlined place.
“Right now, we have four generations in the workplace, all communicating in different ways. If you want those different groups to work together, then you need a truly unified solution for communications. We’re giving people that streamlined solution.”
With a simple backend that connects everything together in one location, and the use of AI to collect information, RingCentral are building a platform for the future. After all, in this world where data is constantly being collected, it’s crucial to have somewhere that information can be stored.
RingCentral are all about streamlining the workforce, and providing a communication and collaboration experience that brings everything together. “Say you had a client out on the field today, in Construction. If they ran into a problem, they’d have to document that issue with pictures, send the pictures back to the engineering team, the team would review, and send an answer back. All of that would take around a week. Now, you can do it in an hour or less.”
What Comes Next for RingCentral?
I was keen to discover what RingCentral had planned for the future development of their company. With all the new complexities of AI technology and other issues coming through, I wanted to know how RingCentral were packaging their solutions for their business customers.
The company told me that they were all about delivering a backend that simplifies the use of multiple collaboration tools in one place. The resources for UC are evolving, and RingCentral are trying to gather those resources into a single place, so that the information gathered is easier to follow and measure. By providing an integrated system at the backend, the brand is effectively simplifying communication for the end-user.
If we look a little further into the future, and the delivery of AI, we can see how this solution might be crucial for the future. After all, when it comes to gathering information about who’s the most active in a specific space, what data people need to know, and how interactions are being measured, gathering all that information from disjointed applications would be impossible.
By moving all collaborative communications into a single stream, the data from various transactions can allow AI engines of the future to learn and develop. After all, the future AI engines need a robust stream of data to learn from.
For RingCentral, the future of UC is all about making a complicated topic simple. “Whether for internal or external communications, we want to take the stresses of technology away from you.” The idea is design an overall UX (user experience) that adapts to the needs of each individual, rather than offering a “one-size-fits-all” solution.
What About GDPR?
Before we closed the interview, we had a brief chat about the latest buzz term, GDPR. The company told me that they believe there’s going to be a lot of testing involved before GDPR can offering the results that people expect.
Ultimately, RingCentral believe that the core requirements of GDPR are understanding where customer data is, and being transparent about how that data is being held.
“The great thing is that we’ve always been transparent. We’ve always let our customers know where they can get their information. The only thing we need to add is the right to be forgotten.”
Of course, the complexities emerge in the different rules and regulations that can be found in different parts of the world. “To make sure our customers feel safe, we’re focusing on giving the end-user complete control, and absolute access to their data, transactions, meta-descriptions, statistics, and everything else. You’re completely empowered to use and move your data how you see fit”.
