The Future is Bright and Unified | #customersupport #supporticket

I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) and sunshiny day.

– Jimmy Cliff

One of my favorite songs! It inspires optimism and hope – promising a future bright with possibility. After months and months of “closed-door” policy, the world seems poised to slowly re-open – reaping the rewards of a planet’s perseverance and resolve.

As it does, it is clear the world of work has been changed forever. Businesses and organizations are redefining and refining their new workplace identity. RingCentral included!

The re-imagining is about choice and options. It is about striking the right balance for people and culture – managing both remote and in-person staff. It is about connecting people in a work-from-anywhere, hybrid workplace. Above all, it requires taking into consideration what your people want – (2021 State of Hybrid Work Report).

Hybrid ≠ Work-from-Home

For a hybrid workforce to thrive, you have to think outside the confines of the ‘work-from-home’ box the pandemic imposed. Employees want a seamless, continuous experience no matter where they are – working from their home, a coffee shop or in the office.

This is where the true magic of Unified Communications shines.

Conversations are free of siloed environments. And engagement goes beyond a single communication mode – taking into account individual preferences. Gone are the days of “one mode to rule them all.” Message, Video, and Phone (MVP) are of equal importance – following the needs of time and place. Context is persistent and the ability to switch between modes ensures continuity and intention.

At RingCentral, MVP is what we do.

Our platform powers business communications so you can work smarter. Working smarter increases productivity – freeing up time to spend on whatever matters most to you and your customers. Family. Friends. Experiences.

We power human connection – in the workplace and beyond.

Transformation Requires Innovation

Innovation allows us to grow and evolve. Let’s just say RingCentral grew a lot in Q1 2021…

We announced a host of new innovations designed to help developers bring improved communications capabilities to their business apps. This includes the ability to integrate video meeting capabilities into custom enterprise workflows with RingCentral Embeddable.

We introduced direct, in-app calling for Salesforce to give more control to sales agents from within Salesforce. The goal? Drive increased productivity, efficiency, and most importantly, improved customer engagement.

We opened a new innovation center in India with sites in Bangalore and Gurgaon. Our global presence – including India – means more and more and businesses around the world can take advantage of cloud communications.

Innovation Requires Security and Trust

Our customers choose our platform because it is secure, reliable, and inspires trust.

Q1 was a milestone quarter for us in this particular area.

We appointed Heather Hinton as our new Chief of Information Security Officer. Joining us from IBM, Heather brings more than 30 years of experience in IT and cyber security to RingCentral. She has managed security operations and data-center security, as well as risk management, and incident response activities for large Fortune 500 customers. Her tremendous pedigree is one we are proud to now have in our corner!

We received the United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) Cyber Essentials Plus certification. The certification, under the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials scheme, was achieved following a comprehensive external audit process undertaken by Manchester-based NCC Group. The certification is a testament to robust practices across operational processes and our resilient cyber defenses.

Perhaps the most exciting update to our innovation this past quarter is the onboarding of the extremely talented team at Kindite. An Israel-based company, Kindite specializes in cryptographic technologies that mitigate and reduce security and privacy risks to information and applications in the cloud. Acquiring both the technology and team, we are reinforcing our ongoing commitment to global security, compliance, and data integrity – providing us with capabilities such as end-to-end encryption that we intend to roll out later this year.

Recognized as a Leader

In Q1, our mission to empower you to collaborate and thrive in your work has not gone unnoticed.

For the second year in a row, Frost & Sullivan ranked RingCentral first and with the highest growth in their 2020 Frost Radar™ UCaaS Market Report.

We were also named a leader in two IDC MarketScape UCaaS reports – both for Enterprise and SMB market segments.

We are humbled by this recognition and look forward to maintaining these rankings in the years ahead.

Partners Make Us Stronger

Through new partnerships and renewed commitment in Q1, we have expanded or bolstered our presence in many new markets around the world.

Together with TELUS, we now serve more businesses in Canada – helping them easily transition their legacy phone systems to the cloud via TELUS Business Connect.

Together with Atos, we also launched Unify Office by RingCentral in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Together with ecotel, we announced the offering of RingCentral Office to its customers in Germany.

Together with Avaya, we announced the ongoing global expansion of Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral as customer demand continues to grow.

Finally, together with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, we announced the availability of Rainbow Officed powered by RingCentral in eight European countries. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Rainbow Office combines the latest in UCaaS technology from RingCentral with market-leading telephony and networking products and services from Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

The Customer is Our Idea Engine

As our customers re-imagine their future for the hybrid workplace, it is inspiring to see our solutions implemented in such innovative and heart-warming ways…

One channel partner win provided a great 7,000 user direct routing win with a leading financial services company across over 60 locations.

A great example of this is our win with the American Cancer Society. They had a range of use cases across corporate offices, retail stores, and Hope Lodges for cancer patients. We are incredibly humbled and proud that this inspirational organization selected RingCentral to meet their diverse needs with a single, cloud-based platform for nearly 3,000 users across over 100 locations.

And finally, we are proud to say we won our largest contact center deal ever. A leading mortgage originator and servicer wanted to replace a mix of older solutions with a single, integrated UCaaS and CCaaS solution for over 6,000 of its employees and over 2,000 contact center agents.

It’s the People Behind the Change Engine

Innovation and growth would not be possible without the employees that make them happen.

Last quarter, we held our very first company-wide Global Kickoff event, Forward ‘21. A roaring success, it has allowed us to approach the future united, aligned, and clear on our direction.

Successful employees look to their leaders for inspiration – those who lead by example. In Q1, we welcomed to the RingCentral family…

Jaya Kumar, Chief Marketing Officer. Jaya brings over 25 years of experience with multiple Fortune 100 companies, including PepsiCo, Kraft Foods/Mondelez. Under his leadership, we look forward to category-changing marketing programs and initiatives.

Arne Duncan, Board of Directors. As part of the Obama Administration, Secretary Duncan served as U.S. Secretary of Education from January 2009 through December 2015. Prior to his federal government service, he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools for eight years, and he is currently a senior fellow at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Secretary Duncan brings a broad understanding of the challenges that our communities will face over the coming years. We are thrilled to have him help guide us on our journey to empower individuals, families, businesses, and communities to learn, connect, and collaborate using our platform.

Powering Human Connections by Working Smarter

As the world looks forward to moving beyond the pandemic, businesses and organizations are confronted with many unknowns. How do you keep people connected and engaged? How do you strike the right work/life harmony for the many households struggling between caretaking and work? How do you inspire productivity while maintaining a sense of corporate culture?

There are no wrong answers right now. We’re all in this together. Charting the paths for our next adventure. Drawing on what we have learned over the last year. Disrupting traditional work models that we, perhaps, defaulted to, out of convention – unaware of what else was possible. For it is only when you live the impossible that the notion of possible takes on a new meaning. So what will our future ‘possible’ be? I look forward to discovering it together with our customers, our partners, and our people.

Perhaps this is the rainbow we’ve been praying for? As we get to that bright, bright, bright, sunshiny day.