This global fragrance maker for world-renowned brands pulled off a hassle-free international telephony integration—embedding RingCentral into Microsoft Teams | #customersupport #supporticket

Highlights:

• Microsoft Teams: Inter Parfums chose RingCentral for their strong global presence, easy onboarding, and flexible global calling options in Microsoft Teams.

• Streamlined onboarding: Because RingCentral is cloud-based and doesn’t require hardware, Inter Parfums can add new users in minutes anywhere in the world.

• Improved operations: RingCentral’s intuitive admin portal makes it easy to create and update routing rules and call queues, allowing the company to quickly respond to changing telephony needs.

The company behind many of the world’s most popular fragrance brands

 You might not have heard of Inter Parfums, Inc., but you know the global organization’s work. The publicly traded company (NASDAQ: IPAR) is the exclusive fragrance developer and distributor for many of the world’s most respected prestige brands—including Kate Spade, Coach, bebe, Montblanc, Jimmy Choo, Anna Sui, and many others.

Demand for the award-winning company’s products is truly global: Inter Parfums has customers in more than 120 countries. 

An international acquisition created a telephony challenge

When Inter Parfums acquired the fragrance unit of fashion brand Salvatore Ferragamo, the company’s IT team was tasked with integrating that division’s employees into the Inter Parfums communications environment. But several factors made that integration a challenge.

First, Inter Parfums is headquartered in New York City, and the Ferragamo team is based primarily in Florence—although some work elsewhere in Europe and others also travel frequently to Hong Kong. As Technology Director Darryl Baptiste points out, a traditional phone system would not have been feasible with such a distributed team.

Another complicating factor, Darryl explains, was the fact that the Ferragamo team already had one communications platform. “A cloud phone solution—one capable of supporting us in all these countries—made the most sense. But those employees were already using Microsoft Teams for their internal messaging and video communications. We didn’t want to force them to use a separate app for their phone calls.”

With RingCentral for Microsoft Teams, This Global Fragrance Maker for World-Renowned Brands Deployed International Phone Service in Days

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Seamlessly adding cloud telephony, with the RingCentral for Microsoft Teams dialer

Because he had used the RingCentral cloud phone solution in a previous role, Darryl knew both that the company supports global business customers, and that RingCentral can be integrated directly into Microsoft Teams for both internal and external dialing.

“The deployment was so easy,” Darryl says. “I called RingCentral, had them set up Italy-based numbers for all employees, ordered a few handsets for the new office, and had our account set up right there. And keep in mind, I did all this while sitting in my New York City office, with no understanding of how a telephony implementation like this works in Italy.” 

Without having to buy and install any onsite telephony equipment or enter into any agreements with local Italian telecom carriers, Darryl was able to set all employees up with a feature-rich cloud phone solution—including their own Italy-based business numbers—which they can access anywhere, on any device, within Microsoft Teams.

Achieving significant operational improvements with RingCentral for Microsoft Teams

“First and foremost, RingCentral gives us flexibility,” Darryl says. “For those who use Microsoft Teams, they now have a global cloud phone solution embedded right in their familiar Teams environment. And for those who don’t use Teams, they can easily access their RingCentral phone service using the soft phone on their computer, the app on their cell phone, or—if they choose—the handset on their desk.”

From an administrative standpoint, Darryl points out that RingCentral makes onboarding new employees into the company’s corporate communications environment easier than ever. In fact, he says, it takes only a few minutes to add the new user into RingCentral, assign them a phone number, and send out some simple tutorials for using the apps and the RingCentral for Microsoft Teams embedded dialer.

“One great thing about the RingCentral for Microsoft Teams integration is how seamless it makes our telephony in terms of setup and configuration. I’m about to move a whole department into a new office in Florence, and one thing I haven’t had to spend any time worrying about is phone service. It’s already there for them, on their laptops and cell phones.”

RingCentral’s features and the platform’s ease of use are also helping the company improve many of its everyday workflows, Darryl explains. “Setting up and adjusting the call queues, hunt groups, and routing instructions is so easy that our teams can do it quickly and without needing to wait for IT. That’s helping them to be more agile and responsive, and ultimately more efficient.” 

Finally, Darryl notes, the global nature of the RingCentral environment has also created new opportunities for Inter Parfums from a recruiting standpoint. “Because we can add business numbers for any region in the world, hiring in various countries will now be easier than it’s ever been from a telephony standpoint. That’s a huge operational advantage for a worldwide company like ours.”

Originally published Dec 09, 2021