RingCentral Offers Innovative Collaboration Tools to Support Remote Work

Two years ago, organizations raced to adopt solutions that would allow them to support workers from home. Collaboration technologies were at the top of the list, and at RingCentral, we certainly saw our share of new customers using our platform for the first time to enable unified messaging, voice and video for their remote employees. 

Fast-forward to today, and many of these same organizations are struggling to optimize their collaboration environments. As a result of rolling out new solutions so quickly, they often have sprawling, redundant environments, and they frequently lack a clear strategy for getting the most out of these tools and managing them over time. 

We’ve seen several organizations have success with CDW’s Managed Collaboration Anywhere offerings. In particular, Managed Collaboration Anywhere can provide the following benefits.

At RingCentral, we can help organizations optimize their use of our solutions. That said, we’re focused exclusively on the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) part of the equation. 

CDW’s wide array of partnerships, in contrast, provides a broader perspective that allows experts to provide vendor-agnostic recommendations — not only for collaboration platforms but also for any associated infrastructure. Additionally, CDW has existing relationships with business and IT leaders within organizations, creating a level of trust as companies look to streamline and enhance their collaboration environments. This may be a bit of an intangible benefit, but it’s a highly valuable one.

The current labor market has made it extremely difficult for many organizations to recruit and retain IT talent. When businesses do make new hires, they don’t want to bog those employees down with routine management tasks just to keep systems up and running. 

A trusted partner like CDW can provide ongoing management services such as help desk, allowing internal staffers to keep their focus on more strategic projects that create value for the business. Furthermore, CDW experts can help administrators uncover powerful service management tools, including remote diagnostic and performance analysis dashboards often overlooked by new customers during onboarding.

Even the best IT tools can’t help an organization achieve its goals if employees don’t use them. Without appropriate training, employees will often revert to their familiar workflows after a short time — potentially resulting in inefficiencies, confusion and even security vulnerabilities. CDW can manage adoption services, ensuring that organizations get the maximum value out of their collaboration systems.

Many of the customers who came to us at the beginning of the pandemic were on-premises users who were looking to transition to the cloud to save money. But a move to the cloud will only cut costs over the long term if organizations take ongoing steps to streamline their collaboration environments. 

Again, many organizations are plagued by sprawl and disparate ad hoc solutions, to the point that IT teams might not have complete visibility into who is using what platforms across enterprises. A partner like CDW can inventory and monitor assets and make sure that organizations aren’t paying for more than they’re using.

Finally, a partner like CDW can guide an organization’s strategic planning around collaboration and ensure future-proofing that promotes flexibility. Many enterprises need advice that goes beyond the technology itself and extends to line-of-business plans. 

Tools should not only be evaluated for their specifications and features but also assessed for their ability to help achieve an organization’s goals — potentially including the ability to retain talent, empower remote work and training, and facilitate effective communications with customers. 

This type of long-term strategic thinking requires buy-in from executive teams, a broad range of tech expertise and a viewpoint that considers sales and marketing (rather than just IT) — all of which a trusted partner like CDW can help to provide.

Story by Toussaint Celestin