RingCentral UCaaS Integrate Business App Instruction Manual
- June 12, 2024
- RingCentral
Table of Contents
The power
of connection
Why you should integrate your
business apps with UCaaS
CHAPTER 1 Integrations today and tomorrow
74% of employees have at least five apps open at one time.
16% use more than 15 apps per business day.
The modern enterprise relies on an array of different tools to boost
productivity, automate workflows, provide customer relationship management and
support, and manage communications both internally and externally.
A Harmon.ie survey of information workers reports that, on average, 74% of
employees have at least five apps open at one time and 16% use more than 15
apps per business day.
In the case of communications and collaboration, many of these tools may have
been adopted at different times and for different purposes. A company’s
landline phone and fax systems may date back decades, and it might have been
years since email platforms or calendaring software were last updated. At the
same time, modern businesses likely use other types of applications, like
video conferencing or instant messaging tools, that have been implemented in
just the past few years.
Businesses often treat each of these systems as its own special island because
they lack an automated solution for sending data between one system and
another. These businesses often rely on manual, ad hoc processes to connect
one platform with others.
While that may alleviate some of these issues, these strategies come at a
great cost, such as a lack of productivity and the loss of tools over time. IT
teams, in particular, feel the pain of the ad hoc approach because they must
deal with disconnected business workflows and, more worryingly, the security
and compliance risks associated with employees using unsanctioned apps to
circumvent poor workflows.
32 days
Workers lose up to 32 daya year navigating between workplace productivity apps
With cloud-based technologies, a business can unify its entire work ecosystem,
easing the strain on the IT department and all end users. Equally worrisome is
the impact that disconnected communications have on employees. In a recent
survey of knowledge workers by CITE Research, more than two-thirds of
respondents said they waste up to 60 minutes at work navigating between apps.
This constant switching between apps is sometimes referred to as “app
overload,” a problem that 75% of IT leaders cite as a major challenge. App
overload means that users have so many different applications to navigate
within their company that they struggle
to find the right solution for a given task, as well as to master all of the
different tools they are expected to use. It not only stifles productivity,
but leads to decreased employee engagement as well.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Thanks to the advent of the cloud, a
better world is possible. By migrating to a cloud-based strategy for deploying
applications, a business can:
- Achieve easier implementation.
- Lower maintenance effort, thereby reducing the strain on its IT department.
- Increase productivity within a robust cloud work environment.
- Integrate various applications much more efficiently than what is possible with a traditional approach.
CHAPTER 2 The power of one cloud communications solution
More than a decade into the cloud-computing era, many businesses have been
using cloud-based enterprise applications, such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce,
and Google Workspace, for years. Such cloud-based apps are great at helping
companies become more efficient and leverage data more effectively.
However, these applications become even more powerful when they are integrated
with a cloud communications app, something that many companies have not yet
done. Simply adopting cloud-based communications applications is only the
first step in realising the full value of these technologies. To leverage them
to maximum potential, businesses must integrate their communications tools
with the other cloud-based business applications they already use.
To illustrate, a business might integrate cloud-based fax solutions with its
email platform so faxes can be read and received as easily as email. Or, it
could integrate video meeting tools with its calendar software to schedule
meetings automatically. These are just some of the integrations that cloud
solutions make possible.
Integrations in a cloud communications system make the whole enterprise
ecosystem much greater than the sum of its parts, whether those integrations
are out of the box or via custom APIs.
Cloud-based communications deliver several critical advantages as compared to legacy, on-premises communications tools.
- The modern generation of cloud-based communications tools increase productivity and streamline workflows. They lend themselves to automation. For example, there is no simple way to automate phone dialing or appointment scheduling on a legacy system, but in the cloud, common tasks can easily be scripted and automated to save time and allow employees to focus their energies on more mission-critical tasks.
- Cloud-based communications tools give a business flexibility to run operations from anywhere because they work equally well on workstations, smartphones, and office communications devices.
- A cloud-based centralised communications hub provides a better user experience because it eliminates the need to learn, for instance, arcane fax machine interfaces or outdated scheduling software.
- A cloud-based centralised communications hub also makes it easy to store and backup communications data such as call or webinar recordings directly into the cloud, where they are accessible instantly from anywhere.
Successful organisations today are building best-of-breed solutions that merge these new cloud technologies with multiple applications like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce to deliver a complete communications experience in a familiar interface.
CHAPTER 3 Business communications and applications: A match made in
heaven
Consumer comfort with using cloud technologies to connect with friends and
family has led to a change in their expectations for the business apps they
use to communicate with fellow workers. Whether their communication is for
business or pleasure, they desire and even demand the same simple user
experiences and efficient workflows. For example, where once users may have
been satisfied with integrated email and calendar, now they demand a much more
integrated communications experience that includes voice, messaging, meetings,
fax, and more.
Here’s what workers said in the CITE Research study mentioned previously:
Workers said they believe an integrated and unified approach to communications
and collaboration would lead to:
Time savings|
---|---
Increased organisation|
Increased productivity|
Better communication with colleagues|
A feeling of control over work|
As end users demand a more comprehensive and seamless communications
experience, the pressure is on IT to respond. Successful companies must
combine business productivity suites with purpose-built communications
solutions to empower employees
with the full range of functionality that they want and need to perform their
jobs.
The marriage of enterprise applications and cloud communications and
collaboration solutions relieves crippling bottlenecks in enterprise
workflows. Rather than toggle endlessly between disconnected apps multiple
times per day, users can access the needed
functionalities from within one centralised cloud communications hub.
That is why today’s workforce is moving toward integrated solutions that
combine tools like email, calendars, and conferencing vs. stand-alone
applications and programs to streamline workflow,
easily manage their scheduling and correspondenceand maintain a unified
business identity.
By integrating applications like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace with cloud
phone, and fax into one consolidated interface, all employees are able to
access everything they need when they need it. Integration use case: Sales
agent Integration use case: Mortgage company employee John is a sales agent
whose job includes calling 50 leads per day. That’s a tall order if John is
expected to place each call manually, as well as keep manual records of which
leads were called, when leads were called, and what the outcome of each call
was. John
also relies on his desktop computer, his desk phone, his mobile phone, and his
email to both call and respond to leads each day.
By integrating a cloud-based calling tool with a CRM platform like Salesforce,
John can automate most of these tasks. Working from a PC or smartphone, he can
easily store call records automatically within his CRM platform and use it to
keep track of the outcomes of calls. Few CRM tools offer this type of
functionality natively, but it can easily be added through integration with a
cloud-based communications tool.
Also, John can quickly dial down a list of calls with an integrated dialer in
his company’s favorite CRM.
Susan, a mortgage company employee, prepares a document using a cloud-based
productivity application like Google Docs or a Box account, but she needs to
send the document to a client as a fax due to regulatory requirements in the
financial services industry. This task requires several tedious, time-
consuming steps. The document has to be downloaded into an offline word
processor, printed out, inserted into a fax machine, and then faxed manually.
Having an integrated UCaaS allows Susan to add plugs-in to do this in a few
steps. With a cloud-based fax solution that integrates with Google Docs or
Box, the process becomes much simpler. With just a few clicks, the document
can be delivered as a fax directlfrom a workstation or phone, even if Susan
doesn’t have a physical fax machine on site.
Integration use case: Customer support managerIntegration use case:
Sales team leader Joel is a customer support manager who is tasked with
ensuring his team successfully resolves 100 ervice complaints a week. How can
he track which team members are most efficient and which ones need additional
training? Joel might have each team member keep a manual tally of calls with
jotted notes about the disposition of each one. He might compare that with
anecdotal information he receives from a random sampling of customers. This
unwieldy system provides few real insights into his team’s output and
abilities.
Fortunately for Joel, modern integration can come to the rescue. Integrated
analytics within a customer service cloud app, like Salesforce Service Cloud,
gives Joel access to instant reporting on how calls are managed, answered, and
more. With the inbound screen pop-up, Joel is able to see who’s calling. Is it
a customer or a prospect? Joel can get a 360-degree view of what’s happening
with that potential caller before answering the call.
Alex is a sales team leader overseeing a large team of sales reps. The team
goal is to schedule 50 meetings per week. Using calendaring software alone,
Alex has to schedule each meeting manually, and she must slog through a
tedious scheduling process that involves the exchange of information over
email or by phone and the coordination of multiple people’s schedules before
she can confirm each meeting.
With an integrated meetings solution that connects directly to Alex’s email
tool of choice, however, the tedium and manual back-and-forth disappear.
Alex can schedule meetings quickly and automatically, without having to shift
between multiple applications. Also, Alex is able to leverage analytics on
communications data to see how her team is working. Who’s making the most
calls and who’s closing the most deals?
CHAPTER 4 The move to connected workspaces
Maintaining legacy on-premises systems costs time and money that can better be
spent helping the enterprise to grow. Now and in the future, tools that boost
productivity and cloud-based solutions are critical for businesses of all
sizes. The flexible, scalable solutions provided by cloud-based communications
systems deliver greater benefits to both end users and IT.
Workflow efficiency and effortless communications become part of everyday
business activities. By integrating a cloud communications system wkey
enterprise applications, businesses gain a robust solution that merges all
business communications into
one productive cloud work environment.
RingCentral’s open platform is your business communications hub to extend into
key applicationsincluding Microsoft applications as well as other leading
business applications such as Google Workspace and Salesforce.
About RingCentral
RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of business cloud
communications and contact centre solutions based on its powerful Message
Video Phone™ (MVP™) global platform. More flexible and cost effective than
legacy on-premises PBX and video conferencing systems that it replaces,
RingCentral empowers modern mobile and distributed workforces to communicate,
collaborate, and connect via any mode, any device, and any location.
RingCentral offers three key products in its portfolio including ingCentral
MVP™, a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform including team
messaging, video meetings, and a cloud phone system; RingCentral Video®, the
company’s video meetings solution with team messaging that enables Smart Video
Meetings™; and RingCentral cloud Contact Centre solutions. RingCentral’s open
platform integrates with leading third-party business applications and enables
customers to easily customise business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered
in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.
For more information, please contact a sales representative.
Visit ringcentral.com.au or call 1800 940 745
RINGCENTRAL® EBOOK | THE POWER OF CONNECTION
RingCentral Australia Pty Ltd, Level 28, 161 Castlereagh Street, Sydney © 2021
RingCentral, Inc.
All rights reserved. RingCentral and the RingCentral logo are registered
trademarks of RingCentral, Inc.
Other third-party marks and logos displayed in this document are the
trademarks of their respective owners.
721647343 08/2021
References
- The easiest way to find, share & organize across M365
- Message. Video. Phone. | RingCentral AU
- Message. Video. Phone. | RingCentral AU
- Survey: 75% of IT staff challenged by app overload | RingCentral
- Resources: Webinars, Videos, Case Studies, and White Papers | RingCentral
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