Transcript
Chris Frey (00:00):
First, some housekeeping. There will be a recording made available of this webinar via our website event page. There will not be any live Q&A during today's webinar. If you do have questions, please post them to the Q&A section and a member of our team will respond to you either live, over phone or email after the webinar. As promised, all attendees will receive a DoorDash gift card as thank you for being here today. We'll be sending out redemption codes and those codes will arrive via email from Kristen Saffley. She's a member of the Converged team.
Okay. Next I'd like to introduce our guest speakers in order of appearance. First we have Frank Skiffington, senior vice president of sales with Mitel. Next up will be Garry Simpson, sales engineer with RingCentral, and last but certainly not least, Lori Campbell, UCaaS and CCaaS solution architect with Converged Technology Professionals.
First up is Frank. Frank, we're very excited to have you here with us today. Thanks so much for carving out some time to be present and answer some of the questions that are surely top of mind for myself and many of the attendees. There is certainly a lot of chatter, if you will, regarding the news between RingCentral and Mitel. I've put together a list of questions for you that I'm hoping are indicative of being the voice of the customer. If you don't mind, we'll get started. Sound good?
Frank Skiffington (01:21):
Yeah. Sure. Great to be here and thanks for the invite. Looking forward.
Chris Frey (01:26):
Frank, an easy one. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your current role with Mitel and what you're charged with doing?
Frank Skiffington (01:35):
Yeah. Sure. Frank Skiffington, I've been at Mitel 24 years, was, up until about 10 years ago, looking after the UK channel business and then got asked to move down to Sydney, Australia. I've been down there for the last nine years looking after ANZ and then more recently the Asia-Pac business for Mitel. Running Asia-Pac for Mitel. Then December last year, got asked to head up the Americas sales business.
That's what I'm currently doing. I got the gig on the 1st of January as it were, and moved to Texas on the 15th of May. I'm a Scottish Australian Texan, Chris, is probably the best way to describe me at the moment.
Chris Frey (02:32):
Well, just remember, don't mess with Texas, right? I guess as I mentioned, we're a heritage ShoreTel and Mitel dealer. I have an immense amount of orange shirts hanging in my closet yet from all my ShoreTel orange. Big question is what's the current runway for the Mitel MiVoice Connect platform, aka the heritage ShoreTel product line?
Frank Skiffington (02:59):
Yeah. We announced the MiVoice Connect product would be end of technical support and we'll run that up until December 2029, so just over seven years. We've not announced as yet any end of new or add-on sales or end-of-life yet. When we do that, we will give a minimum of 12 months advanced notice. That's where we are at the moment with the product.
Chris Frey (03:32):
Do you feel that there's any risk for customers to stay on the Connect platform?
Frank Skiffington (03:37):
I'd say no. I mean, as long as the MiVoice Connect system is meeting the customer's business needs and their own active support, you can minimize risk by keeping the software up to date. We have regular cadence of security updates. That started with our 19.2 release a couple of years back. Security-conscious customers should be staying current via the latest release anyway as and when it's posted. We are currently on 19.3 service pack one and we'll have service pack two out next month, Chris.
Chris Frey (04:21):
How about from a feature release standpoint? We've seen in the past the cadence or the amount of releases shorten over time and the feature set shorten over time. What can we expect for future releases?
Frank Skiffington (04:38):
Well, we're working towards 20.0 release, which is going to be in the first half of 2023. That will bring a number of enhancements including CloudLink chat for desktop and mobile clients along with things like push notification support for mobile clients. We continue to expand the range of endpoints and devices that are supported, including Wi-Fi and subdev handsets and all the latest 6900 series desk phones, whether it's the 6900 or the 6900w sets.
20.2 will support all of those. There's also a new version of MySQL Database along with updates to third-party software that's incorporated in the MiVoice Connect product. Yeah, although we've announced an end of support, we're continuing to release enhancements for the product. It's kind of in keeping with what Mitel do and have always done really is not to leave any customer behind and make sure that they're backward compatible for as long as possible.
Chris Frey (05:58):
What do you think customers can expect from a support standpoint from the Mitel tech?
Frank Skiffington (06:05):
Well, from a support perspective, the support team will continue to fully support MiVoice Connect product on ongoing software releases till the end of sales date. From then until the end of technical support in 2029, which is a fair distance away, product support will continue to assist and support the customers. The best place to look for that is our product release life cycle policy, which you can find on the web.
That gives you software patches and service packs and they'll be delivered at end of sale and add-on sales and end of life, whenever we decide to end of life the product.
Chris Frey (06:53):
For customers that are looking to remain on their premise-based solution, what does Mitel suggest?
Frank Skiffington (07:01):
Well, ultimately, it's all about choice and we follow a program of CLM, customer lifecycle management. If the customer wants to stay on on-prem, then we would be pointing them towards our MiVoice Business solution as a go-forward solution. We're working with our channel partners and getting them skilled and trained at their own pace on MiVoice Business, but really it's up to the customer.
If they want to stay on prem or if they want to move to a UCaaS solution, then we would point them to RingCentral. It's all about choice at that point, and that's what CLM means for us. It's choice for the customer to go down whichever road they want in terms of dedicated instance and on prem or a UCaaS solution. If it's a UCaaS solution, then we are pointing them to our partner in RingCentral.That's really where we are in terms of the options that the customer has, which is more than a lot of vendors have to be honest. We've got options for each customer.
Chris Frey (08:13):
No. I totally agree with that too. You have all these relationships in place and we all want to leverage those existing relationships towards the future. We've all built a lot of trust there between ourselves and our customers. Having choice is really important.
Frank Skiffington (08:30):
Well, you are the trusted advisor for your customers and the customers are looking at you guys to say, "Okay. Which way should we go?" Sometimes that's not just about the product, sometimes it's also about the way in which they pay for it, how they consume it, the commercial options are available to them as well. I think we as Mitel, along with our partners at RingCentral, can offer a wide variety of choice in that respect.
Chris Frey (08:58):
Shifting now into the UCaaS space, how would you best describe the strategy between Mitel and RingCentral today?
Frank Skiffington (09:08):
Well, it's going great at the moment. The reality is we took a decision almost a year ago to get out of the UCaaS space and we decided to partner with RingCentral. We did have options. We could have partnered with other people, but we partnered with RingCentral because they are the market leader, because they are top right Magic Quadrant, Gartner Magic Quadrant.
There's a close synergy with what we do and what they do in terms of the integration of their applications, so it was a really sensible choice from our perspective. We are in the process of migrating our MiCloud Connect customers over to RingCentral and also at the same time we are working with our channel partners to capture those on-prem customers that are likely to move to a UCaaS solution and point them to RingCentral, our partner.
It's working really, really well at the moment and we are delighted with the results and I'm sure RingCentral are delighted with the results as well. Yeah, it's been a good decision so far.
Chris Frey (10:28):
Why RingCentral instead of say Zoom or 8x8?
Frank Skiffington (10:38):
Well, when you look at the... And I'm sure Garry's probably better placed to talk about this than me, but when you look at the core platform itself, and really what excites me about it is the deeper integrations that RingCentral have compared to other people. That's what stands out for me, is the deeper integrations of applications that they have compared to other people and the other players in the market. That was why we decided to go with them.
Chris Frey (11:13):
Why is this good for Mitel MiVoice customer? I guess I'll ask that in a different way. What's in it for them? We have this partnership between Mitel and Ring and we know that there's obviously good stuff there for both of those organizations. What's in it for the customer?
Frank Skiffington (11:33):
Well, the customer's getting best of breed in UCaaS solutions, while at the same time Mitel and the customer are getting a win-win out of it. The channel partner, the customer, RingCentral, Mitel. It's a win-win for everyone. We would naturally lose that customer to UCaaS anyway. If you listen to the analysts, 4.5% of the world's on-prem base is migrating to some form of UCaaS.
We are working with RingCentral to capture that 4.5 of our base and move as much of that over to RingCentral as possible. When they do move across, certainly from our UCaaS solution, they probably get an enhanced solution from RingCentral compared to what Mitel had. From a on-prem to UCaaS solution with RingCentral, as I said earlier, they're getting a lot of deeper integrations and application attachment.
Also, there's commercial options available, they're getting three months free and there's also incentives for the customer to move and migrate and they can retain in most cases their handsets.
Chris Frey (12:52):
You mentioned handsets. That leads into my next question. For years, we deployed the IP230 handsets and customers that stayed on for the long haul, many upgraded to newer-style phone. I know that we have personally deployed immense amount of the 400 series IP phones. The IP485 was a really nice color phone that everybody liked. Is there a plan to make that available to the RingCentral platform?
Frank Skiffington (13:25):
Okay. We're working really hard to get the IP 400 series certified and supported on RingCentral. The testing is going really well at the moment, it's nearing completion and the plan is to have that completed by December of this year on the 400. The plan is to get the IP485, the IP480, the IP480G certified and supported in December. The support for the 420... I'm trying to remember all the numbers here, 420 and the 420G, they've got smaller installed bases that will probably come in the second half of 2023.
Yeah, the focus for us is to get that 400 product certified and supported on RingCentral. We already have got most of the more modern desktop sets that we sell supported and certified on RingCentral. The 6900 series, the new 6900w models, all the 6800 models are supported. It's really a question of the 400 is next on the list.
Yeah, we appreciate there is a big installed base of MiVoice Connect customers with the 400 series sets and we want to try and get them certified and approved to get transitioned across. Or you could, dare I say it, buy new handsets. It's always an option.
Chris Frey (15:06):
We've had a lot of customers that have moved to new handsets, but the chip shortage and global supply issues are real and continue to be real. Hopefully 2023 brings about some better-
Frank Skiffington (15:19):
Yeah. We've not really seen that as much. We've been fairly prudent in our management of that, Chris, and it's not something that we've had a problem with. Even leaving Q3, the chaos at the end of the quarter, we managed to get all orders fulfilled through our channel partners and distributors. I know a lot of people are seeing that and hearing that, but we are not really seeing that as a problem at the moment.
Chris Frey (15:48):
I don't want to put you too much on the spot from a technical standpoint, but from a 400 series phones with RingCentral firmware or on the RingCentral platform, would you expect that the provisioning would be simple, a little more complicated? Do you think that the first round will be limited functionality?
Frank Skiffington (16:15):
This is where... Somebody outside my apartment has decided to get the blower out, so really apologies for that. Yeah, this is where it starts to get a little bit out my comfort zone in terms of functionality. There is a firmware upgrade required. Don't know if you can hear that. It's really loud. Yeah, perfect timing. [inaudible 00:16:43]-
Chris Frey (16:37):
No problem.
Frank Skiffington (16:46):
Yeah. I can certainly get a note out to and you can get out to all the customers that are on the call because I'm obviously not going to make any sense with that noise in the background.
Chris Frey (16:58):
Okay. Frank, thank you very much. In this day and age, stuff going on in the background's pretty commonplace. Frank, thanks for your time and your candid responses today to all of our questions. We appreciate your time being here. For those of you that are wondering, I mean, obviously we're curious, as I'll get out, about the 400 series phone firmware and dates and what that means and what's it going to look like and how do we provision and what's the process going to be and what's going to work and what isn't working?
As soon as we know those things we'll be sure to circulate that out to interested people. All right. Next up today we want to talk to Garry Simpson. Garry, everything working? You have your microphone on?
Garry Simpson (17:44):
I do. I do. I don't have anyone blowing outside luckily yet. We'll see how that goes.
Chris Frey (17:50):
It's early in the afternoon.
Garry Simpson (17:51):
Yes, indeed.
Chris Frey (17:52):
There's still time.
Garry Simpson (17:54):
Yes, indeed.
Chris Frey (17:56):
Garry is a sales engineer with RingCentral and there's a particular reason why we've asked Garry to be here. Garry, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history in the phone business and your current role with RingCentral?
Garry Simpson (18:08):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. There is a little secret. I've been with ShoreTel for quite some time and then I was with Mitel during the acquisition and then moved on to RingCentral. The topic of what we're talking about today is especially near and dear to my heart because I've actually seen all different elements of it, even was a customer of ShoreTel's before I became working for ShoreTel directly.
Yeah. Now in RingCentral, I am working with customers to move them from on-prem systems of all sorts, but in particular, obviously ShoreTel, Mitel customers, those guys are near and dear to my heart because obviously I know the platform, I know where they're working and so it makes my job a little bit easier moving them to the cloud, having that knowledge of where they're coming from.
Chris Frey (18:58):
Garry, I want to explore on some of the things that customers should be considering moving from a heritage ShoreTel Mitel solution to the RingCentral UCaaS solution. It's a lot of what I do day to day. Same with Lori, talk to customers about what do you have and where are you going? Then what do you need to consider during that process? I've got a couple different topics I want to touch on here. The first one that I would like your thoughts on are going to be security and stability.
Garry Simpson (19:29):
Sure. Yeah. The on-prem systems, in a lot of cases, the security of the system is based on the folks that manage it. Either the external party that does that or the onsite employees themselves. With the cloud, that gets moved off the burden of IT and into the cloud provider because the cloud is now the service point. It's not necessarily the onsite systems, the onsite servers and whatnot. There are some benefits though.
The whole concept of upgrading and making sure that you're up to the latest patch to be secure and/or to be stable, that again comes off the shoulders of the local IT staff and moves to the cloud provider and you don't have to worry about it anymore. As a customer, that's one of the nice things moving to the cloud, is that I don't have to worry about that middleware piece.
Someone else is going to do that and the someone else who's going to do that is fully trained and they've got a staff and everyone's going to be well up and educated on the latest threats. It really makes things nice when I'm moving to the cloud to just take that one off the plate altogether.
Chris Frey (20:34):
What about from a security standpoint? Really I'm looking at things like ransomware. Ransomware is kind of a dirty word. I mean, it is a dirty word and it's probably more prevalent than what most people believe it to be because we don't talk about it. It's again, a dirty little secret for many, many customers. Ransomware seem to be a... It's a prime candidate, systems that rely on servers, window servers in particular. Is that addressed with the move to a UCaaS environment?
Garry Simpson (21:11):
Yeah. It's along the same lines as what we were talking about earlier, is that if you are running a virtual server, server farm of some sort locally, you are responsible for making sure that that is not attacked or overtaken. That really goes away because there's no middleware. For cloud you really only have the endpoints that the users are actually using to make and take phone calls and communicate with others and then there's the cloud provider.
That middle tier, that attack vector that a lot of hackers go after is gone. A lot of times that just, again, comes off the plate of IT. I don't have to worry about that anymore. That's an entire staff of people that is going to look after that and no longer becomes a concern, so definitely a positive for the cloud move.
Chris Frey (21:58):
I would say too for people that if you were to experience some ransomware attack, which I hope nobody does, but if you did, even if you have other systems that are compromised, you still have the ability to get your calls from anywhere. You could take your calls from. Even if you can't use your work computer, you still have the means of logging in someplace else and at least maintaining connections with your clients.
Garry Simpson (22:22):
Absolutely. Yeah. One of the nice things about the cloud is that I can use my mobile phone, I can use a webpage, I can use the installed app. There's a bunch of different ways to connect. It doesn't have to be a singular point where a PRI comes into or a SIP trunk comes into and those servers have to be up and running. Now all of a sudden I can go home and work. Even if there's a problem at the office, it doesn't have to affect me. Absolutely.
Chris Frey (22:47):
I want to shift gears here and talk about change. Change is a fun topic. With any time you move from point A to point B, there's some change along the way and it's not always fun, it's not always enjoyable but we really want to point out those areas, point out those potholes. Let customers try to find ways around them. Again, with your perspective being a customer and also working for both manufacturers, I'd like to get some insight from you on some of that change.
Garry Simpson (23:22):
Sure.
Chris Frey (23:23):
I'm going to lead you with a few of these so you can go into them. The first one is, can you talk a little bit about the change people might expect between in the past they had Communicator and then together with their ShoreTel desk phone and those two things were a match made in heaven and they worked together really well. How might that change in a RingCentral environment?
Garry Simpson (23:46):
Yeah. It's a good point because some of these things, the earlier you know about them, the better you can deal with change because change is inevitable, it's going to happen. The question is, how do I manage that with my users? Moving into the cloud, especially with RingCentral in particular, the desk phone and the client do act differently and it would probably be the case no matter what you did and where you move to.
Those things are always going to be a little different. I think one of the things, especially if you're coming from the ShoreTel world is that tight integration between those two is a little different in the cloud because now in the cloud we're supporting endpoints of many different flavors. It doesn't just have to be one particular physical phone. It could be many different physical phones from many different providers and we've got to be able to interact with all of them.
I think it is important to coach users and get them prepped and get them understanding those differences between those two things and how they work. Obviously a desk phone is still a desk phone, you can pick it up, get dial tone, make a phone call. Software, obviously you can do the same thing. How those two interact and what they do together might be a little different and the nuances of which buttons you press to get things to happen are obviously going to be different as well.
Your point as well taken. I think that's one of the first places for people to really get aware of, and if you're going to do any kind of POC or any kind of testing of the system, it's probably a good idea to get people in front of the hard phone, in front of the software, in front of the mobile app, to make sure that they're comfortable with it and that they understand how it works and what those differences are so they can head those off as they start to get to the wider user base.
Chris Frey (25:23):
Can I control my desk phone with the desktop app in RingCentral? Because in ShoreTel, Mitel, there's call control that exists between those two.
Garry Simpson (25:35):
Yeah. The-
Chris Frey (25:36):
Is that the same in Ring?
Garry Simpson (25:37):
No. It's a little different. Again, because the software might have two, three, four, five different phones from different manufacturers, to be quite frank we're always dealing with lowest common denominator. What is it that we can universally address across all those phones? I can send a call that comes from my software to a desk phone, which is much like what you used to be able to do with ShoreTel Communicator and the desk phone.
The real difference becomes with the nuances of what can I do once that call's been established? With ShoreTel, you had pretty much complete call control. You could actually put the call on hold, you could transfer the call, you could mute the call, you could do a lot of things from the software and yet still control your physical phone to do that. With ShoreTel it's... Sorry, with RingCentral it's a little different.
We can, as I said, send that call to the phone, but there isn't as much detail in the quality of the control that we have once the call's on that remote device. Like we were talking about with change, that's one of those things to get people comfortable with. If they've done that a lot, you want to show them, "Okay. With this new world, here's what you can do." It's not to say that you're going to be losing capabilities.
It's really just that it's going to be a different interaction or you might be leaning on the software more or the mobile app more because the functionality is very rich there. Rather than sending a call from my software to my desk phone, that mode of operation may not be the way that you work going forward. It was the way that we worked before, but with COVID, a lot of people learned to work a new way with softphones, mobile phones and all of that.
Chris Frey (27:15):
You mentioned softphone, that's a great lead into my next question. I know we see the trending rise in softphone use. You probably have a slightly different perspective or see it on a larger scale or level than what we see. What is your opinion on the future of softphone?
Garry Simpson (27:34):
Well, it's interesting. The period of time that we've just been through with COVID really changed a lot of things. In the past, you would always hear that, "My users aren't comfortable with change and they want a desk phone on their desk and they want to be able to pick up the handset and make a call." COVID really taught us that, hey, if we need to work in a softphone world, we can do it, and users of all ilks can do it. I think that's one of the big changes.
The other thing is that the softphone really has morphed into being more than just a softphone. Nowadays you're talking about maybe chat, text, fax, video meetings, paging, analog devices. You're having a lot more types of communications than just purely a phone call going through a piece of software. Now the desk phone becomes less of a vital device because these other modes of communication are just as important for me to speak with people.
Text being one of the ones that... I always joke, I don't talk to my kids anymore. I text them, even if they're in the same house with me. The software becomes really critical because I may be calling people, but I might turn around two seconds later and text somebody or receive a fax or get into a video meeting. That really has taken that softphone trajectory and really exponentially moved that curve up.
Chris Frey (28:49):
It's interesting. My daughter got her first phone not too long ago and she would only FaceTime and/or send an SMS and she couldn't understand the idea of dialing a phone number to actually call me. That just breaks my heart as a phone guy. The ShoreTel on-prem PBX was... Right? Tagline. It was brilliantly simple.
Garry Simpson (29:15):
Yes.
Chris Frey (29:15):
Had a pretty easy-to-use interface from an administrative standpoint, easier than most PBXs that I had encountered. It's where I learned and got my chops in the business. What can customers expect when moving to a cloud PBX from an administration standpoint?
Garry Simpson (29:33):
I think this is one of the things that really appeals to a lot of customers coming from the ShoreTel/Mitel world, is that the same concept of keep it simple stupid that we had in the old days of let's make it so that it works and it's not hard to manage or hard to maintain, that really lives on in RingCentral. The concept is if we can get in and do what we need to do and get out, then communications management becomes less of an issue.
I don't have to spend all day trying to figure out how to get a user configured or sites connected or new telephone numbers added. Any of those things really have become much easier. The other thing too is that the interface itself, because it is the cloud, has changed. A lot of that middleware of analog lines, PRIs, T1s, SIP trunking, all of that goes away. Now you've got an interface that's even easier because it doesn't have that middleware piece that you have to worry about.
It really only has the two pieces of the end user, what tools do they need? And the administrator, what tools do they need? I think a lot of people moving to... I know this from firsthand experience, moving from ShoreTel and/or Mitel to RingCentral can see that same design philosophy and really appreciate that when they get in there to manage the system, it's not hard to do so. In a lot of cases people can do it themselves.
Chris Frey (30:57):
The next one, the PBX used to have all kinds of things connected to it. We had all these switches, granted it's an IP phone system, but we still had things like analog phones, fax machines, overhead paging. What should customers consider when moving to a cloud solution regarding those types of devices?
Garry Simpson (31:16):
This again, I think back to your point of change, really comes in very important, which is those things have to be evaluated early on. We can in the cloud handle analog phones, fax machines, paging systems. Those are things that we can do, but it's important to make sure that the SE staff, the sales engineering staff, your sales people from the cloud, in this case RingCentral, really know what you're looking to do.
Because there are occasions where we do have to put hardware in to terminate analog lines or to connect to a fax machine or to set up paging. As long as we know about those things early, we can definitely accomplish them, but it is, to your point of change, something that you should consider well early to make sure that whatever changes that might occur because we do it in a slightly different way are comfortable to you and that it's going to work out the way you want.
I've been on a lot of installs where we can do high-density faxing for analog lines... I'm sorry, high-density analog for analog lines, for faxing we can put in systems to allow current fax machines to work, or for paging, we put in a SIP paging adapter to continue overhead paging. It all can be done, but it's important that it's done and discussed early.
Chris Frey (32:33):
With all this change, we have change to end user behavior, we have change in administrative behavior, there's potential change... And we're not talking big change. We're talking relatively minor changes. How do you feel that customers fair with all this change once they've made the move to a UCaaS environment with Ring? They look back at it say, "That wasn't that bad." Right?
Garry Simpson (33:02):
Yeah. There is change. The change is going to be difficult. All change is, doesn't matter what kind of change it is. I used to work for a guy who I love dearly and he used to always say, "If you don't like change, you're going to hate extinction." That is the truth of the matter, is that these things do change. It doesn't even matter if you go from one onsite phone system to another onsite phone system, change occurs.
What we found is that customers do find those change points, but generally in most cases what they're doing is they're finding out that the new world gives them new avenues, new opportunities, and they generally don't look back. Once they've moved into cloud and they're comfortable there, they generally don't go back to an on-prem system because they've gone through those changes, they've succumbed over any of those obstacles that were in their way, and it allows them to get into that new world and really do what they want to do.
It is there, but like I say, most customers once they get through it, they don't look back.
Chris Frey (34:04):
I think I can speak for all of us here that all the customers that we have moved into softphone only, the numbers that have come back and said, "I change my mind. I want a phone." I don't know how many of those there are, but it's got to be very, very few. Would you agree with that statement?
Garry Simpson (34:22):
I would agree with that, yeah. Again, going back to what I said earlier, it's because it's not just a phone anymore. The software gives you all these different avenues of communication. I think that's one of the reasons people like it, is once you've landed there, all of a sudden all these new avenues are open to you.
Chris Frey (34:38):
The last piece I want to talk about is going to be new features. I'm hoping that you have the opportunity maybe to demo a couple things for us. The things I'd like to talk about or expand on a little bit are the areas that were missing in the past. That was really a good mobile experience. Most of us remember ShoreTel Mobility and it worked. I was a user, I was adopter, but it had its limitations and it never really quite caught on.
Can you show us a little bit about what the mobile experience is like within the RingCentral environment?
Garry Simpson (35:15):
Sure. If you don't mind, I will... This is like working without a net. I'm going to try to share my screen just so I can show you a couple things. Obviously this is not going to be a full-fledged demo, but to give you a taste of a little bit of the way this works and what you can expect. Let me show you. This is the desktop client right next to the mobile app. Like you said, in the old world, some of these things didn't work as well as we had hoped. In the new world, especially with RingCentral, these are rock-solid devices.
I can make and take phone calls on my computer and/or on my mobile phone. They have the same feature set, so I can do messaging, video, phone, text, fax. I can do the same thing here. They are in concert. The nice thing about the cloud ecosystem is that everything works together, especially if you're using all the different pieces from the cloud vendor, as I was mentioning with all the things that you see here. When I go in to make a phone call to a user, you'll notice over here that the mobile phone does know that that has occurred.
I can switch from my desktop software to my mobile software just by clicking this little green bar here. It's aware of that state change. The other thing is, again, talking about this interconnectedness of the ecosystem that is cloud is you can see here, I can go from a phone call into a video meeting.
Instead of switching gears and sending out an invite and having a lot of people join into that meeting and then now we're back talking again, I can, in real time, go from a chat into a phone call. Go take that phone call, move it to my mobile phone, take the mobile phone, move mobile phone, move it back to my desk, switch to a video meeting. All of that is a lot more fluid.
I like to say it allows you to move in two different directions, horizontally across the different devices, so I'm not tethered to one location, and also vertically across the different modes of communication. I start out with a chat, but that might get too slow. I'd love to talk to you on the phone, I push a button, now we're talking, and then if I want to go into a video call, I push another button and now I'm showing.
I've got this ability to change and move and work where I need to work and work in the way that I want to work. I think that's one of the biggest benefits is that now with cloud, we are getting that where all of this does work together and the ecosystem is aware of all the piece parts. This is not obviously meant to be a full demo. We don't necessarily have time for that today.
But it is something that if you can get a demo with a sales engineer, I think we can show you how all these pieces work together really well and give you those avenues I talked about before, is I don't just have to do a phone call. Maybe I want to text someone or maybe I want to send a fax. All those things coming from one interface and being able to just get to them quickly and easily allow users to communicate and really worry about not how they're communicating but what they're communicating.
If it's a single-button press and I'm into a meeting, then I don't have to worry about, how do I get into that meeting? All I worry about is I'm in the meeting, now what do I want to show you? What do I want to talk to you about? Like I said, this is not a full demo, but just a little taste of what some of those options are. I think you already can see that these things really work together very well.
Chris Frey (38:32):
In ShoreTel/Mitel, man, I could talk and say that same thing all the time. ShoreTel/Mitel, ShoreTel/Mitel. One of the great features about that heritage solution was the idea of work groups, right? Kind of like call center light, ACD light, server-based function allowed for call queuing, some reporting, some more advanced logic, a step-up from ring groups. That was something that always set apart the ShoreTel solution from many other on-premise products at the time.
Moving to the cloud in the past, that type of functionality has been difficult. Most customers were urged to go to a full contact center deployment instead of being able to stay within their UCaaS environment. Does the work group functionality of ShoreTel/Mitel, translate into RingCentral today?
Garry Simpson (39:26):
It does and at a very nice level where you have those degrees of complexity. Some customers, a work group, a call queue is more than adequate. They don't need to go to a full call center or contact center. In RingCentral, I'll just show you this, there is the ability to jump in and accept queue calls. This is not contact center, this is call queuing where a call comes in and I might want to have three or four or five or 10 or 15 people answer the call.
I'd like to be able to have my team accept those queue calls and be able to jump in and jump out of the queues like they could've with work groups. I can even get to the level where you could jump into specific work groups or in this case call queues. Same thing. I can have a user who's got this one tool and they're able to fax and text like we were talking about it earlier, but also answer queue calls.
I can do that either on the desktop software or if I go up here to the corner, you can see I can do that on the mobile phone as well. That really allows people to work from anywhere because they don't have to be at a desk phone. They can use their laptop, crack it open anywhere. They can work from their mobile device, an iPad, an iPhone, Android. That work group component is absolutely there.
I do agree with you. I think that was one of the great things of ShoreTel, is that you could have that intermediary stage. It didn't have to be zero or 60. You could run 45 miles an hour if you wanted to, somewhere there in the middle.
Chris Frey (40:48):
I see lots of names, some of the names of people that are attending and I know many of the people here have that today. They have work group functionality, it's not full contact center. They're generally important people. They're high-touch groups. It's not just dial tone for them, so this is great and appreciate the time today, Garry. Thanks for showing us everything and answering all my questions.
Garry Simpson (41:13):
Absolutely.
Chris Frey (41:15):
Okay. Last but not least, next up we have Lori from... Lori's a newish member of the Converged team. Lori, thanks again for being here with us today. Just like I have asked everyone else, can you take a minute and tell us about yourself and your history?
Lori Campbell (41:31):
I can. I have been in the telecommunication industry for about 25 plus years. I, like Garry, started as a customer. I worked for a partner back in the day and numerous providers. The past 13 years I've been a senior project manager with ShoreTel and then the Mitel acquisition until I separated from them in July.
Chris Frey (41:58):
We heard Frank talk a bit about the future of Mitel Connect. I guess I'm looking for a little bit of your own perspective. At the time of your separation from Mitel, what did you witness as far as the personnel that were working on the heritage ShoreTel product line?
Lori Campbell (42:16):
Once that announcement was made with the cloud and RingCentral, a lot of people left. I was part of the last implementation team to leave, but with people leaving, a lot of that tribal ShoreTel heritage knowledge is gone. I know Frank had said that there's 7/10-year timeframe, but I think that that product's sunsetting and 7 to 10 years, it seems like a long time, but it's really not with the way this... They're not phone systems anymore. They're communication systems, and there's so much to it. 7 to 10 years, like I said, sounds like a long time, but it's really not that long.
Chris Frey (43:13):
With a successful background in UCaaS operations and UC, I'm sure there are multiple providers seeking out your services. I guess a little bit of maybe an obvious question, maybe not. Why did you choose to come work for a partner like Converged for the next chapter?
Lori Campbell (43:35):
It was a big decision on my part. I took a step back and looked at what I really liked to do. I was with a manufacturer for many years and it gave me that chance to really sit back and say, "Where do you feel like you're doing the most help?" Being in professional services for a manufacturer, it's a numbers game. It's all about book to bill. It's very transactional and scripted.
Chris Frey (44:08):
Do you feel like in your previous role working for the manufacturer, you were able to be as customer-centric as maybe you wanted to?
Lori Campbell (44:18):
No. It was a really tough line to walk for me. I sat on the fence of between doing what was right for the customer and what was doing right for the business. That's just the nature of the beast.
Chris Frey (44:40):
How about your relationships with customers now? Now that you're no longer with the manufacturer, you're with a partner? Has your perspective on your relationships changed at all with customers?
Lori Campbell (44:51):
Absolutely. Now I feel like I can use the years of experience that I have in this industry and coming at it from a customer and provider, now as a partner, I feel like I can truly consult and give that genuine and honest opinion, get to know their business better, be able to define their goals and their long-term vision for their communications. I have that time with the customer. I can really dive into a day in the life of them.
Once we're able to have those conversations and learn what their goals are and we get those defined, then I get to be the voice of the customer and cut through all of that noise, fill in those gaps for the customer and make sure that everything is done to meet their goals.
Chris Frey (45:54):
We've asked Garry to be here to talk a little bit about the technology and product and such, and one of the main reasons that we've asked you to be here is to talk a lot about the people involved. Both of you have really great and unique perspectives having worked on all facets of this. With your years of project management, I'm sure that you have lots of advice, probably well more advice than we could cram into the few minutes we have here.
What are some of the words of wisdom you have? Let's say two things that you want to pass on to customers here that you would want them to remember.
Lori Campbell (46:34):
Obviously you know me very well, because I can go on about this, but I'll give you two. I, to be honest, was not an early adopter to the cloud. I worked on premise forever and I couldn't understand why people would want to go to the cloud. I went there kicking and screaming. I wanted to stay on premise. It just didn't make any sense to me, until the pandemic hit and then all of a sudden I saw it firsthand. I saw companies that were already on the cloud, their employees didn't miss a beat, they just started working from home.
The ones that were in the middle of an installation or hadn't gone there yet, they were scrambling and they were rushing to get things installed. Rushing a communication system, that's pure chaos. I mean, I can't tell you how many customers we just put those phones in, got them dial tone and said, "Okay. Well, when things calm down we'll go back and we'll fix it." I think we all know how that works. It's not ideal by any means.
In my opinion, this change, it's inevitable and it's better to get in front of it, do it on your terms and not let somebody else make that decision for you. Back to what Frank was saying with the 7 to 10 years, it's not a long time. Really just get in front of that. Be able to give yourself that time to get that done.
Chris Frey (48:09):
Your first one is do it on your own time, in your own terms. What's the second item?
Lori Campbell (48:15):
The second would be to get a partner to help you. Find a good partner with good employees, ones that do this every single day. Like I said, a partner's able to filter that noise, fill in those gaps, ask those questions, ask the hard questions that we have, and one that's going to be there with you throughout the whole entire process. Not just sales.
Once the sale is done, then a partner that's going to do the implementation with you, that will be on all the calls with you, through discovery, through implementation and post-go-live.
Chris Frey (48:57):
I'm glad you mentioned implementation. As a PM I'm sure you've been through many under all different kinds of circumstances. From a professional services standpoint, technology and platform's one thing, but we can't automate everything. We still need human interactions. Can you tell us a little bit about... I guess, how do I boil it down? Who do you feel is best-suited to handle installations? Would you say that it is a partner-led installation or a provider-led installation?
Lori Campbell (49:31):
Yeah. I've seen both. I would always gear towards a partner-led installation. A partner is going to yield you the best results. I mean, they're there to help you. They know it. They live it. Like I said before, they know those skeletons to ask the manufacturers. When you use a partner, those installations are well-thought-out, they're planned and they're executed and you have a successful installation.
If you go directly with the manufacturers, they're generally thin on substance on the programming side and post-support side, so I would definitely say find a partner, find a good partner, and build that relationship with them.
Chris Frey (50:35):
Lori, I think we're going to wrap with one last question.
Lori Campbell (50:37):
Okay.
Chris Frey (50:38):
The last question I have for you is, are there any mistakes that you see customers often make with their move to the cloud? What did you see time and time again from the numerous installs that you did that you could see it coming and yet customers would still continue to do it? What is that one thing that you'd want to caution our attendees on?
Lori Campbell (51:06):
To not rush. Don't rush the installation. Don't let anybody rush the installation. I always have said for years, the most important and most time-consuming part of an installation should be the prep work. Have those deep conversations to... You want to have a deep and thorough design review with a partner and the manufacturer. Get a partner that's going to give you all of those best practices.
(51:42):
Really think about the future, don't think about just now, and don't let providers steer you in the direction of... don't let them influence your decisions. Again, don't rush it. Plan it out. All that prep work that you do will be worth it in the end, you'll have a very successful installation. Your employees are going to think that, "Wow, look at that. That's great. It went so smooth."
(52:14):
They didn't know all that extra prep work that you did before to make it like that. Just be methodical. That's the biggest part.
Chris Frey (52:24):
Lori, really appreciate your time. In fact, I want to thank all of our guests today, Garry. Frank, I believe probably had a step away as he mentioned. One last housekeeping note, please note that a member of the Converged sales team will be reaching out to you in the next week or so to follow up with each of you. I want to thank all of our guests today for taking time out of their very busy days.
I know we all are... We sit through an immense amount of web meetings and webinars today, but I really appreciate everyone's time here today. I hope you found today worthwhile, that there's some information that is valuable to you. I'll speak for everyone here at Converged that we are appreciative of your time and are here to help you in any way that we can. Thank you very much and have a great day.