Structural Technologies

Kasch evaluated four unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions, including RingCentral. He chose RingCentral because in addition to meeting all of his requirements, “RingCentral was the only provider we looked at that had a completeness of vision and a history of continuous improvement,” he says.

He engaged RingCentral Professional Services to help with the implementation, which took only 90 days to deploy to the 22 North American locations. If that seems especially fast, Kasch explains that part of the reason is because they weren’t migrating to UCaaS from a traditional PBX system. “We were already with another UCaaS provider, so we had past experience working with a cloud PBX solution, and with RingCentral, the deployment was pretty seamless.” Because RingCentral Meetings™ is included with every RingEX™ subscription, Kasch saw the opportunity to stop paying for online meetings. First, he had to convince the skeptics, including some very heavy online-meeting users, that the RingCentral alternative was as good or better. After a 30-day pilot using RingCentral Meetings as part of the broader RingEX suite, those employees “really didn’t want that product pried out of their cold, dead hands,” he notes.

Kasch used RingCentral’s open APIs to create integrations with other business software, such as their customized HR system. He sees RingCentral as more than a communications solution. It’s also a key part of his disaster recovery and business continuity strategy. “When superstorm Sandy hit the east coast, we were one of few civil engineering contractors that was up,” Kasch says. “We could take phone calls from our homes and actually show up on-site to help clients with structural damage.”