John Varvatos

Americas

International calling was a must-have

Barbarise’s vision included the phone system, which was an old on-prem PBX when he joined the company. After evaluating a number of cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions, he chose RingCentral, mainly because it was the only one he found that could support international calling between the John Varvatos main office in New York City, its flagship store in London, and its showroom in Milan. Other big selling points for RingCentral included RingEX™, which would let Barbarise get rid of an older web-conferencing solution with limited subscriptions, and the RingCentral Mobile app, which he says is “fantastic.” He also valued RingCentral’s administrative portal for how it provides usage reports and for how it simplifies the management of the system. “I have an IT team of only six people,” Barbarise notes. “That wouldn’t be possible without applications like RingCentral.”

Global collaboration, cost savings, and good people

Barbarise deployed Global RingEX company-wide in 2013. Between the phone service and RingEX, the people involved in the global effort of designing, manufacturing, and selling clothing are now easily connected. That’s due in part to the ease of reaching a colleague in another country by simply dialing their extension. RingEX helps, too, by making it much simpler to set up online meetings, compared to the previous solution. With RingCentral, John Varvatos is actually paying less for a wider range of communications functionality than what it previously paid for just phone service and online conferencing. “We’re easily seeing a 40% to 50% reduction in communications costs with RingCentral,” Barbarise says. For him, another very important aspect of RingCentral is its people. From his first contact with a RingCentral sales representative, through the implementation, and now with on-going support, he has only great things to say. “RingCentral has a position called a Customer Success manager,” Barbarise explains. “A lot of companies have people in these roles, but I do not have one at any other company who is as good as the people at RingCentral. Several years after choosing RingCentral, I am still very confident and happy with that decision.”