{"id":8954,"date":"2020-04-07T09:59:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T08:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/?p=8954"},"modified":"2023-01-16T17:04:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T17:04:45","slug":"ringside-interview-sahil-rekhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/ringside-interview-sahil-rekhi\/","title":{"rendered":"Ringside: Insider Interview with Sahil Rekhi"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this series of posts, we\u2019re talking to our own leaders to get insights into the challenges and solutions of the telecommunications industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

This episode is a special one, taking into account what everyone\u2019s going through. At RingCentral, we\u2019re fortunate that it\u2019s our business to enable remote communication and collaboration. When the time came for us to pack up our laptops and take them to work from home, we did it without missing a beat.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re also lucky to have the kind of colleagues who didn\u2019t just go home and shut the door, but who responded to market conditions and collaborated on all cylinders to provide faultless sales, service and delivery of the RingCentral platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been inundated with support requests from new and existing customers, and we\u2019ve been working hard to answer the call. Through it all we\u2019ve been guided by the leadership of Sahil Rekhi, Managing Director for RingCentral EMEA. Four weeks later, we catch up with Sahil to talk communications, business technology and working from home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sahil is a natural technology evangelist, focussed on driving and enabling business transformation via technology. Having been with RingCentral for the past <\/span>seven<\/span> years, Sahil has been responsible for launching and driving key strategic partnerships, growing the EMEA business and telling the RingCentral story globally. Sahil is an industry veteran with 15+ years of experience in the telecommunications and technology industries, having previously worked for Vodafone on Group strategy and the launch of FMC and unified communications services internationally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sahil, what’s your role at RingCentral and what does a typical day look like?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I am VP of Sales & Operations for EMEA as well as MD EMEA. My responsibility is to drive growth and expansion of the RingCentral business in this region whilst ensuring smooth operations of the business on a daily basis as we scale. A regular day at RingCentral for me is super-varied across a wide spectrum and that’s what makes it challenging and interesting for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Starting the day off with employee-success related discussions often sets the tone for the rest of my day and even my week. This is followed by key conversations on sales, marketing, deployment services or care, then switching to customer feedback, prospect engagements and business development conversations with people outside the business. Eventually, the evening gives me an opportunity to connect with our colleagues and the leadership team back in HQ California, and this helps drive some of the day’s work forward and push alignment for our regional growth plans with our global strategies.<\/span><\/p>\n

What kind of challenges and opportunities do you see from your position?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The opportunities in this role and for everyone at RingCentral are massive. As an organisation, I believe RingCentral is not just a category leader in the communications space, but more of a category defining company, charging from the front.<\/span><\/p>\n

Communication is natural and inherent to the human species; we are social animals and we like to win and be successful, this is where our human instincts kick in to push us towards working, socialising and engaging with people around us – or should I say \u201ccollaborating for success\u201d. RingCentral is enabling this human connection to make a difference for our customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

This drive for human connection, alongside an always innovating product, awesome people, and a market opportunity of over $60B, creates the perfect storm and once-in-a-lifetime inflection point. I would like each person at RingCentral to recognise this moment and stay humble on being focussed to extend this momentum further for years to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

Challenges are many: For the company, driving fast growth and scaling while maintaining an agile, mobilised and inclusive culture is tough, but not impossible. Delivering on this is what differentiates us from others in the market. As for challenges in my role: Scaling fast enough to fulfill the pent-up demand for cloud communications in the region is what keeps me up at night. The market was already shifting extremely quickly, since cloud communications was recognised as the only answer for digital continuity in the transforming business world. What we\u2019ve seen play out over the past four to eight weeks has only exacerbated that.<\/span><\/p>\n\t

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Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\t

RingCentral Office\u00ae offers a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution with enterprise VoIP<\/a> capabilities.<\/p>\r\n\t\t\tLearn more<\/a>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\n

In what ways has business communications changed over your career?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve watched business communications evolve considerably: From voice and email being primary modes of communications – now group messaging and collaboration have taken the prime seat, with voice and video being a close second.<\/span><\/p>\n

In scaling fast-evolving organisations, making decisions with the right data points is critical. These need to be made quickly, but geographic barriers and location hindrance caused by lack of mobility slow down this process. The impact can be hard-felt on business revenues. The introduction of RingCentral to this situation allows me to have all my data, communications and ability to engage delivered to me anywhere on any device from the cloud. The result is that just because I\u2019m out of office or travelling, that doesn’t hinder me from making decisions to drive the business forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re now seeing this scenario play out across the world as we all settle into the new normal of remote working. The shift has been positively embraced by many businesses, but some are facing greater challenges than others: pressures such as panic buying on the supply chain and forced closure on hospitality require some serious creativity to mitigate. The importance of keeping people connected and delivering effective communication is absolutely critical.<\/span><\/p>\n

The importance of keeping people connected and delivering effective communication is absolutely critical. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

Beyond obvious examples, what advice can you give to a business wishing to improve its communication?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Business communication is now more instantaneous and effective in real-time, driving an increase in the pace of business. The evolution of social and personal communications services have created a culture of instant response and gratification. This expectation is not just limited to collaboration between employees, but has extended beyond to becoming a key pillar of improving customer experience<\/a> and hence driving business growth. My advice to businesses of any size is to look at the communications solution they are using across multiple facets given the importance of this as per the view above:<\/span><\/p>\n