Coursera provides the world with free online courses by partnering with top universities and educational institutions all over the world. Founded by Stanford University professors, Coursera has created a unique, interactive online education platform that encourages students to engage via forums, discussions and even in-person meetings. Coursera offers over 400 different online courses ranging from humanities to engineering. Founded in 2011, Coursera’s headquarter office is in Mountain View, CA, where they have just over 100 employees at this time (you can meet their unique team here).
Coursera began using RingCentral not long after it was founded and has since experienced significant growth. RingCentral has helped keep things simple for the Coursera IT team by providing phones that are preconfigured and making administrative tasks easily accessible.
Vu Truong, IT Manager at Coursera, found RingCentral’s effortless set up to be both useful and refreshing. Unlike an on premise PBX system, RingCentral gives Truong and his colleagues the freedom to manage their phone system internally rather than relying on external technicians for maintenance and system changes.
“It takes almost no time to setup RingCentral. Rather than taking a 20 step procedure to get a task done, I can just log in online and make adjustments where necessary,” Says Truong. “RingCentral is a great solution for us to utilize as we grow. With RingCentral, the administrative tasks are significantly easier to use than with other PBX systems that I have used.”
Coursera is taking a modern approach to communications and does not provide desk phones for each employee. This provides cost savings and fits the needs of today’s mobile workforces. With RingCentral, users can be issued phone numbers regardless of whether a physical phone is attached to it. Users have the option to use the Softphone to manage calls, faxes, and their entire account from any computer, or use the mobile app to send and receive calls, send business SMS and access faxes, call logs and voicemails from any iOS or Android device.
“Getting an employee setup with RingCentral is very quick and easy,” Says Truong. “Our employees are all currently in one office, but if anyone ever needed to setup a home office or work remotely it would be a simple process.”
RingCentral has also helped Truong and his fellow IT team members by unifying communications services. Prior to using RingCentral, several third party services were needed to carry out all of Coursera’s communications needs. RingCentral provides several features that help Truong and his colleagues with both cost and time management.
“It’s great that RingCentral includes so many features—it’s a one stop shop,” Says, Truong. “We no longer need third party services for things like faxing and long distance calling.”
Originally published Sep 11, 2014, updated Aug 12, 2020
