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Helping this Global Real Estate Firm Keep Operating While its Staff Works from Home

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2 min read

When we finally get through this pandemic, millions of people all over the world are going to return to offices, shopping centers, and other commercial spaces for the first time in weeks, maybe months. For some of the most iconic buildings that the public will be enthusiastically returning to—like New York City’s Chelsea Market, and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco—we have Jamestown Properties to thank.

Jamestown, a global real estate investment and management company, is responsible for some of the most recognizable properties. The company has a decades-long track record of acquiring, developing, designing, renovating, and managing commercial and residential spaces. Today, Jamestown controls more than $12 billion in assets.

Before COVID-19, the company’s global staff of 300 employees operated out of US offices in Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, as well as international offices in Germany, Colombia, and the Netherlands.

When the pandemic forced the entire organization to shift to remote working, the company’s IT team was relieved the staff already had RingCentral.

The ideal communications platform for a remote workforce

RingCentral’s all-in-one cloud communications solution helped Jamestown’s staff adjust to their new work-from-home reality in several ways.

First, it made the transition painless. As Dean Rogers, the company’s senior support engineer, explains, “People really like the simplicity, being able to do things themselves. When we announced we were closing offices, IT didn’t have to go in and forward everybody’s business line to their cell phones. With RingCentral, they could easily go in and do it on their own.”

And RingCentral continues to help this distributed company stay connected and productive as everyone adjusts to working under these unusual circumstances. For example, although they can’t meet in the office, Jamestown’s employees are using RingCentral Meetings to hold face-to-face video conferences with coworkers, partners, vendors, and property sellers.

As Dean points out, this capability plays a big role in Jamestown’s success. “Commercial real estate moves quickly,” he says. “We used to review deals by email, sending documents back and forth. That slowed things down. Now, we’re doing it all by video calls—and sharing our screens to review these documents in real time. That’s making a big difference.”

The ideal way to provide IT support

RingCentral is also making it easier than ever for Dean and his IT team to help Jametown’s employees around the world with technical issues. “We have a ticket system, but it lags several minutes,” he explains. “I have RingCentral team messaging on my phone and iPad, so if they message me through the RingCentral app, I get that request immediately. I can jump onto their machine, fix their issue, and be gone even before the ticket would’ve reached me.”

Thanks in part to the company’s decision to switch to RingCentral, Jamestown isn’t experiencing the disruptiveness affecting many businesses trying to adjust to the coronavirus fallout. In fact, the company is actually growing. Here’s how Dean describes it:

“The road ahead right now is business as usual. We’re still hiring, and we have new people starting just about every week.”

Originally published May 29, 2020, updated Dec 30, 2022

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