Highlights:
- Our Finance team is driving key outcomes across Financial Planning & Analysis, Financial Accounting, Financial Operations and Finance Digital Transformation.
- Most Finance team members are located in Belmont, CA, and Charlotte, NC, with additional presence in Denver, CO; London, UK; Paris, France; and Manila, Philippines.
Every company has a Finance department. And math is math. So how could a career at one company be all that different from any other? What sets a Finance career at RingCentral apart? According to the people on our Finance team, that’s a looooong list.
Beyond the balance sheet
“To my mind, there are three growth levers: continued international expansion, managing our strategic partnerships, and expanding our product portfolio. The challenge is, how do you balance performance across all three of those areas—to fund growth, invest in appropriate headcount, and market effectively? It’s really exciting to chase the right mix; so we don’t over-invest and dilute our margins, or under-invest, and miss out on the potential benefits of the growth. Balancing all that is complex, but incredibly interesting and rewarding.”
Friedrichowitz believes our strategic partnerships give Finance professionals a unique opportunity to shine.
“I’m super enthusiastic about our partnerships. I’ve never seen deeper relationships than the ones we have, particularly with so many major telcos. (Our partnerships) give us an opportunity to really put our skills to work; from strategy and insights to business partnering, planning, all the way down to reporting. Being able to deliver the right level of visibility then using that to generate insights and drive growth is super-exciting…and a great learning opportunity.”
Just do it
“RingCentral gives you the opportunity to take an initiative by the horns and see it all the way through. You won’t find many roadblocks and boundaries that prevent you from driving meaningful and measurable change. If you’re a self-starter, a leader, and someone willing to get things done , then this is where you want to be.”
Insight = opportunity
In a data-driven age, the role of Finance goes way beyond counting the proverbial beans. For Friedrichowitz the ability to provide insights and act on them sets RingCentral apart.
“We pride ourselves on our ability to not just gather data, but understand what it’s telling us. We can look at an individual line of business and ask, how much revenue are we generating per user? How is that developing over time? What’s driving change if there is any? In other companies you might be limited to just sort of showing the data. Here, we’re able to take it to the Executive team and show them not only the current situation, but how we can improve it going forward. We’re actually solving problems together with the individual lines of business as well. Taking ownership in the solution. We’re thinking the way a CEO or CXO would, and that’s a huge difference to me. I think it’s fun, and something that’s unique to RingCentral.”
Director of Global Collections Kelly Molkenbuhr agrees.
“I definitely agree—we’re able to play an active role. The ability we have to build and maintain relationships really affects our ability to maintain forward momentum. Not only are we given the freedom to do that, but we’re able to share input that adds up to competitive advantage. It’s definitely not just bookkeeping – it’s actually having an active role in keeping the company moving forward.”
Growth Driver vs Support Function
“Finance is a true growth driver at RingCentral” says Srivastava. “The company doesn’t limit us to traditional roles. For example, we played a pivotal role in establishing our strategic partnerships that Ingo referred to – Avaya, Atos and Alcatel. We were a part of the ideation, negotiation, strategy and execution – end-to-end.”
Digitizing Finance on our path to $10B
According to Srivastava, RingCentral Finance is in the midst of an exciting digital transformation journey—modernizing our operations and systems to help scale the company’s rocketship growth to $10B in revenue.
“We’re building modern SAAS monetization platforms, and using best in class technologies to deliver outcomes faster. We’ve already replaced over half our Financial systems in a little less than 2 years. We’ve also streamlined several Quote-to-Cash processes in the same time. This is really fast when you consider the complexity of the subscription business. It’s an exciting time to be in Finance at RingCentral. ”
Cloud-native technology. Massive international partnerships. 30%+ growth every year. Massive transformation. If you’re a Finance professional who dreams big, there’s no shortage of opportunities on RingCentral’s balance sheet.
#HelloToRingCentral
Originally published Sep 08, 2021, updated Dec 30, 2022
