RingCentral Aids Applebee's Franchises in Unlocking Big Savings

Maureen Jackson, the controller for Applebee’s franchisor Gator Apple, was having a tough time reconciling all the phone bills she received each month. Gator Apple operates 41 Applebee’s restaurants in Georgia and Florida, and it had a unique phone system at each location. That meant 41 different phone bills, in different amounts, with due dates at different times of the month.

With that kind of complexity, it’s little wonder Maureen and Gator Apple decided to investigate other options. Their quest for phone-system simplicity led them to hosted VoIP services, which deliver a single, unified phone solution that runs in the cloud.

RingCentral quickly became the front-runner in Gator Apple’s search. What swayed the company was the cost savings that RingCentral could deliver, Maureen told us.

Gator Apple controller Maureen Jackson

“My IT consultant determined that RingCentral could save my business money – AND that I could have all our locations together via one phone system,” she said.

Since Gator Apple signed up for RingCentral business phone service in the summer of 2012, the company has both simplified its bill-payment process – Maureen now receives just one invoice a month – and uncovered huge savings. By switching to RingCentral, Gator Apple was able to reduce its phone bill by $7,000 a month.

That’s money which the company can put right back into its business, Maureen noted.

“RingCentral has dramatically cut our operational costs,” she said. “We can now reallocate those dollars towards advertising for more business and promoting our stores.”

Plus, Gator Apple can easily transfer calls between restaurants – something it was unable to do with the ad-hoc system it had in the past. Because the firm’s employees can quickly transfer calls, it’s much easier for Gator Apple owner Greg Georgas to receive and respond to customer feedback. That, in turn, makes the whole company more efficient.

Until it spoke to a RingCentral Authorized Reseller, Gator Apple didn’t even know that RingCentral was an option for its 40-plus restaurants. But now that it has switched – and discovered both simplicity and cost savings – there’s no going back to the complex arrangement it had in the past. The company, Maureen reported, simply wishes it made the move sooner!

Originally published Feb 19, 2013, updated Sep 01, 2021