Pinnacle Renewable Energy
Switching to RingCentral Helps Pinnacle Renewable Energy Cut its Telecom Costs by 40%
40%
reduction in telecom costs by
switching from PBX systems
to RingCentral
switching from PBX systems
to RingCentral
50%
less time to onboard new employees, because IT can now quickly and easily handle the admin in-house
By allowing us to retire our PBX systems and consolidate communication capabilities, like video conferencing and digital faxing, RingCentral is helping us save about 40% on telephony costs.
Neil Lertnamvongwan
Director of Information Technology
A world-leading producer of biomass products for clean energy
One of the world’s top manufacturers and distributors of industrial wood pellets, Pinnacle Renewable Energy (now part of Drax) plays a major global role in providing sustainable fuel for renewable electricity generation. The company’s biomass solutions are used by large-scale thermal power generators as a greener alternative for reliable, renewable power.
For more than three decades, in fact, the Toronto, Canada-based Pinnacle has been helping societies across Europe, the UK, and Asia make real strides toward environmental sustainability by helping their utilities derive more of their energy from biomass products such as wood pellets.
INDUSTRY
Energy
HQ
British Columbia, Canada
YEAR FOUNDED
1989
EMPLOYEES
200+
Moving the remaining 5% of its IT infrastructure to the cloud
Neil Lertnamvongwan, Pinnacle’s IT Director, points out that the company has always been forward-thinking when it comes to technology. As a result, 95% of the business’s IT systems were cloud-based. “Our phone system was the laggard,” he says.
“We have locations across British Columbia and Alberta, as well as in the US, and each had its own PBX system with standard telephone connections and copper wires running through the offices.”
Finding a cloud solution for Pinnacle’s phone infrastructure was the logical next step. As Neil explains, one major factor in the company’s decision was the opportunity for cost savings.
Our old phone infrastructure was costing the company a lot of money. We were charged for every call, even those between our own offices, and we were paying separately for several online meeting solutions.
Neil Lertnamvongwan
Director of Information Technology
Empowering employees to work from anywhere… just in time for COVID
Neil’s team had begun migrating Pinnacle’s offices to RingCentral but expedited the rollout when the COVID lockdowns went into effect. And even though the team was rushed, they had no trouble implementing the company’s new work-from-anywhere communications environment.
“It was perfect timing, and the transition itself was seamless,” he says. “We made sure everyone had RingCentral on their laptops, we gave them all headsets, and we told them, ‘This is now your phone system – and you can use your existing business extension through your RingCentral app.’”
As Neil explains, Pinnacle’s employees appreciated the ease of the RingCentral system, the fact that they could continue using their business numbers, and the many capabilities they had in a single solution. “A lot of people told me they were thrilled that they could now do team messages, SMS, digital faxes, and make phone calls from one app.”
And while online meetings had always been a challenge for the company in the past, RingCentral’s built-in video conferencing solution solved that problem as well – while creating many new opportunities for team communication.
We had only a limited number of licenses across a few conferencing apps, which created problems when people wanted to set up a meeting but had to ask a coworker for their account. With RingCentral, we were able to say, ‘You don’t have to share licenses anymore. You have your own now, and you can use it as often as you want.
Neil Lertnamvongwan
Director of Information Technology
Bringing the company together
The irony of the lockdowns for Pinnacle, Neil notes, is that while the company’s employees were physically more separated than they’d ever been, they were also communicating, sharing knowledge, and building company culture more than ever. Monitoring the staff’s RingCentral usage, Neil and his team saw not only a tremendous increase in employee communication but also several creative new ways the staff found to use their RingCentral tools to stay connected.
“Our HR and safety teams used to hold lunch-and-learn meetings when they could,” Neil explains. “But that meant sending staff to every location, which took a lot of resources, so we didn’t do it often. RingCentral allowed us to have those events, as well as other company wide meetings, via video conference — so everyone in the company could participate together. It’s interesting: During a forced shutdown of our offices, we actually grew closer as a team.”
RingCentral proved so helpful at keeping employees connected and productive during the lockdowns, in fact, that Neil says it might be leading to a major cultural shift for the company.
Based on the productivity and efficiency we saw from our staff during the lockdowns, we’re seriously thinking about creating a more flexible, remote-work environment post-COVID. And a big part of that success has been RingCentral.
Neil Lertnamvongwan
Director of Information Technology