The Retirement Advantage
How a National Retirement Plan Administrator Uses RingCentral to Streamline Communication for Clients and Employees Alike
Transferring phone numbers into RingCentral is a much smoother process than it was with our previous telecom.
Mark Ruhland
Director of IT, The Retirement Advantage
For The Retirement Advantage (TRA), a company that operates nationally to support businesses and simplify the process of selecting, administering, and ensuring compliance of retirement plans, communication is crucial.
When TRA outgrew their previous platform, they knew they needed to find a software that could keep everyone connected, while also continuing to grow with the company.
RingCentral eased the IT team’s headaches with its intuitive interface and easy onboarding.
The old phone system couldn’t scale as the company grew
With a team of Client Relationship Managers that “live on the phones,” according to Mark Ruhland, Director of IT and Security for TRA, the company has always prioritized the customer experience.
That streamlined experience means clients reaching a team member quickly when they call in instead of waiting on hold.
Being able to consult the data and view call reports to check their wait times and call distribution among employees is crucial to ensuring that they are providing an excellent customer experience across the organization.
Their previous solution, an on-premise phone system, met their needs for a while but wasn’t as user-friendly or intuitive as they would have liked.
Eventually, they came to a crossroads and outgrew their old system. TRA’s IT team was faced with a choice: a major migration to the next tier of their current system, including all new backend hardware and licensing, or find a flexible option that could easily scale with the company’s continued growth.
RingCentral: an all-in-one communication tool.
Ultimately, the team made the decision to switch to a platform that could handle their growing team for the long term. The best part was the platform's intuitive, updated software.
“I appreciate that RingCentral considers the end-user experience, continuously updating things to add features and make it more user-friendly” said Mark.
Now, TRA uses not only the telephony features of RingCentral, but also the video meetings and chat functions as well, creating an all-in-one communication tool that everyone at the company knows how to use effectively.
In fact, according to Mark, the new user set up with RingCentral is pretty simple. They’ve built RingCentral training into their onboarding process so new team members have all of the communication tools at their disposal. They even have the app open automatically when users log on to their computer, giving everyone a home base for communication.
And when it comes to migrating acquired companies into their system TRA benefitted from an improved process. “Transferring phone numbers into RingCentral is a much smoother process than it was with our previous telecom,” said Mark.
Whether through hiring or acquisitions, RingCentral is able to support TRA’s growing needs seamlessly, streamlining the IT department’s job.
We were able to pull this off and continue business as usual, with very little disruption.
Mark Ruhland
Director of IT, The Retirement Advantage
INDUSTRY
Financial Services
HQ
Appleton, WI
YEAR FOUNDED
1996
EMPLOYEES
200+
Using RingCentral to keep moving forward during a crisis
In fact, an unexpected benefit of partnering with RingCentral came in March 2020, when, like many organizations around the world, TRA was forced to quickly transition their entire team to remote work.
The IT department didn’t miss a beat, helping the company continue working in a time of transition. They encouraged employees to stay home to work, either taking home their workstation or using a personal computer and secure remote access software along with the RingCentral mobile app to continue providing the same level of service their customers have come to expect. None of their clients were forced to “email only” service or told to call a different number, the transition was seamless.
By providing instructions for downloading the RingCentral app and how to use it, they got teams set up at home quickly and kept everyone connected throughout the changing situation.
“The great thing was, we weren't reinventing our infrastructure, we had everything in place to support this change. All of TRA’s employees were already on the RingCentral system with a little over half working remotely, being able to easily deploy the RingCentral mobile phone app for the employees that needed it really helped make this transition easy.” said Mark.
Streamlining Communication to Keep Moving Forward
Mark’s team was able to coordinate about 70 employees converting to remote work within a week.
With a software solution that supported quick user growth, technology was one less thing Mark and his team had to think about during an already hectic time.
As Mark said, “We were able to pull this off and continue business as usual, with very little disruption.”