RingCentral channel boss slams rivals who 'nickel and dime' partners

Mike Conlon opens up to CRN on the vendor's partnership with Avaya and new opportunities in the market as a result of the pandemic

Partners should be wary of those vendors out to ‘nickel and dime' them as unified comms-as-a-service (UCaaS) becomes more popular due to remote working practices, according to RingCentral's VP of global strategic partner sales.

The global pandemic has caused a surge in popularity for UCaaS offerings, but partners seeking to benefit from this increased demand should consider their vendor partners carefully, Mike Conlon told CRN.

"We work with the partner community in a way that is very different from our competition because we are all about helping our partner community drive demand and so when you think about onboarding with our competition, it potentially could cost any partner thousands of pounds in order to come on board and be enabled," he explained.

"RingCentral doesn't charge our partners a penny to come on board; we do all the training and all the enablement.

"What we look for out of our partner community is to work closely with us to drive demand, and that is that is a key differentiator between us and our competition that is looking to nickel and dime and charge partners for every last bit when it comes down to working with them as a vendor."

Conlon added that RingCentral is always looking for new partners and promised current partners that they would see more "brand awareness" and clearer messaging from the vendor as well as assistance in taking advantage of the new opportunities that have opened up as a result of the pandemic and its partnership with Avaya.

"Our channel partner community can continue to see more brand awareness around who RingCentral is, I think they will see an enhanced focus from our sales organisation and partnering with our partners more closely than we have in the past," he stated.

"The market for UCaaS is pretty hot right now. We have some really strong competition and there's a lot of funding that's coming into this market as well.

"COVID-19 has enhanced the opportunity for our partnerships within our partner community, but it's also given us an opportunity to talk to a lot more customers because of our stability and our platform in the marketplace."

The vendor partnered with fellow cloud-based comms provider Avaya last year, which saw it inject $500m into the beleaguered firm.

That partnership is now beginning to "flourish" globally, according to Conlon. The duo earlier this year launched the Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) product in the US and plan to launch it in other countries soon, including the UK.

"We have plans over the next few months to really start taking the partnership with ACO over into the UK, France and other countries throughout the rest of 2020," he stated.

"We look at it as part of a very strong partnership. We've activated a significant amount of partnerships with Avaya partners in the US alone and we are about to start that endeavour in partnership with Avaya partners across the UK and France over the next 30 to 45 days."