RingCentral brought together the communications piece, the meetings piece, the collaboration space, as well as supporting faxing, which is still used in our industry.
Cresa's business model emphasizes customer service, which means its employees rarely spend all day in their offices. “I'd say 60–70% of the time, our advisors and project managers are out on the road meeting with customers and doing site tours,” says David Nuss, Chief Information Officer at Cresa.
Supporting mobility and attracting clients in high-tech
Nuss’s goal is to make their data available to them at all times. Cloud-based solutions are a big part of his strategy, so when he decided to upgrade the company’s communications platform, cloud-based was an important criteria.
Nuss’s additional incentive to move Cresa off older communications tools was to better attract high-tech clients.
“Technology companies are the fastest-growing market for commercial real estate, and our industry has historically not been big on embracing technology,” Nuss explains. “I want to show that we are not an old, stodgy real estate company. One way of doing this is to use the same platforms the tech companies are using.”
Smartphones are now mobile offices
Nuss chose RingCentral as Cresa’s communications platform “because it provided a single solution for a lot of diverse platforms. RingCentral brought together the communications piece, the meetings piece, the collaboration space, as well as supporting faxing, which is still used in our industry.”
Another reason was RingCentral’s support for the mobile workforce. “RingCentral Phone is key because it lets our advisors be reachable at any time on their mobile phones,” Nuss explains. “They can receive faxes, handle meetings, take phone calls, and actually dial out from whatever number they want—their direct number, their trunk line, or their cell phone number. RingCentral Phone has turned their smartphones into their mobile offices.”
The RingCentral integration with Salesforce was also important to Nuss because it provides insight into the business that Cresa didn’t previously have. “Every call, every note, every activity and its result gets captured in Salesforce,” Nuss says. “We can use that data to make decisions about where we put resources and how we support our customers. RingCentral is a great tool for that.”
RingCentral is definitely a key to the evolution of Cresa right now. It allows us to interact with our customers anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
RingCentral supports a global expansion
RingCentral is the perfect communications platform for Cresa as it grows. “At times, we have offices we have to turn up with only days’ to weeks’ notice,” Nuss says. “We no longer have to source the infrastructure, put it in place, configure it, and turn it on. The fact that RingCentral is cloud-based lets us turn it on in an instant.”
Global RingEX extends this advantage to the overseas offices. “Global RingEX matches up with the countries we’re in today and countries that we look to be going into in the future. As we grow our footprint, we have confidence that RingCentral is there to support us,” Nuss adds.
“RingCentral is definitely a key to the evolution of Cresa right now,” Nuss concludes. “It allows us to interact with our customers anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”