Eight Eleven Group
This Top-10 consulting and professional services firm lowered its telecom expenses by $324,000 with RingCentral
$324,000
SAVINGS AS A RESULT OF ROLLING OUT RINGCENTRAL ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION
0.5
FTE FREED UP FOR MORE PROACTIVE IT PROJECTS THAN FIXING PHONE ISSUES
1
DAY TO TRANSITION EVERYONE TO REMOTE WORK
When we moved to RingCentral, we found ourselves in a position I’ve never experienced as an IT professional. We were not only significantly improving our communication capabilities over our previous UCaaS provider, but also reducing costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jake Baldwin
IT Operations Manager
A multiple-award-winning consulting and professional services agency
Each year, the experts at Eight Eleven Group help connect thousands of qualified consultants with companies looking for top talent in IT, healthcare technology, accounting, HR, legal, marketing, and other professions.
Thanks to a well-earned reputation for putting what’s best for its clients and consultants above all other considerations, Eight Eleven has grown organically year after year. Today, with dozens of locations across the United States, the company is one of the country’s 10 largest consulting and professional services firms.
In addition to connecting the best and brightest consultants with its corporate clients, Eight Eleven has built a team-oriented culture that also attracts top talent to its own organization. For the last six years in a row, USA Today’s IndyStar has named Eight Eleven a Top Workplace.
INDUSTRY
Consulting & Professional Services
HQ
Indianapolis, IN
YEAR FOUNDED
2000
EMPLOYEES
800
A phone solution that couldn’t scale
Years ago, Eight Eleven signed up for a cloud telephony solution for the company’s then 50-employee staff. IT Operations Manager Jake Baldwin explains that at first, the platform served the company’s needs well. But soon, its limitations began showing.
“Eight Eleven has grown consistently, adding employees and offices all over the country,” Jake says. “The more people we brought on, and the more locations we opened in new markets, the clearer it became that we had outgrown our phone system. As we reached 500, then 700 employees around the country, we needed things like mobility, sophisticated call routing, the ability to SMS text on our business lines, and other features our legacy system didn’t offer.”
Enabling workflow improvements across the company
As Jake points out, Eight Eleven’s staff began taking advantage of several RingCentral features immediately to improve their daily workflows.
“One huge benefit we saw right away was that our recruiters could now send and receive SMS texts on their business numbers wherever they were. A lot of our consultants prefer staying in contact by text rather than a phone call, and it’s great that our delivery team can have those communications through the RingCentral app on their phones or computers, without having to give out their personal cell numbers anymore.”
Eight Eleven’s department managers also found ways to improve their teams’ operations, as Jake explains. “Our sales and delivery managers love the Call Monitoring feature because it lets them listen in on calls live and even whisper to the rep in real-time. It’s a great tool for coaching and training new hires, and it’s particularly valuable now, with so many employees working in offices scattered across the nation.”
Our old phone solution was so complicated that if I had to fix or change something, I knew that was going to take up most of my day. We’d need to get the vendor involved, and that would usually mean hours on the phone. With RingCentral, we’ve gotten all that time back, because administering the solution is so easy that we can do it ourselves online—and make most changes within a few minutes.
Jake Baldwin
IT Operations Manager
Leveraging RingCentral for video as well as calls and texts
Eight Eleven provides its clients with a national bench of resources, with offices and employees located across the country. As Jake notes, RingCentral Video has proven to be a highly useful tool both for keeping these distributed teams feeling connected and enabling employees to communicate with clients, partners, and consultants.
“We’ve found so many uses for RingCentral Video,” he says. “It’s a great resource for screening consultants and having deeper conversations with our corporate clients. We also use video conferencing for our internal meetings, especially the larger departmental meetings—which is something we couldn’t do with our previous video provider because they limited participants. Now we can have a video call involving people across many states, which is just invaluable.”
Creating more efficiencies by connecting RingCentral and Salesforce
As Jake also explains, Eight Eleven’s recruiters, sales reps, and customer success agents are improving their workflows thanks to the RingCentral for Salesforce integration.
“The RingCentral Salesforce integration allows our employees to text, call, and log activity right from our Salesforce interface, which helps streamline the day-to-day operations of our recruiters. Also, the installation itself was very easy, and in fact, our Customer Success Manager handled the whole process.”
A one-of-a-kind RingCentral anecdote
Finally, Jake notes, RingCentral played a key role in helping an Eight Eleven employee through a medical emergency—an incident that made Jake more grateful than ever for having moved the company to the RingCentral platform.
“One of our employees working remotely dialed 9-1-1 from his business number, and because I’m our RingCentral administrator, I saw that call come through. I called the employee to ask if it was a misdial, and he told me that his cell phone had died and that he was having trouble breathing.”
Jake explains that the employee had recently tested positive for COVID, so he knew this might be serious. “Fortunately, he was able to call 9-1-1 through the RingCentral app from his computer. He and I stayed in contact throughout the incident via SMS texts—because he couldn’t talk easily—and of course, he used the texting feature in RingCentral for that too. How’s that for giving our employees features that can improve their lives!”
Aside from all the great communication capabilities we now have for the first time, the best thing about RingCentral is that it’s been a real partnership—from implementation through today, years later. Our RingCentral project and account managers are always checking in to make sure we have what we need, and they’re always readily available when we have a question or request. That’s a true partner.
Jake Baldwin
IT Operations Manager