Moving from a traditional business phone system to RingCentral is more than replacing desk phones or moving telephone numbers to the cloud.
For organizations with hundreds of users, multiple locations, contact centers, analog devices, paging systems, emergency calling requirements, call flows, and decades of accumulated telephone-system programming, the real challenge is managing the migration without disrupting the organization.
That is where High Country Workplace Technologies adds value.
High Country doesn't simply sell RingCentral licenses. We help organizations understand their existing communications environment, design the new solution, manage the transition, implement RingCentral, and support the customer after the migration is complete.
Why Work With High Country for a RingCentral Migration?
A successful RingCentral migration requires knowledge of both the system you're moving to and the system you're moving from.
High Country has spent decades implementing and supporting business communications systems. Our experience includes legacy and modern platforms from Mitel, ShoreTel/MiVoice Connect, Avaya, Cisco and other manufacturers, as well as today's cloud communications platforms.
That experience matters during a migration.
Before configuring RingCentral, we work to understand how your existing telephone system actually operates:
- Users, extensions and direct numbers
- Auto attendants and IVRs
- Hunt groups and call queues
- Contact center workflows
- Business hours and holiday schedules
- Voicemail
- Call recording
- Paging systems
- Fax machines
- Analog lines and devices
- Emergency and elevator phones
- Door phones and entry systems
- Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 integration
- Network and Internet connectivity
- Emergency calling and location requirements
The objective isn't simply to reproduce an old PBX in the cloud. It is to determine what should be retained, what should be improved, and what is no longer necessary.
We Understand the Legacy System You're Replacing
One of the biggest advantages of working with High Country is our experience with the systems many organizations are trying to replace.
A customer migrating from a Mitel MiVoice Connect or Avaya system may have years of programming embedded in the existing platform. Call routing may depend on hunt groups, workgroups, schedules, route points, voicemail applications, analog gateways, paging interfaces and other components that aren't obvious from a simple list of extensions.
If the migration team doesn't understand the existing system, important functionality can be missed.
High Country can evaluate the existing environment and translate those requirements into an appropriate RingCentral design.
We Design RingCentral Around Your Organization
RingCentral provides a broad communications platform, but successful implementation still requires good design.
High Country works with customers to determine how RingCentral should be configured for each part of the organization.
That may include:
RingEX for business communications and user calling.
RingCentral Contact Center or RingCX for departments requiring more advanced customer interaction, reporting, analytics, dispositions, recordings or queue functionality.
Microsoft Teams integration for organizations that want employees to work primarily from Teams while using RingCentral for enterprise telephony.
Common-area and shared phones for classrooms, warehouses, lobbies, break rooms and other locations where a dedicated user license may not be appropriate.
Analog and specialty devices that still need connectivity after the traditional PBX disappears.
The correct design may be different for different departments.
We Look at the Network Before the Migration
Cloud communications make the network part of the telephone system.
Internet connectivity, firewalls, switches, VLANs, Quality of Service, Wi-Fi, SD-WAN and network routing can all affect voice quality.
High Country's experience extends beyond telephony into networking and infrastructure, including Cisco Meraki and other network technologies.
Before migration, we can help identify network conditions that could affect RingCentral performance rather than discovering those issues after hundreds of users have been moved.
We Manage Number Porting and Cutover
Telephone-number porting is one of the most important parts of a cloud migration.
Organizations may have hundreds or thousands of telephone numbers spread across multiple carriers, locations and billing accounts.
High Country helps identify those numbers, determine which numbers need to move, coordinate porting, and develop a cutover plan.
The goal is straightforward:
Your customers should still be able to reach you while the technology behind the telephone number changes.
We Don't Forget About Paging, Fax and Analog Devices
This is an area where cloud migrations can become unexpectedly complicated.
A traditional PBX may still connect to:
- Overhead paging
- Fax machines
- Fire or alarm systems
- Elevator phones
- Door-entry systems
- Modems
- Emergency phones
- Hotline and ringdown devices
- Legacy analog equipment
Those devices don't disappear simply because the organization moves its employees to cloud communications.
High Country identifies these requirements during discovery and develops an appropriate migration strategy for them.
We Can Help Reuse Existing Phones When It Makes Sense
Some organizations have made significant investments in existing telephone hardware.
Depending on the manufacturer, model, hardware revision and firmware, some existing devices may be reusable while others may need to be replaced.
High Country can help determine what equipment can realistically be retained before the organization purchases hundreds of new phones unnecessarily.
Just as importantly, we'll tell you when reusing an existing phone doesn't make technical or financial sense.
We Understand Multi-Site Organizations
Migrating a 20-user office is very different from migrating a city government, school district, university, hotel group or multi-location business.
Large organizations need a migration strategy.
Rather than moving everyone simultaneously, High Country can develop a phased migration based on locations, departments and operational requirements.
A typical project may include:
- Discovery and documentation
- Network readiness assessment
- RingCentral solution design
- Pilot users or locations
- User and device configuration
- Number-porting preparation
- User training
- Phased migration
- Cutover validation
- Post-migration support
This reduces risk while allowing lessons learned during early migrations to improve subsequent phases.
We Stay Involved After RingCentral Goes Live
A RingCentral implementation doesn't end when the numbers port.
Users need assistance. Call flows change. Departments discover new requirements. New employees arrive. Locations open and close. Contact-center requirements evolve.
High Country can remain involved as your communications technology partner after implementation.
Instead of forcing your internal IT team to become experts in every aspect of RingCentral administration, licensing, carrier services, telephone hardware, analog gateways, paging and network troubleshooting, High Country can provide an escalation path when assistance is needed.
One Partner Across the Migration
Perhaps the biggest value High Country provides is accountability.
Without an experienced technology partner, a communications problem can quickly turn into finger-pointing between the cloud provider, Internet carrier, firewall vendor, network provider, cabling contractor, telephone manufacturer and internal IT department.
High Country works across these technologies.
Our experience includes cloud communications, legacy PBXs, SIP services, Internet connectivity, networking, Wi-Fi, paging, analog devices, cabling and related communications infrastructure.
That allows us to look at the entire communications environment, rather than just the RingCentral application.
Why Not Just Buy RingCentral Directly?
For a small organization with straightforward requirements, a direct implementation may be perfectly adequate.
For a larger or more complex organization, the value of an experienced implementation partner increases substantially.
The question isn't whether RingCentral works.
The question is:
How do we get from the communications environment we have today to RingCentral without losing the functionality our organization depends on?
That is the problem High Country is designed to solve.
Planning a RingCentral Migration?
If your organization is considering replacing a Mitel, ShoreTel, Avaya, Cisco or other legacy telephone system with RingCentral, High Country Workplace Technologies can help evaluate the existing environment and develop a practical migration plan.
Whether you operate a single office or a multi-location enterprise, school district, local government, hotel group or other complex organization, the first step should be understanding what you have today.
High Country Workplace Technologies can help you determine what needs to move, what can be improved, and how to make the transition to RingCentral with the least disruption possible. Please Contact Us to help.
This post was authored by Jim Whitfield