With RingCentral’s Cloud Phone and Video Meetings Solutions, Attraqt’s Global Staff Finds the Answer for Its Mobile and Distributed Workforce Needs

This e-commerce software company could no longer support its growing staff with an on-premises phone system.
A search for a flexible, mobile cloud-based communications solution led to RingCentral.
Attraqt employees can now be productive anywhere, and the company enjoys seamless communication among its worldwide staff.
Company profile:
Attraqt (LON: ATQT) powers exceptional shopping experiences for over 240 of the world’s leading retail brands. Attraqt’s core product, the Fredhopper Discovery Platform, drives relevant and inspiring e-commerce experiences through personalisation, search, recommendations, internationalisation, and merchandising SaaS solutions. Simple-to-use interfaces and efficient workflows enable merchandisers to take full control and enhance the value of smart automation with their own strategic expertise and creativity. In 2019, Attraqt acquired Early Birds, an award-winning AI-driven personalisation software provider. Together, the two companies combine Attraqt’s pedigree in data-led search and merchandising capabilities that optimise product discovery and visual curation with Early Birds’s award-winning ability to empower learning algorithms to orchestrate and personalise the entire shopper journey.
Year founded:
2003
EMPLOYEES:
150 employees
HEADQUARTERS:
London, United Kingdom
WEBSITE:
With more than 300 leading brands depending on Attraqt’s cloud-based e-commerce and data analytics tools every day, the company’s 150 employees needed reliable and scalable communications solutions.
But as the company’s workforce expanded in recent years to include offices not only in the UK but also the Netherlands, Bulgaria, France, Germany, and Australia, Attraqt realised it could no longer function as a world-class organisation with on-premises, inflexible phone systems. 

An opportunity to finally upgrade its phone infrastructure

“In recent years, we’d adopted a cloud-only policy for any new technology deployment,” explains David Phillips, CIO at Attraqt. “But we were still using traditional PBX phone systems at all of our locations around the world. We had no central management, no phone app, and we couldn’t enable our staff to work remotely without an expensive handset and licence."
“And there was another challenge,” Phillips continues. “Many of our employees spend a lot of time on the road. Because their business numbers were tied to physical landlines, these employees had to give out their personal mobile numbers for work. They didn’t appreciate this, and it didn’t project the professional image we wanted.”
Fortunately, two factors presented themselves simultaneously and gave Attraqt the opportunity to migrate both its system and video meetings to a single cloud solution. “At roughly the time our telecom contract was up for renewal, we were also planning to move our London headquarters to a new office space,” says Phillips. “We didn’t want to invest in or manage any local hardware, and we knew we needed to improve our communications anyway to give our worldwide staff more flexibility and help them be more responsive to customers. This was our opportunity to apply Attraqt’s cloud-only policy to our telecommunications, and we seized it.”

A thorough review of cloud communications solutions

“I did a lot of research,” recalls Phillips. “RingCentral was the clear choice for several reasons. For one thing, it was truly seamless. Many of the other solutions I looked into seemed to require a lot of add-ons.”
“Also, other cloud phone system offerings seemed to be little more than hosted versions of the old on-prem phone system we had. They just weren’t very robust in terms of functionality. But RingCentral had all of the features and flexibility we needed. In fact, RingCentral even had
outstanding video meeting capability seamlessly integrated with its phone solution. That meant we could consolidate our voice and video platforms into a single environment.”
“Finally, RingCentral was a global organisation, like we are, and that gave us a level of trust and confidence in them that we just didn’t feel while researching other cloud providers.” 

Ticking all the right boxes

“Moving to RingCentral has given us the flexible, frictionless communication environment we wanted,” Phillips explains. “Employees can now use their mobile phones and laptops for calls, be accessible anywhere, and even host video conferences within the same integrated cloud environment.”
“In fact, because RingCentral offers such a robust, full-featured solution, we’ve been able to cancel some of the third-party products we’d been paying for, such as overseas answering services. That means RingCentral is saving us money too.”
“We’re also benefiting in many ways from RingCentral Meetings. Our staff really appreciates the screen-sharing feature, on-screen annotation, the
option to record meetings, and the ability to set up a conference that participants can join without the host even being present. This has been helpful for our sales efforts because it lets Attraqt’s reps set up reference calls where existing clients and prospective clients can communicate directly."
“And thanks to RingCentral, our senior leadership team is now able to meet with much less friction. On any given day, our various executives could be anywhere in the world. With RingCentral Meetings on their phones and laptops, they can all get together virtually—no matter how far the team is scattered geographically.”

Making business acquisitions more efficient

Yet another benefit of the RingCentral implementation, which Attraqt hadn’t anticipated, is that it will actually help the company bring newly acquired companies into its operations more quickly and efficiently.
“We recently acquired a French-based AI company,” Phillips explains. “Because we have RingCentral, we will be able to scale up this business and onboard its staff much faster and with less friction than would’ve ever been possible before. For example, we’ll be able to integrate their
phone numbers into the Attraqt system from our HQ, set them up with new emails, and get all of the staff’s communications set up almost instantly."
“Also, thanks to RingCentral Meetings, we’re easily able to communicate via video conferencing with the newly acquired team, which is helping onboard them and speed up their integration into our company. And it couldn’t have happened this efficiently without RingCentral.”