Rainbow Office In Today’s New Workplace

Workplaces need communications solutions that are easy to use and flexible. Rainbow Office addresses these requirements with a first-in-class service.

In a recent interview for Ringside, RingCentral’s blog, Jasper Van Sas, Global Head of Sales for Rainbow Office at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, shared his insights into how Rainbow Office is making an impact in today’s new workplace.

Since Rainbow Office launched in March 2021, have customers pointed out key features that make the product stand out from others in the market?

When looking for a solution, customers are interested in key elements like high availability, ease of use and how you set the solution up and deploy it. They are looking for that ease of use and flexibility where they can upscale or downscale depending on their needs.

And on all these aspects, “Rainbow Office” provides the first-in-class service. Integrations are key too. We live in a connected world. People want to work from anywhere, on any device, and work from any application. For example, the Direct Routing options for Microsoft® Teams, specifically in enterprise customers, is something that we are encountering on a day-to-day basis. It brings the Microsoft Teams’ phone capabilities to another level for customers.

Spur of the moment conversations are often lost in today’s video-first world. Are there any features coming to Rainbow Office that will help dispersed teams with spontaneous conversations?

We know how important it is to provide the best experience possible to people when using our solution. Spontaneous conversation is key to a great teamwork and to ease it, we launched a new feature called Team Huddle. With the click of a button, you move from a chat conversation to a sales call. You can include people from within your organization or people externally. Once you are in that session, you can organize Breakout Rooms to go in-depth on a specific subject. It allows us to quickly engage our customers and partners we’re working with in doing business.

As Rainbow Office is an open platform that integrates easily with other applications used by our customers, there are really no limits to what we can do to enhance the experience.

Can you give a brief overview of Rainbow Office’s current features, what updates can customers expect to see soon and what the top benefits of features overall?

First, Rainbow Office will continue to enhance the video experience of customers. For instance, the latest release brings new features such as ‘share camera view’ for mobile users, auto-follow and image quality improvements in the desktop app.

We also ensure Rainbow Office integrates easily with more terminals because many customers still use desktop phones. The ‘Rooms’ offering launch illustrates our desire to enable a hybrid way of working by offering standard and easy-to-use video conferencing solutions. This means those returning to the office can collaborate effectively with remote workers.

So really all of the key features that customers need and expect for business telephony. Call routing, IVR, conferencing and much more.

How do you think businesses will operate post-pandemic?

I don’t always like to talk about the pandemic in my conversations with customers and partners. But it’s a reality that we’re still living today. The way we worked changed rapidly. Over the course of a couple of weeks, we made a giant leap in terms of technology, how we do business, how we work, how we live, how we interact with each other.

Now the question is, is that pendulum going to swing back, and how far will it swing? The hybrid way of working and living is something that will be extended and is going to be more dominant in the future.

There’s the idea of the 15-Minute City. So where your kids go to school, where you do sports activities and even where you go for drinks are all within a 15-minute journey of where you live – it’s something that we will see in business as well. In other words, work will be much more accessible. You’ll still have the centralized office, but there will be remote working hubs, and you’ll also still have your home office. Depending on your needs, you’ll shift between these places.

Can you tell us a bit about your career to-date and your role at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise?

I started my career in inside sales at an IT distributor. I did that for a few years and then progressed from answering phone calls and doing callouts, to managing the HP business. From there I moved to an external sales function with a Managed Service Provider, after that, I moved into the field of e-learning where I focused on developing tailor-made projects and launching internally developed SaaS solutions.

Following that, I was contacted by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise for a sales leadership position. I was initially focused on the Education vertical and then moved to manage an international team with Key Enterprise Accounts in Europe.

Then came the Rainbow Office announcement and the partnership with RingCentral which instantly interested me. After discussing it with several people and expressing my interest I was offered the opportunity to manage the sales team and co-author the go-to-market strategy for Rainbow Office in nine countries.

We at tbtech are looking forward to following the exciting journey of the partnership, and supporting the value the RBO solution can bring.