FE Fundinfo
How a leading European Provider of Fund Data Easily Connects its Global Staff with RingCentral and Microsoft Teams
From a telecom perspective, we faced some unique challenges, including the need for a global solution that could support our offices across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Integrating RingCentral with our Microsoft Teams environment solved that challenge—giving us a single, shared telephony environment around the world.
Thomas Fuhrmann
Head of Infrastructure Projects
A leading provider of fund data and software in Europe
When institutional investors and financial advisers conduct research on behalf of their clients, one of their most vexing challenges is finding up-to-date and comprehensive financial data from trusted sources. FE fundinfo was founded to solve that problem.
A multiple-award-winning financial data and technology company, FE fundinfo connects fund managers and fund distributors around the world through intelligent investment research software and a centralised, global information marketplace to share and act on reliable fund data.
The global financial community has clearly found tremendous value in FE fundinfo’s platform and research services. Thousands of financial advisers and asset managers, as well as hundreds of banks and insurance firms rely every day on the company’s tools and information marketplace to make smart investment decisions for their clients.
Microsoft Teams: connecting a locked-down, global staff
Thomas Fuhrmann, Head of Infrastructure Projects, explains that the company rebranded itself as FE fundinfo in 2019, after the merger of three leading fund data and technology firms—each with an international presence. The newly formed entity, Thomas points out, had offices all over the world, but no unified communications environment connecting them all.
“We inherited a lot of legacy, on-prem phone systems and service contracts with local telecom carriers everywhere, some of which were quite expensive because they were serving small satellite offices,” Thomas explains. “Our goal was to find a global, unified communications solution for the entire organisation.”
But then the pandemic started, and FE fundinfo’s staff had to transition immediately to remote working. “We couldn’t wait to find a unified global solution that offered everything—including cloud telephony—so we set everybody up on Microsoft Teams, where they could at least message and directly call each other across international offices.”
RingCentral Cloud PBX for Teams: completing the global unified solution
As pleased as FE fundinfo’s employees were to have a companywide app for some of their communications during the lockdowns, the organisation still needed a global, feature-rich cloud telephony solution.
“The Teams phone system didn’t offer key functionality we needed” says Thomas. “For example, it didn’t make it easy to delegate admin privileges, which would let our department heads and supervisors configure their own IVRs and call queues, regardless of their location.”
An even more fundamental challenge, Thomas notes, was the limited international phone service that Microsoft Teams offered. “The Teams app couldn’t give us calling capabilities in all the locations where we have offices. And we anticipated that challenge would only become more serious over time, because we’re expanding into new regions rapidly.
RingCentral was the only cloud provider to make a compelling case that it would soon earn a telecom license to operate in India, where we have a large presence. That was another reason we felt vindicated with our decision—soon after we signed on, RingCentral became the first UCaaS provider to get licensed in India.
Thomas Fuhrmann
Head of Infrastructure Projects
INDUSTRY
Financial services
HQ
London, UK
YEAR FOUNDED
1996 (as Financial Express)
EMPLOYEES
900+
After thoroughly researching the industry, FE fundinfo discovered RingCentral Cloud PBX for Microsoft Teams. With this direct-routing integration, users can make and receive calls on their business numbers from a RingCentral widget embedded directly into their Teams environment. And as Thomas points out, the benefits to the company have been considerable.
Improving operations by integrating RingCentral into Teams
One of the most immediate benefits of implementing the RingCentral Teams integration, Thomas explains, was the easy onboarding and rapid widespread adoption. “RingCentral is so intuitive that the rollout didn’t require much training. People just popped open their Teams app and started using the RingCentral widget for their calls. It also has plenty of integrations we know are there such as single sign on to streamline the user experience”
RingCentral’s streamlined cloud management and proven ease of use with FE fundinfo’s staff, Thomas adds, also has positive implications for the company’s growth plans. “From a telecom standpoint, it’s going to be onboarding new employees and even new offices, because we can manage it all from the cloud,” he says. “We won’t need to send an IT person out to set up any telephony hardware, because there is no hardware.”
And being truly global means there’s no concerns about costs or reliability as Thomas mentions,
“We know having that local presence in each country makes calling more reliable and we also can see the cost savings we are making on international calling.”
Finally, Thomas notes that having RingCentral available to the company’s staff all over the world is also helping each department improve their telephony operations. “It’s so easy for a manager in any department to configure and update their automated phone menu or call queue through the online portal, without having to wait for IT. That’s allowing each group to customise their own phone system, which means providing a better customer experience.”
RingCentral is also helping us control our op/ex and keep our telephony costs steady and predictable. We’ve consolidated all our phone systems down to a single provider, we’re no longer paying crazy carrier fees to deliver phone service to smaller offices, and we know exactly how much it’s going to cost us to add a new user.
Thomas Fuhrmann
Head of Infrastructure Projects