redT Homes
With RingCentral, Eco-Friendly Real Estate Firm redT Homes Consolidated its Tech Stack and Significantly Improved Operation
RingCentral has been invaluable for creating the efficiencies that are helping us grow. We’ve reduced our tech stack by a third. We now have everyone on the same communications platform. We’re keeping all company leads in-house. And we can more accurately track our marketing ROI because we integrated RingCentral with Salesforce.
Mike Bulin
VP of Sales and Marketing
Denver-based redT Homes has done something few real estate development services firms ever have; the company pivoted its entire business model to become an environmentally responsible real estate developer and brokerage.
What makes redT’s pivot even rarer is what drove the transformation to the company’s new mission of building a greener Colorado. That catalyst was a request from the firm’s employees, who wanted their hard work to make a difference in the lives of Colorado families and to contribute to a more sustainable world.
The firm’s founder agreed, and today redT works only with developers and investors willing to commit to projects that meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for environmental responsibility. The company even formed its own development subsidiary, LiteHomes, to build energy-efficient and planet-friendly homes.
The company’s new mission is proving to be wildly successful with investors, developers, and homebuyers throughout the Denver area. Demand for redT’s services has increased so much, in fact, that the company grew its staff by more than 60% in 2021—and expects to do so again in 2022.
INDUSTRY
Real estate
HQ
Denver, CO
YEAR FOUNDED
2014
EMPLOYEES
40
Rapid expansion called for streamlined, modern communications
Mike Bulin, redT’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, explains that as the pace of the firm’s growth increased, it began outgrowing its on-prem phone system. And that wasn’t the only challenge.
“We had gotten so scattered in terms of our communications. Employees were using four or five different platforms—their office phones, their personal cell phones when they were out of the office, and several apps for team chat and video conferencing. That just wasn’t efficient, and we knew it would only get more inefficient as the company grew.”
Creating a unified communications environment with RingEX
As Mike explains, his team solved these challenges, and put redT in a strong position for continued expansion, by transitioning to the cloud-based RingEX—with unified phone, messaging, and video in a unified app.
“Because the RingCentral app is so intuitive, and because RingCentral’s training was terrific, we had 100% adoption across the company pretty much immediately when we went live,” he says. “That meant we had everyone communicating through one shared environment, not five.”
The migration to RingCentral, Mike notes, led to significant operational improvements right away. “With the RingCentral mobile app on everyone’s cell phones, our employees were able to be more responsive to clients from anywhere.”
And, he adds, the ability to make and receive business calls through the mobile app led to another important business advantage for the company.
Rather than giving out their personal cell numbers, our reps are now able to communicate with clients using their business numbers on the RingCentral mobile app, even when they’re on the road. That means we can keep all leads within the redT communications environment—and maintain those prospect relationships even if a sales rep leaves.
Mike Bulin
VP of Sales and Marketing
Viewing RingCentral as a true partner, not just a technology vendor
Although Mike knows from experience that technology implementations are often highly disruptive to a company, he says redT’s migration to RingCentral was just the opposite—from signing up for the service, through onboarding the entire company.
“From day one, this has really felt like a partnership. Everyone we’ve worked with at RingCentral—our dedicated sales rep, the outstanding project management and implementation team, the support staff—has always been responsive, caring, and committed to our success.”
Our RingCentral sales rep listened carefully to our goals and helped us design a system that did exactly what we needed—and could scale easily for us over time. Then our project manager took the time to diligently walk us through our implementation and help us train our staff. Also, RingCentral’s support team has always been there when we’ve run into hurdles.
Mike Bulin
VP of Sales and Marketing
Creating efficiencies with all the tools in the RingCentral app
In addition to enjoying the ability to make and receive their business phone calls on any device, redT’s employees are also finding ways to improve their workflows using the other communication services included in the RingCentral platform.
“We use RingCentral Video all the time,” he says. “It’s ideal for client and partner presentations when we can’t meet face-to-face because we can easily host those meetings from anywhere and we can share our screen to walk partners through our presentation materials. I also like how easy it is to enhance our internal communications. I can just open the app, click on my marketing manager’s name, and fire up a video chat with him in real-time.”
And while redT is a fast-growing organization, the company wants to remain a close-knit team. As Mike points out, the built-in RingCentral Team Messaging platform helps here, too.
“We’ve found all sorts of creative ways the messaging app to keep us closer,” Mike says. “One of our employees makes gourmet coffee each morning for everyone in the office, and when it’s ready he’ll send a message out on our RingCentral office group. Then, we all come running. And our VP of construction just got a new puppy, and of course he’s posting pictures on our RingCentral messaging group, like a proud papa should.”
Getting even more value from a key RingCentral app integration
Finally, Mike points out, redT is also leveraging its new cloud-communication platform to gain visibility into the company’s marketing spend that it never had before. Using the RingCentral for Salesforce integration, he explains, is helping redT allocate its marketing budget for a more effective ROI.
The RingCentral for Salesforce integration is invaluable for helping us monitor our marketing campaigns are working. We assign new phone numbers through RingCentral to each campaign, and when those leads come in, they go straight into our Salesforce environment. That lets us track which campaigns are working and which aren’t—something we weren’t able to do with our old phone system.
Mike Bulin
VP of Sales and Marketing