Like many of the vendors in the business communications space, RingCentral has been working hard to design solutions for organizations and companies that need to move their operations to a work-from-home footing as fast as possible. Very quickly, it designed an
offer for K-12 schools, healthcare providers, and non-profit organizations that includes voice, messaging, and meeting services.
Liquid Networx Steps In
Within days of hearing about the RingCentral offer, I saw a LinkedIn
post from one of its preferred partners, Liquid Networx, about training 30 teachers on videoconferencing for distance learning. Two days later, I saw a post about a medical practice
Liquid Networx had quickly transitioned to telemedicine (see image at top of post).
Understanding that others might benefit from the stories of how this school and medical practice were able to shift to virtual operations so quickly, I reached out to
Andrew Hammond, director of strategic services at Liquid Networx, for additional color on his LinkedIn posts. Liquid Networx is a telecommunications lifecycle management organization with a focus on mobility, cloud, and compliance solutions. The company is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, and serves corporate customers throughout the U.S. and abroad. Hammond graciously agreed to a videoconference interview.
Consultants in Pain Medicine, PA
Consultants in Pain Medicine, PA (
CPM) is a consortium of doctors that has created a medical group to offer pain management. CPM, an existing Liquid Networx customer, has 17 clinics located in greater San Antonio.
A recent Liquid Networx project involved installing Fortinet SD-WAN to link CPM locations. About six months ago, CPM asked Liquid Networx for help in modernizing faxing, Hammond said. The firm proposed and ultimately installed one RingCentral license per clinic to handle faxing. This service cost less than the existing fax solution, and CPM thought it might eventually expand its use to manage telephony needs. At the time, however, CPM’s premises-based telephony system met its needs.
Fast-forward to this month. As the coronavirus situation became more serious, CPM realized it needed a way to allow doctors to work virtually. As one option, the consortium looked at having the doctors take their premises system telephones home with them. For every remote office, the firm would have needed to purchase and deploy a security firewall. But that would support only voice, not videoconferencing. It would then have had to add a videoconferencing license.
Familiar with RingCentral’s offer for healthcare organizations I mentioned above, Liquid Networx presented the UCaaS provider as a second choice, one that would not only support voice but telemedicine as well. CPM agreed that it was a superior alternative and decided to move ahead with the RingCentral solution. Liquid Networx configured the system, trained the doctors, and in less than 48 hours, CPM was providing customers with telemedicine appointments, Hammond said.
HIPAA-compliance factored heavily into CPM’s decision to use RingCentral for fax, and now for all of its communications needs, Hammond said. RingCentral supports fully encrypted, end-to-end video, he said.
Gloria Deo Academy
Gloria Deo Academy (GDA) is a K-12 private school in Bulverde, Texas. Following a university-style schedule, Gloria Deo Academy provides core academic classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or Mondays and Wednesdays, and offers elective courses on Fridays. For the rest of the week, students benefit from one-on-one academic reinforcement at home.
As a small private school, with a roster of about 200 students and 30 teachers, GDA had unique pros and cons as it confronted the challenge of responding to COVID-19 school closure. GDA students were already familiar with doing classwork at home and each was equipped with a computer for home use. But, as Hammond explained, as a small school, GDA had never been very technical and didn’t have the IT expertise to quickly support an application like distance learning.
Liquid Networx, aware of the school because employees have children that attend it, approached GDA to explain the possibilities afforded by the RingCentral offer. The LinkedIn post above tells the story. Liquid Networx set up all 30 teachers with their own personal meeting rooms, and they quickly embraced the solution. While the teachers “had never had to do anything like this, had never set up a virtual meeting, they are so happy to have some technology and be able to talk to and see their kids,” Hammond shared.
In the lower grades, kindergarten through grade eight, GDA is delivering a combination of recorded videos and live sessions over RingCentral Video. For high school, GDA is keeping its hour-by-hour, class-by-class schedule in a virtual classroom. It sees the need to have that live experience. For example, in Spanish class, teachers and students are able to speak Spanish over the videoconference to teach and learn the required skills.
Thousands of stories like these are being played out, not only in the U.S. but across the globe. What I hope to highlight here is how partners are using software and emergency offers from companies like RingCentral to bring rapid solutions to organizations in industries with the most immediate need: education, health care, and emergency services. We are all in this together. Stay safe.
