RingCentral has promoted Kira Makagon to President and COO with the remit of driving innovation and growth.
Announced during RingCentral's latest earnings call for Q4 CY2024, Makagon will step up from Chief Innovation Officer to manage the UCaaS and CCaaS business's product and technology arms.
Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral's CEO, commented during the earnings call:
She has been in charge of all products and technology and has been the driving force behind turning RingCentral into an open-air platform and our evolution into a multiproduct company that now includes contact centre and AI(...) Kira's expertise in driving product vision and innovation, coupled with her deep understanding of customer needs and our company's culture makes her the ideal leader to help guide RingCentral into our next phase of AI-fueled multiproduct growth."
Shmunis added that, in her new role, Makagon will oversee the company's product and technology organisation and will introduce direct and channel sales, customer success, marketing, and business operations organisations.
Meanwhile, Makagon also outlined her own priorities in her new position. "This shapes our strategy and innovation, and here are my key priorities," Makagon said during the earnings call. "First, build upon our UCaaS leadership, infusing AI across our entire portfolio. Second, expand TAM through our multiproduct portfolio, led by RingCX, our native AI-first CCaaS solutions. Third, drive profitable growth and improve customer engagement across our entire business."
RingCentral's Operational Highlights From Its Latest Quarter
Makagon elaborated on the first UCaaS-centric priority and the ambition to imbue AI across the entire portfolio. She emphasised that customers choose the platform for its market-leading cloud business phone system with a robust omnichannel feature set. This culminated in one of RingCentral's largest wins this quarter via an international public sector customer who purchased over 10,000 seats in RingEX.
Interestingly, Makagon also highlighted that business customers are choosing RingCentral to complement Microsoft Teams messaging and video. Teams customers turning to RingCentral was a trend Makagon underlined repeatedly, citing several $1 million TCV deals, where the platform's integration with Teams was considered a decisive factor.
In other UC-centric operational highlights, Shmunis stressed the impact of AI's introduction across most of RingCentral's ecosystem. The exec highlighted one major new customer, technology services and solutions provider Genpact, as selecting RingCentral's full, AI-powered comms suite across RingEX and RingCX to power its 125,000 employees in 30+ countries.
