SAMUEL A. RAMIREZ & CO.
Making the Perfect Trade for UCx with Webex
When a New York City-based financial services firm needed a unified communications solution to empower its hybrid team to stay connected, it turned to TPx.
The Challenge and Opportunity
Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. is the oldest Hispanic-owned financial services company on Wall Street, with 150 employees across multiple offices, and needed a unified communications solution to match its lauded reputation.
Quick Fact
The transition from Samuel A. Ramirez & Co.’s on-premises phone solution to UCx with Webex lasted only two to three hours.
The Solution
The financial services firm chose TPx’s award-winning UCx with Webex solution that goes beyond traditional calling plans with true enterprise VoIP.
The Benefits
TPx’s UCx with Webex transforms how employees work with a single, simple, unified communications and collaboration app for calling, messaging and meeting with anyone, anywhere on any device. Meetings and conversations are always secure with enterprise-grade security.
The Results
Thanks to the enterprise-grade security embedded from the start, TPx’s UCx solution ensures that meetings and conversations are secure, allowing the Ramirez team to work from wherever is more convenient for them — in the office or remotely – and keep confidential communications secure.
About Samuel A. Ramirez & Co.
Founded in 1971, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. is a nationwide, full-service investment bank, brokerage and advisory firm. The New York City-based company is the oldest Hispanic-owned financial services company on Wall Street and serves institutional clients and retail investors across six core areas: asset management, fixed-income sales and trading, investment banking, institutional equities, municipal finance and wealth management. Ramirez has offices in Albany, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Orlando, San Antonio, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“Being a smaller firm with just 150 employees is nothing to a large IT vendor. I was looking for a niche company that could deliver the service level I expected. TPx was a great fit and has an impressive roster of current customers. They brought an expertise that would allow me to do a seamless cutover of our communications solutions. That’s the environment that I was looking for.”
Rey Pacheco, Ramirez’s Chief Technology Officer, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co.
The Challenge
During its 50-year history, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. has built a reputation for delivering quality financial services. As technology has evolved, the company needed to ensure its IT solutions could continue to support its workforce and customers. Rey Pacheco, Ramirez’s Chief Technology Officer, has been with the company for about 12 years and has seen how technology has evolved during that time.
“I tend to keep an eye on the market and the technology environments and see what services would bring value to the firm,” Pacheco added. “I don’t need to be state of the art; I don’t need to be the first guy to deploy a specific technology. My job is to introduce technologies that deliver added value.”
When Pacheco joined the company, it had an older, on-premises phone system that needed a refresh. “It didn’t have some of the unified communications features we were looking for to support a remote workforce,” Pacheco said. Within the last decade, the firm has doubled its headcount to 150 employees, and Pacheco knew he needed communications solutions that could grow alongside the firm. Pacheco debated between keeping the technology on-premises or transitioning to a cloud-based solution, but he recognized the critical importance of transitioning to the cloud and the value it would bring to the firm.
“With the evolution of more cloud-based services, I am of the mind of waiting to see the technologies to prove themselves,” Pacheco said. “With employees located all over the country and in Puerto Rico working in a hybrid model, we needed a proven cloud-based solution. We vetted several different companies, and TPx was one of them.”
The Solution
Pacheco and the firm opted for TPx’s award-winning UCx with Webex solution. It goes beyond traditional calling plans with true enterprise VoIP combined with full collaboration features, making it a complete solution for calling, messaging, video conferencing and meetings. “In the vetting process and exploring different hosted solutions, the decision really came down to the technology,” Pacheco said.
UCx with Webex offers rich feature functionality that supports better communications for a hybrid and remote workforce. With roughly 90% of employees working out of the New York headquarters on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and remotely on Monday and Fridays, UCx with Webex makes it easy for the firm’s employees to use a single phone number to connect with customers, colleagues, and partners regardless of where they are located.
The unified communications solution offers more than just calling capabilities for the financial services firm. It is designed to empower remote work through virtual meetings, instant messaging, video conferencing, collaboration and productivity tools.
The Results
UCx with Webex has transformed how Ramirez’s employees work and communicate. With a single, simple, unified communications and collaboration app for calling, messaging and meeting, they can work confidently wherever they are, knowing their meetings and conversations are secure with enterprise-grade security. By embracing cloud-based unified communications, they have gained a versatile, scalable, and feature-rich toolset that bridges the gap between working in the office and remotely.
Pacheco has been impressed with TPx throughout the implementation process. “When I deploy a new technology, I want to deploy it right the first time — test it, put pressure on it, and see if it breaks and what that breaking point is and remediate,” said Pacheco. “The UCx with Webex implementation was seamless. When I say seamless deployment, it was seamless — to the point where an hour or two hours in, the phones were coming up. It was a great experience.”
Pacheco is glad he decided to partner with TPx for unified communications. “I didn’t want to select the biggest vendor because we would fall between the cracks, and I’ve had that experience with other larger providers,” Pacheco said. “I prefer to work with a company that has an intimate knowledge of my environment, people that I know by first name, and people that I can reach out to if there’s a significant event affecting my environment.”
Ramirez & Co. can count on TPx to provide the services and support they need and can easily scale their business communications as the firm’s needs evolve. Ultimately, UCx with Webex enables effective communication and collaboration, helping Ramirez & Co. thrive in the evolving landscape of modern business. “It’s not only my reputation. I represent something bigger. I represent Ramirez & Co.,” Pacheco said. “The firm’s reputation is paramount to me, and that integrity — I call it IT integrity — allows our customers to know that they can rely on us. TPx helps make that happen.”
Additional Resources
Unified Communications 101
Unified communications, also known as UC or UCaaS, is a key communications technology in the modern workplace. Read this guide for everything you need know about UC and learn why businesses of today are transitioning to it.
The Benefits of Cloud-Based Communications for Financial Services
If your financial services organization isn’t using cloud-based communications, you could be opening yourself up to regulatory headaches and putting sensitive information at risk. In this blog, we’ll cover the main benefits of opting for more modern communications.