The latest RingCentral partner program aims to help partners own the entire sales cycle with businesses of up to 400 employees.

RingCentral Ignite, introduced on Tuesday, builds on the company’s Channel Harmony program, but gives partners more flexibility. They can choose the sales process that best suits the needs of each individual prospect, the company said.

Lisa Del Real is RingCentral‘s vice president of global partner programs. She said Ignite allows qualified partners to take charge of and fully control the entire sales process. That includes quoting, closing, upsell and cross-sell opportunities with SMBs.

RingCentral’s Lisa Del Real

“The key here is choice,” she said. “For the first time, RingCentral partners can now decide – for each individual deal – whether to utilize the resources available to them through our existing Channel Harmony program for larger enterprise deals, or streamline and expedite the process with RingCentral Ignite for a small-to-medium business deal.”

Certified partners can provide quotes, access a dedicated remote team for sales support, and close deals with higher sales incentives. For larger, more complex deals, partners will continue to use Channel Harmony for sales resources.

Partner Feedback Crucial

The new RingCentral partner program was born out of feedback from partners, Del Real said. Many wanted a faster process to handle deals they had full confidence in, she said.

“As a major evolution to our partner program, this pivot represents a commitment to continuing to find ways to better approach and engage with the partner community,” she said.

RingCentral works with distributors, master agents, channel partners and carrier partners to deliver cloud communications to businesses around the world.

RingCentral’s Zane Long

“By empowering partners to respond to and help customers faster, potentially in times of crisis, we can do our part to keep people connected when they need it the most, now or in the future,” Del Real said.

“Now more than ever, organizations need technology that allows them to work from anywhere,” said Zane Long, RingCentral’s senior vice president of global partner sales. “Partners can continue to look to RingCentral as the complete cloud solution for today’s modern digital workforce across small, medium and large businesses.”

RingCentral earlier this month named former Microsoft channel chief Phil Sorgen its new chief revenue officer.  He plans to continue to expand RingCentral’s demand-generation programs.