Lower TCO with a Unified Communications System Designed for the IP Age

As the economic outlook starts to brighten, organizations are looking toward making IT investments that fuel business growth. A unified communications (UC) system designed for the IP age can help companies deliver outstanding service to customers and take advantage of emerging revenue opportunities.

With a new UC system, organizations can free themselves from aging legacy phone systems that impede modern-day communication and collaboration. Organizations can get control of the ballooning costs sunk into maintaining outmoded, proprietary phone systems.

In today's business climate, it's critical that any new IT investment not only be affordable from the initial purchase but also be operationally efficient over the ensuing years of service. Upfront purchase costs represent a mere 25 percent of total cost of ownership (TCO) over five or more years, so paying close attention to the operating costs such as administration costs and power costs can have a material impact to delivering these services to employees over the long term.

And IT staffs have never been leaner, making ease of use and management all the more important.

Cut Complexity and Lower TCO

The ShoreTel UC system is designed from the ground up to cut complexity costs and lower TCO. A growing number of customers choose ShoreTel because of its low TCO, backed by the ShoreTel Lowest Total Cost of Ownership Guarantee.

With ShoreTel, organizations from the San Francisco Giants to the Better Business Bureau are realizing dramatic costs savings year after year and improving customer service. "We evaluated ShoreTel and other leading providers, and selected ShoreTel for its demonstrated lowest total cost of ownership over a 5-year period or longer," said Doug Schweiss, Manager, Telecommunication Services at RehabCare, a leading provider of physical rehabilitation program management services and facilities across the United States. "Our analysis of the alternatives determined that ShoreTel's overall management costs were at least 25 percent lower than the next competitive system. Since our deployment, we have observed substantial reductions in costs, including an 80 percent reduction in manpower for moves, adds and changes over our legacy systems. ShoreTel's overall simplicity has enabled us to reduce costs, while empowering our internal staff with communication solutions that result in superior patient care."

By designing a UC system from the ground up that exploits the full power of IP, ShoreTel successfully untangled the complexity typically associated with other solutions—complexity that results in high maintenance and management costs.

The ShoreTel system is easy to manage, so administrative staff can easy do adds, moves and changes, which allows the organization to focus on their core business. Workers can easily learn how to use the ShoreTel system, which allows your organization to reduce training and support costs. Plus, ShoreTel's distributed architecture allows your organization to leverage your existing infrastructure and roll out an IP phone system to multiple locations, all managed from a single location.

BDO Canada LLP, one of Canada's largest accounting services and advisory firms, has seen success using ShoreTel. "With about 100 offices across Canada and many more remote workers, we need a flexible and easy-to-manage communication system," said Claude Vezina, Manager, National Telecom at BDO Canada. "Remote management is simple thanks to the ShoreTel Director Web-based user interface, so we have the flexibility to address different requirements without requiring dedicated staff in remote sites. Our TCO is also reduced because there's no cost to say current. Upgrades are included in the annual maintenance package—a huge cost advantage unrivalled by the other vendors we looked at."

The ShoreTel Lowest TCO Guarantee Program uses independent third-party data to compare the actual costs a business incurs for its UC system over time. If the TCO analysis shows that ShoreTel's TCO is higher than a competitor's, ShoreTel will lower its price to beat the competition. Get details on the ShoreTel Lowest TCO Guarantee, including terms and conditions.

ShoreTel is renowned for its obsessive focus on customer satisfaction. ShoreTel recently won a total of seven 2009 MarketTools CustomerSat Achievement in Customer Excellence (ACE) Awards, and has been named Best Overall VoIP Provider for six years in a row by Nemertes Research, an independent research firm.

"Staying in touch with our 100,000+ members and key influencers is vital to the success of our initiatives. Not only is the ShoreTel system highly reliable, but because it's intuitive to learn and manage, we don't need to track down and hire highly qualified staff to run it like we would with other systems," said Chaim Yudkowsky, CIO of American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "Deployment costs were lower than competing products, licensing costs are less and we've been able to free up IT staff to work on other projects. Overall, ShoreTel's low TCO means we're saving money and operating more efficiently."

If you'd like to be a hero in your company by reducing costs with the latest UC solutions, sign up to learn more about the ShoreTel Lowest TCO Guarantee program and get your free 15-page TCO comparison report now.