ShoreTel Inks Carolina Panthers, Portland Trail Blazers Deal

ShoreTel has announced two new sports team customers – the Carolina Panthers and the Portland Trail Blazers.

The Panthers decided to replace their 20-year-old communications system as part of the Bank of America stadium renovation and evaluated several providers. The team selected a ShoreTel solution for its ability to support both analog and VoIP telephones, ease of IT management, and the ability to reduce overall costs.

The Panthers purchased a ShoreTel onsite solution with Conferencing, Workgroups and Mobility. ShoreTel is being used throughout the stadium with more than 1,000 stations, as well as 35 Workgroup members in the group sales and ticket offices.

“We’re very happy with our decision to implement ShoreTel – it’s extremely easy to manage the system, requiring minimal time and minimal training,” said James Hammond, director of IT at the Panthers. “Our overall cost of operations has been reduced with ShoreTel as well, enabling us to use the extra funds for other projects. And users love the voice quality and Outlook integration to name just two features.”

The Portland Trail Blazers looked to ShoreTel to replace an aging telephony system that did not integrate with its contact center solution. With a small IT staff, the team needed an all-in-one, easy to manage telephony and contact center solution that integrated with its Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. ShoreTel met all of these needs along with providing conferencing, web collaboration, mobility and E911 capabilities. The ShoreTel system is up and running in three locations (Moda Center, Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, and the training facility) serving 450 users.

“ShoreTel provides everything I need in one integrated solution,” said Lou Pallotta, telecommunications manager for the Portland Trail Blazers. “I’ve worked on many systems in my 30-year career, and ShoreTel is the easiest to set-up and maintain. Also importantly, our employees love it – they especially like the ease of web sharing, which sales people have been using in place of traveling to some client sites.”

“ShoreTel has been very successful with the professional sports segment because these customers all require the same key things: lowest total cost of operations, easy for IT to manage and staff to use, a robust architecture to handle multiple locations, and a mobility solution for dispersed scouts and personnel,” said Mike Healy, senior vice president and CFO at ShoreTel. “Together with our hard-working channel partners, we’re committed to providing businesses of all types and sizes with reliable, flexible solutions delivered onsite, in the cloud or a combination of the two.”

The Panthers are the third professional football team to select ShoreTel, joining the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Rams. The Trail Blazers are the latest professional basketball team to use ShoreTel, joining the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns and the Washington Wizards. ShoreTel sports customers also include six professional baseball teams and four professional hockey teams.


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