The city of San Luis Obispo replaced its aging phone system with a ShoreTel IP phone system to improve communications for its 480 employees. The previous system was costly to maintain, complicated to use, and difficult to manage. The new ShoreTel system provides exceptional reliability, easy administration and configuration, and a rapid return on investment of only three years. It has improved productivity and customer service for city employees and departments.

1. Government Success Story
San Luis Obispo accomplishes a
mission in savings with ShoreTel
Challenge:
• San Luis Obispo’s 10 year-old
Centrex system was costly to
maintain, complicated to use, and
difficult to manage. The progressive
city needed an agile phone system
that met the needs of 480 city
employees in diverse departments—
from public safety to planning—and
kept cost of ownership low.
Solution:
• A ShoreTel®
IP Phone System with
ShoreGear®
Voice Switches and
more than 400 ShorePhone®
IP
telephones in 32 city offices, fire
stations and parks.
Benefits:
• Rapid return on investment due to
ShoreTel’s simplicity and ease of
management that reduces effort, and
lets San Luis Obispo’s phone system
be managed by internal IT staff.
• San Luis Obispo can add and move
extensions quickly and easily,
saving valuable time and increasing
city responsiveness to the needs of
end users.
• ShoreTel’s distributed architecture
delivers exceptional reliability to
help ensure every call is answered
promptly and by the right person.
• ShoreTel’s highly configurable call
routing and handling eliminates
phone tag, while pre-screening
feature ensures better service for
callers.
Among California’s oldest and most
influential communities, San Luis Obispo
is proud of its two centuries of history, and
continues to welcome visitors, students
and new residents eager to explore the
recreational, educational and cultural
opportunities in California’s Central Coast
hub. To support the superb quality of life
in this scenic area, the city takes forward-
looking strategy to providing modern
services. These services are delivered on a
modern technology infrastructure, which
boasts a fiber optic network, installed
jointly in an innovative partnership with Cal
Poly. As part of that progressive strategy,
San Luis Obispo city government relies on
a ShoreTel IP phone system to keep city
communications flowing smoothly.
Prior to the ShoreTel deployment, city
management was becoming increasingly
frustrated with the city’s 10-year old
Centrex/ISDN system. The system was
complex to manage and use, required
equipment that was difficult to repair or
replace, and often dropped calls while
transferring them. All in all, the system
was reaching its end of life and not
supporting latest initiatives for improving
customer service, streamlining internal
communications, increasing operational
efficiency and reducing costs. Clearly San
Luis Obispo needed a phone system that
matched the city’s forward-looking agenda.
A mission to improve
communications
Gartner conducted a study of
communications in the city, and concluded
that a voice over IP phone system would
be the best way to improve customer
service, streamline efficiency across the city,
and reduce costs.
“We needed a new system that could be
configured for our established business
processes and work flows,” explained
Steve Schmidt, San Luis Obispo’s
Information Technology Manager. “To
change our processes and workflows
simply to fit in with how a new phone
system worked would be too costly and
time consuming—we had to make the
San Luis Obispo (www.slocity.org) is home to one of California’s historic
missions and Cal Poly State University. While the Central California Coast city
of 45,000 actively invests in historic preservation, San Luis Obispo is just as
actively building a 21st century municipal infrastructure.

2. ShoreTel and the City of San Luis Obispo PAGE 2
transition as easy and transparent to
callers as possible.” The new system also
had to let San Luis Obispo keep the same
phone numbers and easily interoperate
with the city’s Extreme network.
San Luis Obispo evaluated systems
from a long list of both traditional and
IP PBX suppliers, and reduced the
list to ShoreTel and Mitel. The city’s
network vendor, Extreme, is a ShoreTel
partner and had already successfully
implemented a networking solution.
“ShoreTel’s interoperability with Extreme
was a huge advantage because we could
be confident that both solutions worked
well together,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We
also liked the fact that ShoreTel switches
are solid state with no moving parts other
then the fan, which makes the system
highly reliable,” he continued.
After talking with several customer
references and attending a demonstration,
Mr. Schmidt recommended ShoreTel to
city management, and the decision was
finalized. “It was easy to see that the
ShoreTel Unified Communications (UC)
system was simple to support and had a
low cost of ownership,” he added. “The
system met all our requirements and the
price was very competitive. The bottom
line was that ShoreTel offered the most
value for the money.”
To ensure the city could keep all phone
numbers, city offices had to cut over to
the new system at the same time. The
installation went very smoothly,” Mr.
Schmidt reported. “We carried out the
cutover on a Friday and on Monday we were
doing business. The change was completely
transparent to both callers and staff.”
Brilliant simplicity boosts
city productivity
ShoreTel’s ease of administration has
helped San Luis Obispo’s IT staff be more
productive. Not only can the system be
managed by the small IT group without
drawing on external resources, but it also
reduced the overall maintenance burden
and opened up time for advancing
strategic IT initiatives.
“We used to spend five or six hours a
week maintaining the old phone system,”
Mr. Schmidt explained. “So when we
discovered that ShoreTel maintenance
took less than 15 minutes, we were
astonished. In the past we had to place a
service call just to add a new extension,
and end users had to wait several
days. Now we can make these changes
ourselves with a standard Web browser—
any time and from any location.”
From flexible voicemail options to
integration with Microsoft Outlook
calendar, ShoreWare®
Call Manager
helps city staff work more efficiently and
effectively.
Police stay mobile and connected
Unified messaging provides one of
the system’s most valuable benefits,
especially for San Luis Obispo’s police
officers. With ShoreTel, officers now have
individual voicemail boxes and can pick
up messages from any phone as well
as through e-mail. And ShoreTel’s Find
Me feature lets callers reach officers
simply by calling the main number,
eliminating the need to give out DID and
cell phone numbers. ‘They can stay in
communication regardless of location,
and no longer have to take time from
other responsibilities to check messages,”
explained Mr. Schmidt. “And they can
return important calls immediately
without revealing their cell phone or
direct numbers.”
ShoreTel also helps city employees reach
the people they need, when they need
them, reducing the amount of time
wasted in telephone tag. “Conference
calls are very simple to set up on the fly
and ShoreTel’s presence feature also
makes it easy and fast to see if people are
available,” Mr. Schmidt said. “With the old
system, receptionists had to look at a 50
button console to determine if someone
being called was on the phone. Now,
they can easily see if people are available,
on the phone, out of the office or in a
meeting. Not only can they direct callers
appropriately, customer service is better
because we can get answers faster.”
Customer service also gains from ShoreTel’s
workgroups and sophisticated rules-based
call routing; ensuring that every call is not
only answered, but handled properly as
“The system met all our
requirements and the
price was very competitive.
The bottom line was that
ShoreTel offered the most
value for the money.”
Steve Schmidt
Information Technology Manager
San Luis Obispo

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its award-winning IP business phone system. We offer organizations of all sizes integrated,
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helps significantly reduce the complexity and costs typically associated with other solutions.
The feature-rich ShoreTel UC system offers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and the
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worldwide. For more information, visit shoretel.com.
well. San Luis Obispo created 26 separate
ShoreTel workgroups—one for each of the
city’s main telephone lines, such as utility
billing, garbage collection, and building
permits. Not only does this let supervisors
manage queues for optimal service;
workgroup reporting gives them insight for
better planning and staffing.
Built-in reliability keeps
calls connected
Phone system downtime is no longer a
worry for Mr. Schmidt and his team, thanks
to ShoreTel’s distributed architecture
and flexible configuration options. Using
reports supplied by ShoreWare®
Director,
the IT team were able to pinpoint the T1
capacity needed to build redundancy into
the network. With the optimal capacity
in place, the ShoreTel system handles
outages and switchovers automatically,
without missing a beat. “We configured
our T1 lines using ShoreTel’s hunt groups,
which automatically routes calls to another
TI line in case of a problem,” Mr. Schmidt
explained. “If a T1 line goes down, users
never notice. They can still make and
receive calls.”
Routine changes such as adding and
moving extensions have also disappeared
from Mr. Schmidt’s list of daily challenges.
“We always have a lot of people moving
around as a result of department re-
organizations,” he explained. “In the
past, we had to issue a service order to
the carrier to make changes, and moves
seldom went smoothly. With ShoreTel,
moves haven’t caused a single phone
problem. When you move the network,
the phone simply goes with it. People can
easily re-assign their phone numbers to
a new location with ShoreTel and it’s very
easy to add people to a work group.”
Accelerated ROI paves the way
for expanded deployment
Even in the best economic times,
municipal budgets are always under a
microscope. So it was welcome news
to Mr. Schmidt and his team that San
Luis Obispo’s ShoreTel system delivered
even better return on investment than
expected. “When we first proposed the
ShoreTel system, we projected about a
four-year ROI,” reported Mr. Schmidt.
“However, we’re saving so much on our
phone bill, the ROI is even better than
we anticipated—current figures indicate
about three years.”
Feeling confident about the reliability
and scalability of the initial ShoreTel
implementation, the city is on track to
deploy the system in its new dispatch
center. Mr. Schmidt anticipates that this
ShoreTel deployment will be as smooth
and trouble-free as the initial one.
“ShoreTel’s reliability and flexibility means
that communication just happens – when,
where and how it needs to. Thanks to
ShoreTel, every part of city government
can focus on serving the public and take
the phone system for granted.”
“We’re saving so much on our
phone bill, the ROI is even
better than we anticipated—
current figures indicate about
three years.”
Steve Schmidt
Information Technology Manager
San Luis Obispo