Shoretel takes channel from SME to enterprise

Unified communications specilaist Shoretel has launched a new product set aimed at giving its channel partners the opportunity to sell a single telephony solution scaling from 5 to 5000 users.

“The advantage of our SBE 100 product for the channel is that it enables them to be competitive selling to SMEs as well as to large enterprise,” said Shoretel managing director, Jamie Romanin, in an interview.

This differs from past experience for the channel where channel partners had to learn, train and certify three different solutions for three different market levels, he said.

The difference in the product set aimed at SME is in the licensing restrictions and the software bundled with the product. “It’s effectively an off-the-shelf telephony solution in a box aimed at SME,” Romanin said.

Nexus Risk Solutions, a Perth-based insurance broker with 60 employees and five offices across WA, recently worked with channel partner Comms Plus to install the Shoretel SBE 100 into its offices.

Chief information officer David Baines told CRN the company was struggling with an old fashioned solution. “We had disparate voice solutions because of the way the company had grown,” he said. “And those voice solutions tended to be old, too.”

Baines said he went to market and looked at a number of phone vendors, but none could really do what he wanted, which was to knit the company’s five offices into a single entity. “The other vendors we looked at tended to be in a bit of a timewarp.”

Working with the channel partner, Baines deployed the solution relatively quickly, but he conceded many of the functions available on the Shoretel solution haven’t been used by the company – yet. “We’re relatively conservative, a bit like a bank in that way,” he said.

One function which has won favour is the ability to have a single number which then diverts to mobile. Using this, the company doesn’t have to give out broker’s mobile numbers, and a single number can serve as a front door to the company. And, as Baines said, there’s an ancillary benefit.

“When a broker leaves, their customers are still coming to us through the single number, and so we’re able to retain customers.”

The most popular features, however, are the unified communications aspects of the system. “Click to talk,” said Baines. “If I could name any single feature, that’s the one that has made a real difference to us.”