ShoreTel-Sponsored Survey Reveals CIO and IT/Telecom Professionals Communications Wish List: Simplicity, Reduced Costs, and Easier Integration With Business Processes
SUNNYVALE, Calif., August 24, 2010 –ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), today announced the results of a survey of ShoreTel prospective customers that identifies the latest needs and priorities of CIOs and IT/Telecom Professionals when it comes to their communications system.
The findings from the survey of 475 participants clearly lay out many of the issues vendors must address if they are to satisfy customer communication needs, including simplicity, reliability, ease of use and management, reduced costs, and easier integration with business processes. The survey also reveals an interesting disparity: nearly 81 percent of respondents expressed a desire to simplify their communications system yet only 47 percent, less than half, have actual goals in place to help them achieve this.
In response to the question asking which system capabilities are most important to IT, 80 percent of respondents indicated ease of use for end users, 80 percent indicated reliability, and 76 percent indicated ease of management. The survey also revealed that the highest ranked causes of complexity are “Integrating communications system with business processes,” “integrating new equipment with legacy systems,” and “the number of remote/mobile workers.”
SUMMARY OF SURVEY DETAILS AND ADDITIONAL FINDINGS
- Most Important Capabilities for CIOs and IT/Telecom Professionals: The top three system qualities that are most important to CIOs and IT/Telecom professionals include ease-of-use for end users, reliability, ease of management.
- Most Important Capabilities for End Users: The top three system qualities that are most important to end users include ease of use, reliability, and audio/sound quality.
- Biggest Management Challenges: When asked to indicate the biggest obstacle in managing their telephony/communications systems, the majority of respondents claimed that the following issues were the most challenging: management time/complexity; costs for moves, adds, and changes; end-user complaints and difficulties; and inconsistent/incompatible systems.
- Frustration With Technology Providers: When asked to rate their frustration level with technology providers, specifically market leaders in the VoIP or unified communications category, 65 percent were frustrated by “many invisible costs after purchase,” 63 percent were frustrated by “systems that are hard and costly to manage,” and 57 percent were frustrated by “systems that are complex and hard to use and learn” and “support issues such as with remote users.”
- Size of Organization: Respondents represented organizations of all sizes, with 39 percent coming from companies with 0-49 employees, 39 percent coming from companies with 50-1000 employees, and 22 percent coming from companies with more than 1,000 employees.
SHORETEL QUOTE
Kevin Gavin, Vice President of Marketing, ShoreTel
“This survey of ShoreTel prospective customers is an industry bellwether for how vendors should approach solving their customers’ most pressing communications needs and issues. All too often, companies are forced to struggle with unnecessary complexity in their communications systems. This complexity increases costs and decreases performance. From the very beginning, our mission was to eliminate complexity with brilliantly simple solutions that help our customers improve business efficiency, reduce costs and increase productivity. Our consistently high marks for customer satisfaction indicate we continue to deliver on these promises.”
About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc., (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a leading provider of Pure IP unified communications solutions. ShoreTel enables companies of any size to seamlessly integrate all communications – voice, video, messaging and data – with their business processes. Independent of device or location, ShoreTel’s distributed software architecture eliminates the traditional costs, complexity and reliability issues typically associated with other solutions. ShoreTel continues to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction, ease of use and manageability while driving down the overall total cost of ownership. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices in Austin, Texas, the United Kingdom, Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com or call 1-800-425-9385.
https://www.shoretel.com/news/press-releases/shoretel-survey-shows-ease-use-management-simplicity-and-reliability-among-top
