Financial institutions of all types are under constant pressure to improve the efficiency of their operations, to bring down costs, and to provide the best in customer service. ShoreTel\'s all-in-one solution addresses these needs head-on, resulting in increased productivity and customer satisfaction
2. “Only a couple of our branches have a dedicated receptionist, so
our ability with ShoreTel to set up a branch operator workgroup
and leverage people across all our locations is a big benefit.”
— Sheila Genske, IT Trainer and Telecommunications Specialist
Community Bank & Trust
ShoreTel in financial services
• Scalability: The ShoreTel UC system scales seamlessly from 10 to tens of thousands of
users, so financial services organizations can easily grow and add more branches and
offices.
• Availability and reliability: The ShoreTel UC system offers more than 99.999 percent
availability—a mission-critical feature in a financial transaction environment. Business
continuity is ensured with a distributed software architecture incorporating a switch-
based hardware platform that helps eliminate any single point of failure.
• Ease of use and management: ShoreTel’s UC solutions are based on a distributed
architecture that is ideal for multisite financial branches because it appears and
functions as a single, unified system that is easy to manage and use through ShoreTel
Director, an intuitive, Web-based interface.
2 | BEATING COMPLEXITY: Financial Services
3. Overview
While cost-reduction remains a priority in the financial services industry, globalization,
convergence and consolidation are creating new market shifts, increasing the pressure
on financial organizations to stand out from the crowd. Increased competition from
innovative rivals, expectations of cutting-edge service from customers, and pressure to
increase shareholder value, mean financial organizations of all sizes now have to do more
than simply process transactions faster.
ShoreTel is a leading provider of brilliantly simple Unified Communications (UC) solutions
and is helping the financial services industry address these challenges through a powerful,
all-in-one solution that helps eliminate complexity and lower the total cost of ownership.
Customers today expect high levels of service that go far beyond the traditional visit to
the local bricks and mortar branch office. From the constantly connected road warrior who
needs mobile account access, to the consumer who needs a one-time service such as life
insurance, a UC system can help financial organizations improve customer service by:
• Making staff more accessible. Most regional financial organizations don’t staff each
location with every type of specialist. With ShoreTel’s UC system, customers can reach a
loan specialist or investment advisor and receive up-to-the-minute advice, regardless of
location.
• Enabling four-digit dialing to communicate as a single organization, even across
branches or offices. When callers are transferred, they feel like they are interacting with a
single organization. Four-digit dialing also boosts employee productivity by streamlining
inter-branch connectivity.
• Always answering. Some branches prefer to configure their communications to create
stand-alone branches, consistent with the way their business is organized. When a
customer calls a branch, it rings on all designated phones and the first available person
picks up the call.
• Offering new ways to communicate effectively with customers. ShoreTel Enterprise
Contact Center solutions enable financial services institutions of all sizes to centralize
customer inquiries at a call center, or easily establish a call center in a new location.
Financial institutions that rely on ShoreTel
• Retail banks
• Investment banks
• Credit unions
• Insurance firms
• Investment and brokerage firms
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4. The ShoreTel distributed architecture
ShoreTel Director
PSTN
/ITSP
HEADQUARTERS INTERNATIONAL
BRANCH
Headquarters Server
(System Adminstration, voicemail, ShoreTel
ShoreTel Communicator &
auto attendant, work groups)
Communicator & RoamAnywhere
[Physical or Virtual]
RoamAnywhere
Analog
Device ShoreTel
Voice Switches
ShoreTel
Contact Communicator Distributed Voice
Center
Server (voicemail
& auto attendant)
ShoreTel [Physical or Virtual]
ShoreTel Appliances
(Collaboration, Communicator
VPN Concentrator, Contact Center
& Mobility Router) ShoreTel
ShoreTel IP Phone
IP Phone
ShoreTel
Voice Switches
IP WAN
ShoreTel
Communicator &
ShoreTel RoamAnywhere
ShoreTel Voice Switch
Communicator & ShoreTel
RoamAnywhere Communicator
ShoreTel
Legacy VPN Phone
Voicemail
OFFICE
Legacy ANYWHERE
Phones
Legacy PBX
PSTN
/ ITSP
REGIONAL OFFICE
PSTN
SINGL E
E-IMAGE ARCHITECTUR
ShoreTel
Centralized communications pays huge dividends
• Intelligence is distributed across a single-image architecture so financial organizations
with multiple branches can consolidate on one, easy-to-manage system.
• Centralized inboxes for all electronic communications, including email, voicemail, video
and instant messaging let employees to manage communications efficiently from either
their desktops or telephones.
• Call answering and routing features, such as interactive voice response applications,
sophisticated queuing options and powerful messaging features, can be consolidated
across branches and offices to optimize responsiveness and employee productivity.
4 | BEATING COMPLEXITY: Financial Services
5. Keep your balance sheet in the green:
The ShoreTel UC system incorporates a strong set of operational efficiencies designed
to help financial organizations significantly lower operational costs. The first and most
apparent benefit to financial organizations is the elimination of toll costs. ShoreTel’s least-
cost routing capabilities reduce long distance toll charges by sending voice calls over the
existing data network, and you can share voice trunks between locations to reduce the
number of phone lines you’re leasing. These savings alone can quickly offset the cost of
ShoreTel’s UC solution, and then travel directly to the bottom line.
ShoreTel Converged Conferencing helps you save on costly teleconferencing services by
providing your employees with voice and Web conferencing through Microsoft Outlook.
This enables users to collaborate more readily, work from anywhere, reduce travel costs
and meet customer demands quickly.
In traditional telephony systems, the geographic dispersion of regional branches can
result in complex and costly basic administration. However, ShoreTel solutions cut
complexity by simplifying system management on one easy-to-use interface. Financial
organizations can readily bring management in-house and take control of personnel
moves, adds and changes, rather than pay a third party service provider.
.
Stay on the safe side with ShoreTel
Protecting customers’ personal financial information is critical in today’s global threat
environment. Just one single security breach can have catastrophic consequences. With
federal laws constantly pushing new privacy measures, your communications system must
be secure.
ShoreTel’s UC system provides the level of security financial organizations need to help
prevent eavesdropping and other data theft in sensitive environments. A high-performance
algorithm encrypts and deciphers the RTP media stream in real time, enabling secure
voice conversations to take place with no noticeable latency. Built-in features like SSL
communications, passwords, locked calls, and one-time access codes provide additional
security to help ensure confidential information is not obtained by unauthorized users, and
to help you ensure regulatory compliance.
In addition, the ability of ShoreTel’s UC system to track phone calls, export and distribute
original voicemail messages and keep a running history of calls into each number provides a
simple tool for helping you meet regulations specific to your organization.
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6. Take the credit for enhanced business performance
ShoreTel’s UC system is designed to easily integrate with legacy systems and enable a
phased rollout. This is an important benefit for financial organizations planning to adopt
a UC strategy across multiple branches, or organizations faced with moving offices.
Cutovers can be performed quickly and with minimal disruption, dramatically reducing
the risks typically associated with implementing a new UC system.
In addition, ShoreTel’s UC system is easy to integrate with tailored business
applications—both off-the-shelf and custom packages. By simply connecting ShoreTel to
a customer relationship management (CRM) database, caller information will immediately
populate the screen when a customer dials in, allowing employees to respond faster and
more effectively. Plus, innovative customer services can easily be added to the system,
such as enabling customers to access their account information directly. This level
of flexibility supports advanced technologies, so organizations can stay ahead in the
marketplace, and employees are more productive—right at the point of each call.
“The failover of ShoreTel’s UC system has already been a great
benefit. We encountered a unique situation when deploying
ShoreTel’s UC system—Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi and
Louisiana. Because of ShoreTel, it was easy to shift the phone service
to the other offices. Calls were automatically routed to other offices
and we could still service customers in Mississippi and Louisiana.”
— DONNA JONYNAS, Chief Information Officer
Safeway Insurance
Business continuity without breaking the bank
The ShoreTel UC system offers more than 99.999 percent availability—a mission-critical
feature in a financial transaction environment. The distributed software architecture
incorporates a switch-based hardware platform that helps eliminate any single point of
failure. ShoreTel Voice Switches are highly reliable, with no moving parts (except for a
fan), redundant Ethernet ports and a real-time operating system. In the event of a power
outage at one site, phones automatically failover to another voice switch, providing your
organization with complete redundancy. Also, call control is distributed, so redundancy
is delivered cost effectively with N+1 and additional redundancy can be configured by
simply adding voice switches.
6 | BEATING COMPLEXITY: Financial Services
7. “ShoreTel’s ease of use and advanced functionality means we are
saving an estimated 117 staff hours a month. That translates to more
time our staff can spend focusing on new initiatives and technology
related projects.”
— Tony Hildesheim, Vice President of IT
Washington State Employees Credit Union
Join the smart money
Financial organizations around the world rely on the power of ShoreTel UC solutions
as they expand service offerings and grow their customer base. ShoreTel is a leading
provider of UC solutions for financial organizations, with in-depth experience
addressing your distinct business and technology needs through:
• Application integration: ShoreTel offers comprehensive integration with enterprise
applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite and Salesforce.com, and can
be easily integrated with leading banking applications by providers such as Fiserv, Jack
Henry and Metavante.
• Professional Services: ShoreTel’s Professional Services team provides a full range of
services to help ensure organizations optimize the ShoreTel UC system.
• Commitment to customer satisfaction: ShoreTel leads the industry in customer service,
having been named Best Overall VoIP Provider by Nemertes Research for six years in
a row. Our focus on ensuring world-class customer satisfaction and knowledge of the
financial services industry also means that we are well-resourced to work with financial
institutions of all sizes.
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