City of North Las Vegas

Located in Clark County, Nevada, North Las Vegas is characterized by its friendly atmosphere, development opportunities, civic pride, and responsive government. This 78.25 square-mile city is surrounded by majestic mountains and desert valleys, and is energized by an underlying current of dynamic growth. Because it is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, the responsibilities of the city’s personnel are constantly changing and new employees are being hired all the time. A high-performing, flexible communications system is key to keeping up with this growth and change.

In late 2004, the city of North Las Vegas was faced with a leased Nortel telephone system and a lease that was about to expire in the next year. The city’s service provider maintained the equipment, but the service was unsatisfactory, unreliable, and costly. The inability to manage the system in-house was a detriment to the city’s workflow and budget, so the network operations team started looking at alternative solutions. The city realized it was time to capitalize on the ongoing toll charge and T1 lease savings associated with VoIP. Priority was placed on cost, ease of maintenance, and the ability to manage the system from within rather than having to rely on an outside service provider to handle upgrades and support moves, adds, and changes.  

As part of the tech team’s review of competing systems, the ShoreTel system was installed for a day. The intuitive features of ShoreTel Call Manager received high praise from employees, and upon review of the costs and manageability of the solution, the end-users got what they wanted. The installation of the first three sites — many more of which will follow — was completed in phases over five months in order to avoid downtime, and was deemed to be a hands-down success. The city was able to put all the pieces in place so that the go-live for 270 users went through without a hitch. Other benefits include:

• ShoreTel Director streamlines system management tasks into a single Web browser, so IT staff can make adds, moves, and changes from anywhere with the click of a button.
• The ShoreTel system not only costs less overall, but saves additional money almost daily due to the system’s ease of implementation, management, and use. 
• Enhanced productivity with a built-in suite of versatile, real-time tools that put flexible features, telephony and IM control, and collaboration services at city employees’ fingertips.
• Workgroups’ powerful features enable city resources to be directed where they are most needed. Voice call routing consolidates calls to one number, while basic reporting features help with planning and forecasting.