City of Sioux Falls

The City of Sioux Falls, SD, was “born” when land speculators arrived to claim a townsite in the fall of 1856. Those claiming the site left for the winter and returned in the spring of 1857 to establish a more permanent, year-round settlement. The city, which is the largest in the state, is a regional trade, distribution, and healthcare center.

“In 2005 alone, we handled over a million calls — including internal calls and outside calls.”
- Deb Christofferson, Telecommunications Specialist, City of Sioux Falls.

In 2003, Sioux Falls had a Fujitsu 9600 PBX phone system it had outgrown. It offered limited functionality and was costly to upgrade. And with this old system, when a city employee dialed 911, there was no way to know where the call was coming from. The city decided it was time to evaluate a replacement and began looking at VoIP solutions from various providers, including Cisco, InterTel, Nortel, and ShoreTel. In addition to finding a system that would fit the budget, the city’s top priorities included ease of deployment, ease of use, and enhanced functionality.  

“We wanted to go with a system that wasn’t limited by copper on our campus. We also wanted a system that would provide integrated and centralized voicemail so that everyone in every office would be on the same system.”
- Ed Castle, IT Manager, City of Sioux Falls.

Impressed with ShoreTel, the city initiated a pilot project with 20 phones in its IT division and 20 phones at remote sites. The choice became clear when the IT team saw the system’s capabilities. Over the course of two years, ShoreTel provided Sioux Falls with a comprehensive IP-based unified communications system. Across its 10 Sioux Falls sites, which include buildings that house libraries, city hall, and other departments, the city deployed ShoreTel 120 and 40 Voice Switches, two ShoreTel T1 Voice Switches for redundancy, and a range of ShoreTel IP Phones to suit different end-user needs. Other benefits include:

• With the ShoreTel system, if a city staff member dials 911, crucial information is passed on to the emergency center, down to the floor, department, and actual phone.
• The city integrated its Tapit EX Call Accounting Software into the system, to enable billing of individual departments for toll charges.
• The city realized estimated savings of at least $50,000 the first year, thanks to T1 charge savings and the elimination of Centrex numbers.
• Ongoing savings are estimated at about $30,000 per year in line charges. In addition, ShoreTel Director enables browser-based management of the system, reducing maintenance costs. 

“The bottom line is that with ShoreTel, we can do a lot more with the existing IT team. We’re able to handle everything in-house and we don’t have to wait for anybody to make changes for us. We can just take care of things and move on to other projects. ShoreTel has made all of us more efficient, which is essential when an organization like ours needs to maximize time and budget.”
- Ed Castle, IT Manager, City of Sioux Falls.