Cooma-Monaro Shire Council

The Cooma-Monaro Shire Council meets the local government needs of more than 10,000 people living across 5,421 km² of Australia’s rugged Snowy Mountains region in southern New South Wales. In this uncompromising and often remote environment, survival can depend on the council’s ability to respond quickly to calls and deliver promptly on its service promise. Recently, the council launched a plan to raise service levels to those of larger councils and businesses. 

“We are a relatively small council but our responsibilities cover an area of Australia unique to the rest of the country.”
—  Scott Goudie, Manager for Information Technology & Telecommunications, Cooma-Monaro Shire Council.

The Council’s nine-year-old Ericsson ISDN phone system was proving a major barrier to raising communication standards. Council staff could not share text messages and calendar information via the phone system, and time was being lost to rounds of phone tag with constituents and suppliers. The system was expensive; beyond service contracts for adds, moves, and changes, many in-house calls to offices just three kilometers away were being billed at a full rate set by a carrier. Monthly line charges, in-bound mobile costs, and texting charges only added to this burden. Any population growth in the area stood to increase these costs.

“Council management was concerned that monthly telephony bills were excessive, and demanding greater control and more transparency on telephony costs.”
— Scott Goudie, Manager for Information Technology & Telecommunications, Cooma-Monaro Shire Council.

After comparing competing systems and calculating value projections on a ShoreTel unified communications (UC) system based on a conservative 15 years of use, the council made its decision. In less than a week, a ShoreTel system was in place that consisted of ShoreTel Director and ShoreTel Call Manager, plus ShoreTel 50, 90, and 120 Voice Switches, 85 easy-to-use ShoreTel 230 IP Phones, and an IP8000 conference phone. The deployment was rolled out on an existing data network running over the fiber optic network connection between the council’s administration center and satellite locations. These locations included a works depot, a library, and a visitor center that receives 3,000 calls per month during the winter season. Benefits include:

• Projected ROI of less than four years on a planned 15-year life for the ShoreTel UC system.
• Call control features of ShoreTel Call Manager help improve productivity and enhance customer service.
• Seamless integration with Microsoft^® Outlook^® helps council staff stay connected whether they are working from their desktops or in the field.
• Expensive third-party service calls are eliminated as ShoreTel Director permits moves, adds, and changes to be completed from anywhere on the network.
• Savings of $1,600 per month — previously paid to a carrier — as the high-performance ShoreTel UC system runs on the council’s existing voice and data network.
• ShoreTel Voice Switches meet the council’s high priority mandate for environmental responsibility by using 50 percent less power than switches in competitive UC systems.

“With its built-in smarts and flexibility, we are confident we have the core resources in place to meet these longer term needs.”
—  Scott Goudie, Manager for Information Technology & Telecommunications, Cooma-Monaro Shire Council.