DOWNLITE

DOWNLITE, headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, is America’s premier manufacturer of down and feather bedding. A descendant of a 100-year-old feather processing company, today DOWNLITE is recognized as the leader in quality and service. The company’s cutting-edge development and innovative products are redefining the bedding industry. In early 2006, DOWNLITE began expanding from two facilities to six: four in Cincinnati, one in Indiana, and one in New York.

“We were looking for better 911 capabilities. The old system would flash 911 and give the extension number but not the location of the extension, which is a critical piece of information in an emergency situation."
— Matt Fleming, Network Manager, DOWNLITE.

With an older NEC PBX-based telephone system, the organization was faced with performance problems that were costing both time and money to fix. Worse still, replacement parts for the antiquated system were not always available. Along with the need to upgrade to a phone system that would cost-effectively connect all of its sites and support future growth, the team sought a system that had the ability to alert designated employees when a 911 call was dialed.

“The Enhanced 911 (E911) capabilities on the Cisco side required an additional applications server and additional software in the range of $20,000, and it required a lot of complicated licensing.”
— Matt Fleming, Network Manager, DOWNLITE.

After narrowing the search to two vendors, DOWNLITE chose ShoreTel for its ease of management, reliability, and scalability, as well as its key safety features. With the help of its integration partner, ShoreTel provided DOWNLITE with nine ShoreTel Voice Switches and over 200 ShoreTel IP Phones. Deciding to update their infrastructure along with the VoIP deployment, the DOWNLITE team worked with ShoreTel partner, Foundry, to install new networking equipment. Working together, ShoreTel, Foundry, and DOWNLITE's integration partners got the new network and IP telephony system up and running quickly and at an unbeatable price. Other benefits include:

• Increased employee efficiency with click-to-dial feature, and easy management of both voicemail and email from within Microsoft^® Outlook^®.
• Higher levels of customer service as the caller’s experience within the system accompanies each in-bound call. Operators can deliver more personalized attention and connect callers to the right agent.
• Immediate cost savings as the ShoreTel system did not require an upgrade of existing T1 lines, which would have been the case had the old system remained in place.
• The system, which looks and behaves like a single, unified platform, can keep pace with company expansion plans. It scales with plug-and-play simplicity, lowering costs and enabling employees to communicate quickly and easily with each other regardless of their location.

“ShoreTel met all of our requirements. It’s reliable, easy to use, and it offers us the critical E911 internal notification capabilities we wanted. We’re happy with ShoreTel and we’re happy with support from our integration partner.”
— Matt Fleming, Network Manager, DOWNLITE.