First Guarantee Mortgage

With six offices total, First Guarantee Mortgage is a multi-state mortgage brokerage based in Saratoga Springs, NY. As it is in many professional services, market success in real estate is dependent upon the quality and stability of communications infrastructures. Mortgage companies in particular, however, need to have systems in place that can route a high volume of calls to loan officers while moving data traffic at a rapid clip.

“Instead of reduced administration, we were spending more time managing our phone system.”
- Erik Mash, Vice President of Information Technology, First Guarantee Mortgage.

First Guarantee Mortgage had fairly recently implemented an IP-based system in hopes of cutting costs and taking advantages of sophisticated features. The deployment of the system, however, quickly went south when it proved to be unreliable and its voice quality poor. Just months later, the mortgage broker looked to cut its losses and find a new system. For the replacement system, the company sought a combination of performance, reliability, scalability, and a reasonable price, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of the fiber network that was already connecting its six sites.

“The morale of my crew was actually shot."
- Erik Mash, Vice President of Information Technology, First Guarantee Mortgage.

ShoreTel’s promise of redundancy, scalability, and price-competitiveness proved to be just what First Guarantee needed.  In the spring of 2005, the firm deployed a ShoreTel IP phone system that included 500 IP phones, six ShoreTel 120 switches, eight Shore Tel T1 switches, and a voicemail server. With a staff of six dedicated to the roll out, the entire phone system was up in less than 24 business hours with no major disruption to business. The positive results were immediate. Voice quality, reliability, and scalability gave the ShoreTel system the necessary power and stability to handle the company’s high call volume without missing a beat. Other benefits include:

• The system’s redundancy was tested early, when First Guarantee Mortgage lost a fiber link shortly after implementation. The PBX functioned as two different phone systems for an hour, but the phone system worked flawlessly.
• The distributed, unified solution has all of the company’s 400+ employees on one phone and one voicemail system across all locations.
• ShoreTel Director’s Web-based management interface allows administrators to access the entire system from anywhere, making moves, adds, and changes remotely.
• Tight integration with Microsoft^® Outlook^® saves time. The dial-by-name feature eliminates the need to manage multiple directories, which had been necessary with the original NEC/Nitsuko system.
• ShoreTel Core Software includes a powerful voice messaging system, including user-configurable call handling options and find-me routing. The voice messaging system can be accessed visually from ShoreTel Call Manager or the user’s Outlook inbox.

“The ease of deployment was incredible. ShoreTel worked right out of the box. We had the entire phone system up in less than 24 business hours with no major disruption to business.”
- Erik Mash, Vice President of Information Technology, First Guarantee Mortgage.