McKenzie Sports

McKenzie Sports, which manages two businesses for hunting enthusiasts, lives and dies by the phone. About 95 percent of the McKenzie Sports’ sales are phone orders, which can reach 30,000 per month during peak months. The rest come via Internet and fax. Excellent customer support and reliable phone service are essential for the North Carolina-based sporting goods supplier to hit its sales targets. 

“We had outgrown our switching infrastructure and knew an upgrade was just over the horizon.”
- Barry McKenzie, Director of IT, McKenzie Sports.

In 2001, McKenzie Sports was poised to grow through acquisition. With a Nortel Networks Norstar-Plus Modular ICS system already at capacity, the company needed a reliable solution to accommodate future expansion and remote locations. Adding six employees at the Fremont, NE, distribution center by piggybacking voice traffic on the data link had maxed out the existing system. Voice traffic came out of the Nortel PBX on a digital extension, and then the digital signal was converted to analog, which then ran between the routers at each site via a T-1 link. In Fremont, the analog signal was converted back to digital and entered the Nortel key system as a digital extension. The set-up was inefficient, to say the least.

“We had a dedicated T-1 between the two locations for data, and part of it was partitioned off and dedicated to the voice signals between locations. Part of our site-to-site bandwidth was dedicated to those two voice lines, and we couldn’t use that bandwidth for anything else.”
- Barry McKenzie, Director of IT, McKenzie Sports.

The ShoreTel deployment included several ShoreTel 24s and one ShoreTel T1 Voice Switch for its 100 employees at headquarters in North Carolina. Satellite offices — including those in Wisconsin and Nevada — are also each equipped with a ShoreTel 24 Voice Switch. Along with 75 ShoreTel analog phones, the hardware includes analog phones purchased off-the-shelf from local retailers. As the flexible system supports both IP and analog, in the event of WAN outage, the analog side of the ShoreTel system kicks in, allowing for the continued taking of orders. Other benefits include:

• Significant cost savings overall. Up to $18,000 in bandwidth costs, $5,000 to $10,000 per year in administration, and $5,000 in replacement equipment.
• Improved customer service, thanks to presence and rich media features that let employees see who is available and choose how best to reach them. 
• IT staff are freed up to pursue critical tasks, as all system maintenance is managed from ShoreTel Director’s browser-based interface. Setting up new offices now takes minutes.
• Reduction of toll charges now that calls are routed through voice switches at McKenzie’s headquarters, including long-distance and calls to the company’s 800 number.

“People took to ShoreTel Call Manager like ducks to water. I shudder to think of the screeching that would commence if we had to do away with it.”
- Barry McKenzie, Director of IT, McKenzie Sports.