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ShoreTel has announced that an increasing number of organizations in the automobile industry are turning to ShoreTel (News - Alert) for transformative IP-based communications solutions.

The key drivers behind this increase in adoption are said to be flexibility and ease of integration with automotive business processes.

The ShoreTel UC solution has been designed and built for the IP age. Company officials said that the solution is easy to deploy, use and administer, making it an ideal choice for companies such as the 2,000 U.S. businesses in the automotive industry with over 50 employees, who need a simple way to connect with customers and reduce the IT resources dedicated to managing a complex system.

Plus, the ShoreTel solution is based on an open architecture, enabling automotive dealers to implement third-party solutions. Company officials said that this provides “greater capabilities” for system administrators and users that ultimately deliver extended value to their constituencies.

With the help of ShoreTel open APIs, ShoreTel Innovation Network validated member bridgeSpeak offers tools that allow auto dealers to connect their telecommunications tools with their databases for the data management systems (DMS); customer relationship management (CRM); and business development center (BDC).

Company officials said that this unlocks many new possibilities for how dealers can conduct their business more profitably, and also eliminates complexity caused by disparate, disconnected information systems.

Mark Murawski, manager of implementation and support at bridgeSpeak, noted that customer service is a key differentiator in the automotive industry, and companies rely on the latest communications technology to optimize the customer experience.

“ShoreTel's ease of deployment and use, along with its ability to easily integrate with our software solutions, lets automotive companies add the capabilities they need while reducing costs and closing more deals,” Murawski said.

Judy Serra, controller for Toyota’s headquarters in Miami, Florida, said that ShoreTel was the only system out of five different manufacturers that worked perfectly during the initial demo.

“Seven months and two installations later I can’t say enough good things about the ShoreTel system and its integration with bridgeSpeak for screen pops and OAISYS (News - Alert) for call recording,” Serra said.

Greg Bennett, IT director for Downtown L.A. Motors, said that with ShoreTel, they were immediately able to save thousands of dollars a month by eliminating PBX (News - Alert) programming costs and handling adds/moves/changes on their own.

“In the automotive industry there are always many changes going on including staffing, locations, and office arrangements, and ShoreTel makes it easier for us to take care of these changes quickly and with minimal impact to our users,” Bennett said.

ShoreTel is a provider of simple unified communication (UC) solutions based on its award-winning IP business phone system.

Earlier this year in March, ShoreTel and Polycom announced an expansion of their technology partnership to further the shared mission of delivering business communications systems based on open standards.