Inflow Communications Deploys a ShoreTel® VOIP phone system for Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort

Inflow Communications Deploys a ShoreTel® VOIP phone system for Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort

Inflow Communications worked with Mt. Hood Meadows to deploy a ShoreTel® Unified Communications system.

The problems that had to be solved:

  1. Mt. Hood Meadows had an antiquated Toshiba® business phone system that was years beyond its useful life
  2. Cost savings was very important (when is it not?)
  3. They needed a better way to intelligently route calls from their guests to the appropriate department and employee.  Previously, guests might get transferred into a big black hole.  Guests don’t like this and it’s not conducive for business.
  1. If a guest is transferred to another department, there was no way to “see” if there were employees to take that call.
  2. Their Portland, Oregon-based sales office needed to be integrated to the main phone system on the mountain.  Previously, if a guest called the sales office and needed to speak with somebody on the mountain, they had to hang up and dial another number.
  3. Employees are mobile on the mountain, and they needed an easy way for the phone system to integrate with their mobile devices.
  4. The old Toshiba system was cumbersome to administer and not flexible.
  5. Due to Mt. Hood Meadow’s location, they could not get 20th century dial tone services like PRI, Direct Numbers, and Caller ID.
  6. The current voicemail system was failing.

Inflow’s Solution (3 years ago)

Inflow deployed a ShoreTel® Unified Communications System at the sales office and integrated it to the legacy Toshiba® phone system with a PRI connection on the mountain.  This provided station-to-station dialing, across an Internet VPN connection, between the Toshiba and ShoreTel systems and locations.

Based on budget, Inflow replaced old Toshiba phones with ShoreTel® VoIP phones on the mountain

Inflow Deployed a ShoreTel® Unified Communications server to provide Unified Comm tools for the legacy Toshiba® users and to replace the failing voicemail system.  Essentially, the ShoreTel® voicemail system become voicemail for all users (regardless of the system they were one).  This gave the Toshiba® users features like find-me / follow-me, voicemail-to-email, etc.

Fast Forward to last spring:

The Mt. Hood Meadows IT staff finished replacing the Toshiba® system with ShoreTel® VoIP on the mountain.  All users got ShoreTel® IP phones and ShoreTel®’s desktop VoIP / productivity tool, Call Communicator (Unified Messaging, Presence Management, Call Control, etc)

They installed a standard Internet T1 connection through the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC), and deployed Broadvox SIP trunks across it.  This was a perfect solution for Meadows.  This gave them Caller ID and Direct Inward Dial numbers.  More importantly, due to the nature of SIP trunks, the customer can “trunk up” or add SIP trunks in the busy season, and reduce their trunks (and cost) during the spring and summer.  Additionally, they get unlimited long distance into Canada and the US (which is nice since almost every calling destination is long distance from Mt. Hood).

The result – a happy customer for Inflow Communications and happy guests for Mt. Hood Meadows.