Dennison Technology Group Inc. Voted #1 in customer satisfaction!

Dennison Technology Group Ideacom Mid-America’s

2009-11-24T05:30:00.000-08:00

Dennison Technology Group Inc., which helps design call systems for mid-sized firms, bought the business division of a fellow Twin Cities telecom firm, allowing it to expand its presence in the health care market.

Minnetonka-based Dennison isn’t disclosing terms of its deal to buy an Ideacom Mid-America’s ShoreTel services business, which re-sells communication systems made by ShoreTel Inc., a public company based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Dennison has focused strictly on re-selling ShoreTel systems for about five years, making the acquisition a good fit, said Dennison CEO Troy Brevig. The Ideacom Mid-America unit has a strong presence in the health care market, giving Dennison access to new customers.

Dennison, which has about 20 employees, targets businesses with between 100 and 1,000 phone users. It integrates voice-over Internet protocol systems (VoIP), which send call data over the Internet rather than through traditional phone lines. Such systems have grown increasingly popular with business users in recent years, which has helped fuel Dennison’s growth; the company’s revenue is up 71 percent compared to the 2004, Brevig said. He declined to reveal sales figures.

Business has slowed with the recession, though Dennison officials expect to continue to see at least sum uptick in revenue for 2009. However, the ongoing economic downturn has made conditions for making acquisitions strong, Brevig said. “There’s no better time to be doing it. There’s a lot of movement in our industry, with vendors picking up different products and discontinuing others.”

Dennison Technology Group Inc.

City: Minnetonka
CEO: Troy Brevig
Business: Telecom
Employees: About 20
Web: dtg-mn.com

ShoreTel Named "Best Overall VOIP Provider" for Fifth Year in a Row

2008-10-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

ShoreTel, Inc., (NASDAQ: SHOR), a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications (UC) solutions, today announced that for the fifth year in a row ShoreTel has been named the Best Overall VOIP Provider in the Nemertes PilotHouse Awards for Unified Communications & Collaboration. The awards rated 24 VOIP vendors based entirely on the views and experiences of 426 customers.

ShoreTel won the Best Overall VOIP Provider award based on earning the highest average rating (4.22 out of 5) across all categories. ShoreTel was tops in:

Technology - covering underlying software, platforms, intelligence and standards compliance
Product Features - focusing on handset and switch capabilities. Customers like the architecture, built-in redundancy and ability to scale by stacking additional switches
Customer Service - focusing on response time, account service, RFP process, and warranty issues. Customers like that ShoreTel listens well to suggestions for upgrades and improvements
Value - focusing on "bang for the buck" - customers feel they received value for their expenditure. Customers like that the capital, implementation and operational costs are lower than competitors and that ShoreTel includes its Personal Call Manager desktop client with every license
Solution Experience - focusing on the ability to understand business requirements and craft solutions that meet customer needs
Ease of Installation and Troubleshooting
UC Vision - indicating the best plan and outlook for moving customers from VOIP to a full UC deployment
ShoreTel was also one of the top three rated vendors for integration capabilities, which tracks how well products integrate with third-party products and applications

"We're extremely pleased that Nemertes has provided an independent opportunity for our customers to express satisfaction with their ShoreTel UC systems," said Steve Timmerman, vice president of marketing, ShoreTel. "We understand the business and communications challenges our customers face, and we will continue to create the systems that meet their most exacting demands for high reliability, ease of deployment and use, and features that provide them with a competitive edge. We are especially proud that we have earned the top spot in Nemertes' evaluation for the fifth straight year."

The Nemertes report offered the following insights into ShoreTel and its customers.

Assessing Real Customer Experiences

"One key message from these findings is that biggest does not equate to best. Although Cisco, Avaya and Nortel have the largest market share, when evaluated across all industries and all sizes of companies, they do not score in the top three providers. This indicates market share among all sizes of companies may be more a function of marketing efforts rather than true customer experience. (It is important to note the top scores change when we segment the findings by industry and by segment size. …)"

A True Plug-and-Play Implementation

"ShoreTel's ease of installation has been a hallmark of its customer satisfaction. In fact, one of ShoreTel's highest scores (4.56) is for ease of installation and troubleshooting. Year after year, ShoreTel customers praise the product line, describing it as "true plug-and-play" implementation. Many initially had no intention to use ShoreTel, but VARs were able to do quick sales demonstrations in which they established a VOIP system in a matter of a few hours-and that impressed the prospective customers enough to buy the system. 'ShoreTel has very user-friendly, durable products,' says the telecom manager for a distribution company with 400 endpoints."

A Company That Listens

"ShoreTel customers of all sizes say the vendor is responsive to concerns or problems, and that it listens well to suggestions for upgrades and improvements. 'With ShoreTel, you don't get the run-around. They do what they say, when they say they will,' says the IT director for a non-profit agency with 200 endpoints."

System Value

"ShoreTel's customers also feel they get good value with ShoreTel's product line. The capital, implementation and operational costs are lower than most competitors.

Out goes Cisco, in comes ShoreTel VoIP for the City of Oakland

2008-08-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

The City of Oakland, Calif., has been experiementing with unified communications for 10 years and installed a Cisco VoIP system in 2003 but that was swapped out for a Shoretel system. View this 4 minute video about why the city chose Shoretel, how the system integrates with the rest of the city's office infrastructure and why the system isn't used by the city's 911 emergency network.

Video: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1243511167/bctid1729344053