Case Study: ShoreTel Taps BigMachines to Streamline Quote-to-Order Process

“We went through a learning curve and figured out how we can make the QMS more bulletproof so people don’t make mistakes,” said Parkinson. “We’ve built some checks into the system to direct system users with prompts such as ‘did you forget this?’ Early on in the implementation, about 20 percent of the orders had issues like missing equipment. Now, it’s down to about five percent or less.”

Order processing time has also been dramatically reduced, dropping from about 27 minutes per order prior to the QMS implementation to about 10 minutes. Over time, processing time reduced even further, down to seven minutes or less.

“Some of that improvement has come through additional work flow automation on our back-end ERP system, but a big portion of the credit is due to the QMS,” said Parkinson.

“Our CEO is pleased that we have scaled the business without continuing to add headcount in our order processing organization. We’ve eliminated that problem through the reduction in processing time. As a result, the number of orders we process per month has gone up significantly, while headcount has remained flat.”

ShoreTel plans to continually enhance its order entry and fulfillment system. One immediate project is to enhance automated configuration processes, which specify equipment combinations for certain projects. “We think our product is more integrated than our competitors’ products, so creating correct orders for our systems is not difficult,” said Parkinson. “On orders for more complex systems, such as contact center products, we have a built-in system configurator and we also have a configurator for calculating professional service support. But we haven’t yet built a configurator into our QMS product as whole, and that is something on our roadmap.”

Overall, ShoreTel has been very satisfied with the performance of its QMS. “BigMachines is a significant product for us,” said Parkinson. “We want to make it easy for our channel partners to do business with us, so having a tool like this is significant. It’s my No. 1 priority and I’ve spent more time on this than any other project. There are a number of things we need to do to gain the partner satisfaction that we want, so we want to find ways to make the QMS better.”

QMS capability will be particularly critical as ShoreTel targets growth opportunities, which include larger corporate customers. “In the past, we’ve targeted small- to medium-sized businesses, but now we’re targeting all levels — and we have had recent success winning Fortune 500 accounts,” said Parkinson.

This case study was originally created in 2007 following ShoreTel’s deployment of BigMachines in 2006. In the time since, ShoreTel has become a public company. ShoreTel continues to be a BigMachines customer and today more than 95 percent of their orders are submitted via the QMS system; order processing time has been reduced to about six minutes.