National Distribution Alliance Chooses NacTel/ShoreTel as its Vital Communications Partner

NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NacTel (North Atlantic Communications), a leading provider of enterprise telecommunications and data systems has successfully installed and integrated a new state-of-the-art communications system for National Distribution Alliance, the largest independently owned and operated newspaper wholesaler in the country. After an extensive search, NDA chose ShoreTel's simple Unified Communication (UC) solution based on its award-winning IP business phone system, provided by NacTel, the award-winning communications sales and service organization, headquartered in Plainview and Hauppauge, NY.  

NDA's core business -- distributing hundreds of periodicals to more than 10,000 merchants -- is a 24/7, 365-day per year operation.  NDA provides time-critical service to publishers and merchants across the metropolitan area. To this end, NDA's choice of a communications solution was based on these key objectives:

• Achieve operating efficiencies and provide best-in-class service to merchants, publishers and field personnel
• Unify operational communications across five regional distribution centers
• Provide redundancy, route diversity and survivability for each of the company's distribution centers  
• Control the system via an accessible, single-source web application, even on a remote basis
• Manage scalable growth
• Deliver intuitive and easy-to-use call center administration and supervision
• Provide merchants access to daily delivery status and account information via Interactive Voice Response and make CSR intervention optional
• Eliminate wait times and abandons when contacting CSRs and the ability to request a callback rather than to hold in a queue

NDA operates more than 150 dedicated routes daily.  In this scenario, anything that affects delivery -- inclement weather, a publisher's late close or a truck breakdown -- needs to be managed and communicated to the field immediately.  Proactive communications protect sales, manage merchant expectations and mitigate complaints.  NDA's new system enables custom messages and immediate deployment.  If a delivery exception occurs, NDA is able to post messages for merchants calling to learn if their outlet is affected and if to expect an on-time, late or recovered delivery.  NacTel's strategic initiatives, using the ShoreTel system, give NDA this ability.

Commenting on the relationship, NDA President & COO Mike Pouchie shared what led the company to choose NacTel:  "This was an important project for us; we had to get it right.  We're a 365-day operation so we had to transition during our production cycle.  That made our choice of NacTel as a partner even more important.  NacTel did a great job for us and we're providing better service to our publishers and merchants as a result."

Sally SooHoo, one of NDA's Customer Care experts, added, "NacTel's presentation was informative and provided specifics that related to the applications we were looking to implement.  The account rep was knowledgeable about call center applications; he shared examples of how other clients used the proposed system.   Another major factor was in-house training; NacTel provided it while other vendors proposed using a "training service".  NacTel's proposed configuration was more comprehensive in addressing our operational needs, both short and long-term and implementation went smoothly.  We didn't have any down time."  

Regarding early results, Mike remarked, "Now that the product is installed and we have several months of use under our belts, we've improved our call handling and operational efficiencies.  We're able to provide dedicated service to diverse groups of callers, including our merchants, publishers and even our field/delivery personnel.  This allows us to handle calls quickly, to reduce or eliminate wait times and to improve efficiency."

NacTel President Jamie Buswell commented, "We understood from the get-go that the value that NDA was offering its stakeholders was the instantaneous communications and infrastructure that makes NDA almost indispensable to these publishers and merchants.  There was no doubt that ShoreTel's system capabilities was perfect for NDA today, and its rich feature set paves the way for future enhancements to the way it manages and relates to its customer base.  In fact, we are talking about future initiatives such as expanding IVR and call center applications as well as automating processes and integration of the phone and CIS systems, all possible within the ShoreTel environment and all geared to give merchants even more opportunity to query the system and manage their own accounts."

For more information about NacTel and the ShoreTel system, contact Jamie Buswell at 516-756-9000 or e-mail Jamie at [email protected].

About NacTel: Celebrating its 30th year in business NacTel (North Atlantic Communications) demystifies technology to deliver smart business solutions that make sense and satisfy budgets through a deep expertise of communication technologies, from modest key systems to enterprise networks to sophisticated call centers to Internet Protocol telephony and more.  NacTel provides consulting, design, installation and ongoing service, specializing in designs that offer business continuation solutions that employ, redundancy, resiliency, route diversity, survivability and the wherewithal to keep all employees connected with "office anywhere" feature sets.  

Since its inception in 1980, NacTel has conducted all business under a "trusted business partner" philosophy, offering a complete, full-service relationship that includes planning, products, services and top industry expertise.  As part of this, NacTel customers have enjoyed a single point of contact for every telecommunications need, allowing NacTel to exercise a service commitment based on satisfying all customers, one at a time.  For more information, visit www.nactelsystems.com.

About ShoreTel, Inc.: ShoreTel, Inc., (NASDAQ: SHOR) is the provider of brilliantly simple Unified Communication (UC) solutions based on its award-winning IP business phone system. We offer organizations of all sizes integrated, voice, video, data, and mobile communications on an open, distributed IP architecture that helps significantly reduce the complexity and costs typically associated with other solutions. The feature-rich ShoreTel UC system offers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and the highest customer satisfaction in the industry, in part because it is easy to deploy, manage, scale and use. Increasingly, companies around the world are finding a competitive edge by replacing business-as-usual with new thinking, and choosing ShoreTel to handle their integrated business communication. ShoreTel is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices in Austin, Texas, United Kingdom, Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

About National Distribution Alliance: NDA is the largest independently owned and operated newspaper wholesaler in the country, representing over 200 newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, the New York Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Diario de Mexico, Sing Tao, the Irish Echo and more than 250 magazines, including People, Time, Vanity Fair, Star, Maxim, Cosmopolitan, National Enquirer, People en Espanol, Vanidades and O Magazine.  NDA services more than 10,000 merchants in the New York Metro area daily, helping publishers reach more outlets, and to do so more cost-effectively than they can do through their own direct delivery. For more information, contact Anne Everhart at 718-706-2313.

Press Contacts:
Jamie Buswell -- NacTel 516-756-9000
Andy Jacobs -- Linx Communications 631-361-4400

SOURCE NacTel