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Daily Herald: ShoreTel Beats Eight Vendors to Replace a 20-Year-Old Phone System

The third-largest daily newspaper in Illinois deploys ShoreTel across five locations — replacing a two-decade-old system with one that saves IT resources, improves contact center visibility, and helps reporters in the field stay reachable.

The Challenge

Paddock Publications had been running a 20-year-old phone system that couldn't support the contact center visibility, field reporter mobility, or administrative simplicity the organization needed to operate effectively.

The Solution

CTPros implemented ShoreTel across five locations — delivering superior call quality, intuitive contact center management, and a platform the IT team could administer without a dedicated telephony expert.

About Paddock Publications and the Daily Herald

2-3 sentences covering what the company does, how long they've been around, and any relevant context (size, geography, industry positon).

Twenty Years on the Same System — and Running Out of Road

Paddock Publications had been running the same phone system for 20 years. By 2014, the limitations were showing across the organization. The contact center supervisors managing subscriber and classified ad call centers had minimal visibility into their departments — limited reporting, no intuitive call tracking, and software that required dedicated telephony expertise to administer. Reporters working in the field had limited ability to receive calls through the office system while away from their desks.

Stu Paddock III, SVP of Digital Technology and Information Systems, assembled a cross-functional committee of 12 stakeholders from across departments to lead the evaluation. The group researched eight telephony vendors before narrowing to three finalists. CTPros implemented the selected solution.

300 Phones, Five Locations, and a System the Whole IT Team Can Run

CTPros implemented approximately 300 ShoreTel phones across five Paddock Publications locations in spring 2014, transitioning the organization to VoIP and deploying ShoreTel Communicator on employee desktops. The implementation included training across the organization so staff could manage their own features — call forwarding, Outlook calendar sync, conferencing — without routing requests through IT.

The contact center deployment gave supervisors the tools they had been missing: intuitive department management, real-time call tracking, and reporting dashboards that didn't require IT involvement to access or interpret.

Less IT Overhead, Better Contact Centers, and Reporters Who Stay Reachable

The outcomes at Paddock Publications spanned the organization. On the IT side, the intuitive administrative software eliminated the need for a dedicated telephony expert — anyone on the IT team could handle special requests. The move to VoIP removed PBX infrastructure and maintenance costs that had been running into the tens of thousands annually.

In the contact centers, supervisors gained real-time visibility they hadn't had before — department management, call tracking, and reporting all accessible without IT support.

For the editorial team, the mobility features changed how reporters work in the field. All 100 police station numbers used for daily crime report calls are now accessible via speed dial — a click instead of a lookup. Voicemail-to-email means field reporters no longer miss calls when away from the office. The ability to receive forwarded business calls on a cell phone while away from the desk gave staff the flexibility that a 20-year-old system could never support.

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