As people continue to struggle finding employment, and companies reduce spending, a unified communications platform is now making strides to helping customers reduce costs, improve efficiency and retain reliable operations.

ShoreTel (News - Alert), the creator of a variety of communication systems, are maximizing clients’ return on investment (ROI) with several of its user-friendly platforms.

The California-based company provides commercial closed-source VoIP products to businesses with as little as 10 users, to as many as 20,000. The system is pretty simple: when a company purchases a service from ShoreTel, it’ll receive an IP-based telephone, a handset, and access to a mobile and desktop version of its phone application.

The application helps to unify the various communications platforms that come with ShoreTel, such as instant messaging, video and audio collaboration, visual voicemail, call recording, and more.

ShoreTel has made big moves specifically with its financial customers. “The ease of deployment and scalability of a ShoreTel UC solution, along with the ability to serve customers over a variety of communication channels, allows it to meet the unique needs of any financial organization,” ShoreTel said in a statement.

One customer, David Fritz, a programmer analyst at Colonial Savings, F.A., said the service ShoreTel offers is simple, manageable, and will expand with the banks’ needs. “We chose ShoreTel because it supported our growth path, and it could be componentized easily. Like a Lego, with its interlocking principles, ShoreTel makes it easy to grow, modify and manage a modern phone platform,” said Fritz.

Kevin Gavin (News - Alert), chief marketing officer at ShoreTel, said clients prefer their solutions because they make upgrades and changes with the customer in mind. “Now more than ever, the tools banks use to communicate with customers are crucial to their success, as fewer people are actually going inside the bank to conduct transactions,” he said. “A ShoreTel UC Solution enables banks to offer a better and more responsive experience to customers.”