Communications and Collaboration Become Part of Companies' Lives: Survey

Communications and collaboration have become a part of companies' lives, according the latest research from Frost & Sullivan.

Recently, the company conducted a survey that uncovered awareness of unified communication and collaboration “UCC” tools has been significantly growing, as a C-level executive uses four to five tools on average per day.

The survey also found that the majority of tools available, especially instant and unified messaging is extensively employed at all levels of the organization.

With satisfying return on investment “ROI” and anticipated cost savings, companies plan to increase their budgets toward Web conferencing, instant messaging and other tools in the coming months.

The survey also looked at C-level executives in Europe and their attitudes and strategic thoughts on investment decisions in communications and collaboration products and services.

The survey measured awareness, level of usage and recognized leading communications and collaboration companies while assessing future intentions for the use of communications and collaboration tools within organizations.

"C-level executives are conscious about benefits that communications and collaboration tools can bring and 46 percent of the respondents plan to increase the budget for these tools in the next 12 months," said Dorota Oviedo industry analyst for unified communication and collaboration group with Frost & Sullivan.

Oviedo who co-authored the survey and noted that the respondents cited instant messaging (73 percent), telephony presence information (71 percent) and Enterprise Web 2.0 (63 percent), as the most popular tools used daily by C-level executives.

The data gathered from the survey offers a clear picture of a rapidly growing and expanding market.

Anna Kuberacka, Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst for Customer Research and second author of the research study also said a large share of organizations plan to expand usage of the specific tools, ranging from 36 percent toward telepresence to almost 60 percent for video conferencing.

"Among non-users the largest proportion either plans to implement the tools within the next 12 months or in a longer term: within the next 2-3 years," said Kuberacka.

"Among the main reasons to extend the communication and collaboration budget in the future is productivity increase (46 percent)," said Kuberacka.

Executives also noted less travel (43 percent), cost reduction (35 percent), as well as technology advances (35 percent) as key drivers. 

Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for virtual-pbx. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi