Survey: 84 Percent of C-Level Execs View Web Conferencing as Essential Communications and Collaboration Tool

A recent survey of C-level executives in the United States, conducted by market research firm Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), shows that a majority of decision-makers view Web conferencing as an essential communications and collaboration tool.


The survey examined executives' attitudes and strategies regarding their personal and organizational use of such communications services. The results show that, overall, the global recession has had a limited impact on large-size, primarily multi-national organizations and their use of communications and collaboration tools.

The survey reveals that most executives view communications and collaboration tools as useful for providing cost reduction benefits (83 percent of respondents), especially with regard to unifying global operations, followed by faster decision-making (81 percent).

Awareness and usage is higher with the more well-established technologies, including video conferencing (92 percent of respondents) and audio conferencing (82 percent). But many C-level executives see relatively newer tools, such as Web conferencing (84 percent) and instant messaging (88 percent), as also being important for their communications and collaboration strategies.

The report finds that most U.S. C-level executives are trying to ride out the economic storm -- thus a majority of them haven’t yet cut Web conferencing services from their budgets – if anything, they are investing in them.

Meanwhile, many organizations have cut their business travel budgets in order to hold down costs -- and they are turning to audio, video and Web conferencing services to facilitate live meetings between partners, customers and prospects. What’s more, many organizations now view conferencing as essential for internal communications. This is particularly true for larger organizations with multiple geographically-dispersed divisions, departments, offices and branches. Many C-level execs are hesitant to cut conferencing services because they improve collaboration, boost employee productivity and deliver significant ROI.

 

"While it appears that many U.S. C-level executives are simply trying to maintain the status quo -- with the hopes of coming out on the other side of the economic storm in a better position, some of those executives have plans beyond two years of increasing usage and budgets of communications and collaboration tools," said Melanie Turek, industry principal for the unified communications and collaboration practice at Frost & Sullivan, in the May report. "This suggests that U.S. C-level executives expect an economic recovery sooner rather than later, and that they see real strategic value in UC&C."

 

As for actual deployment, the most widely utilized tool is audio conferencing (86 percent of respondents). While various communications and collaboration tools are currently in use, C-level executives admit that others within their organizations use the tools more widely than they personally use them. However, these executives' relative lack of first-hand experience does not minimize the importance and perceived benefits they believe these tools can offer to their organizations.

"Due to their continued plans to utilize and budget for communications and collaboration tools, it seems that C-level executives are relying on these tools to provide strength and deliver overall value to their organizations," said Tonya Fowler, director of Frost & Sullivan's customer research group, which conducts independent, non-sponsored research among end-users to evaluate and measure companies and trends in the market. Customer research collaborated with the firm's UC&C practice to develop and deliver the results of the study.