Frost & Sullivan Releases the End-User Study on Communications and Collaboration Products and Services

Evaluating the use of communications and collaboration products and services, Frost & Sullivan has announced the results of its end user study that focuses on what U.S.-based C-level executives think about personal and organizational use of communications services.

 

According to the survey, U.S. C-level executives (CEO, CTO’s CIO, CFO’s ect.) are not willing to cut down the expenses of their communications even in the face of deepening recession. Many companies are still maintaining their earlier budgets allotted to the communication purposes, according to the Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) survey.

 

According to the survey, communications and collaboration tools are useful for providing cost reduction benefits (83 percent of respondents), especially related to unifying global operations, and followed by faster decision-making (81 percent). The survey also states that awareness and usage is highest among tools such as video conferencing (92 percent of respondents) and audio conferencing (82 percent).

 

“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," says Melanie Turek, Industry Principal for the Unified Communications (News - Alert) & Collaboration (UC&C) practice at Frost & Sullivan.

 

The survey states that some new tools such as instant messaging (88 percent) and Web conferencing (84 percent) have also earned popularity among the C-level executives. According to the survey, vendor recognition seems to be centered among big-name providers, including AT&T (News - Alert), Microsoft, and Cisco (81 percent, 81 percent, and 77 percent, respectively)

 

In a recently released survey, Frost & Sullivan stated that pharmaceutical companies in the future will invest more in CRM segments such as marketing automation, customer analytics and closed loop marketing. These companies will also focus on the management of key opinion leaders as a priority. The company stated that only a flexible and cost-effective CRM will be able to achieve strong penetration.