SMBs Adopting Web Conferencing
A new study by Wainhouse Research, sponsored by Citrix, shows
significant adoption of Web conferencing by small and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) to meet with clients and increase revenue.
The resulting whitepaper, The Vital Role of Web Conferencing in Small and Media Enterprises,
is based on a Web survey that targeted a portion of the Citrix
GoToMeeting corporate customers. The survey results show that SMBs are
using Web conferencing as the medium of choice for product demos and
meetings with both clients and prospective clients. Of course, that’s
hardly a scientific sample, but the results do tally with our views.
Web
conferencing is enabling SMBs to reach more people — it saves travel
costs, and a hosted solution doesn’t consume scarce IT resources. The
survey also indicates that ease of use, reliability, good customer
support, and competitive pricing and security are the most important
factors when choosing a Web conferencing vendor.
The following are some highlights from the survey:
“Outbound” Web conferencing applications that involve customers and prospects are most important to SMBs.
75%
of SMB respondents believe the ability to involve/reach more people and
save travel costs and time are major reasons to use Web conferencing;
59% say it makes meetings more productive.
55% of SMBs (and 44%
of large enterprise respondents) say that in addition to the more
predictable improvements in business practices, Web conferencing
enables users to solve problems they could not solve before.
69%
of all respondents use Web conferencing to enable new meetings that
could not be held in any other way due to cost constraints, timing, and
several other issues.
Once again, don’t forget that these statistics are based on a sample of respondents who are already using Web conferencing, so are probably not representative of the market as a whole.
SMBs
are generally faster to adopt new cost-saving technologies that can
impact revenue, but expect to see Web conferencing usage continue to
grow as the collaborative benefits become better understood and the
technology becomes easier to operate.
… Colin R. Bush and Richi Jennings