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Which Communications Technologies Do Businesses Use? Many technologies are in use today, some as pervasive as pencil and paper, some still moving up the adoption curve. While email clearly leads in daily usage, web conferencing falls right behind audio conferencing as a daily or weekly tool. A few things worth noting:
- On a weekly basis, nearly as many people use audio and web conferencing together (46%) as use audio conferencing (48%).
- Wainhouse Research believes that some of the 57% who use IM daily or weekly likely use it to help launch conferencing sessions quickly.
Why Web Conferencing?
We asked respondents to rate why they use web conferencing on a 1-4 scale (with 4 = very important and 1 = not important). The top three reasons that were cited for using web conferencing are clustered together: to cut travel costs (3.43), involve more people/expand reach (3.36), and improve productivity (3.34). All three fall mid-way between important and very important. Encouraging team collaboration and improving training are also important, both scoring 3.13 (slightly higher than “important.”)
What Are Your Applications Today? Next Year?
Employee training and collaboration with internal teams are the two most common applications for web conferencing today (both 46%). Within 12 months 78% plan to be collaborating with internal teams using web conferencing.
Collaboration with external teams/partners, at 41% adoption today, shows the highest likely growth over the next 12 months – 40%. That would make it the #2 application in 12 months. This “maps well” to Wainhouse Research’s understanding of evolving usage patterns and the growing importance of external teams/partners.
Software demonstrations (43% today, 32% additional in 12 months) are also a strong application area. Other survey data tells us that when people do not use web conferencing, typically it is because the benefits are not apparent or it requires a cultural change for which they are not ready.
What to Look For ... And What to Avoid
Web conferencing users care more about basic quality and reliability in their tools than anything else.
- Ease of use (54%), quality and reliability (52%), performance (48%), and price (46%) are all grouped together as the top four criteria for selecting a provider. This is consistent with other Wainhouse Research findings.
- Features (30%) and integration with apps and workflow (28%) are important to almost one third of respondents.
Other aspects, like brand reputation or global reach , may be important to a small group.
The key thing to remember is that web conferencing should be easy to use & deploy, reliable, and affordable.
Satisfaction and Providers
We asked if users are satisfied with their web conferencing providers. Well over two thirds (71%) are satisfied or very satisfied with their web conferencing provider. Another quarter (26%) is somewhat satisfied; this group holds some reservations about their provider. And only 3% are unsatisfied.
We examined satisfaction rates by vendor on a 1-4 scale (with 4 = very satisfied and 1 = not satisfied). Citrix, the sponsor of this research, is the only vendor with a composite score above 3.0, “satisfied.” This clearly shows positive attitudes regarding its user satisfaction.
Other providers received composite scores ranging from 2.68 to 2.85 — respectable numbers that are at the high end of the satisfaction range. But among those surveyed for this project, Citrix is leading the way in customer satisfaction.
The Impact: Most Memorable Web Conferencing Events
We asked respondents to describe their most memorable web conferencing experience and heard about the impact of the technology in a variety of scenarios. Most respondents made some type of comment and Wainhouse Research grouped responses together by category to shed light on the mix of responses. We recorded responses based on the depth of the answer; if a respondent’s answer applied to multiple types of events or attitudes, we tallied them as appropriate. Thus if someone mentioned training and the ability to include participants globally and the ability to team, we recorded their answers three times: once under training, once under geographical reach, and once under teaming. The chart to the left lists the relative rank of the most mentioned types of memorable events or attitudes about web conferencing.
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