Conferencing Now Displaces Much Travel

By Gary Kim

Videoconferencing and Web conferencing long have been touted as substitutes for travel. Now there is more evidence both conferencing methods actually have started to replace significant amounts of travel in many enterprise, mid-sized and small business settings.

Perhaps just as significantly, use of Web conferencing, for example, seems to have leaped over the last year, according to researchers at Wainhouse Research. Some 46 percent of SME respondents report dramatic growth (50 percent or more) in their use of Web conferencing over the past year.

About 28 percent of respondents report growth in their use of Web conferencing by 25 percent or more in the last year. Overall, 94 percent of respondents said their use of Web conferencing grew over the last year. The growth figures for large enterprises are very similar, say Wainhouse researchers.

The difference is that online customer presentations and demonstrations are more important to SME users than to large enterprise users. Enterprise users are more likely to use Web conferencing for internal communications.

SMEs also hold almost twice as many Web conferences involving customers, and almost three times as many Web conferences involving prospects, as enterprises do. It is worth noting, however, that 30 percent of the SME respondents surveyed by Wainhouse had sales and marketing titles.

Wainhouse found that 54 percent of enterprise meetings now are based on conferencing technologies rather than being held face to face. In the SME segment, 64 percent of meetings are held using a conferencing technology rather than conducted face to face.

Of course, there seem to be differences. Small and medium-sized businesses have embraced web conferencing to the point where it is now the medium of choice for conducting meetings, while large enterprises prefer, or can still afford, to meet in-person.

High-end telepresence systems, though out of the price range for small businesses, are especially favored by mid-market firms (companies with more than 100 and less than 2,500 employees), according to Peter Brockman, Brockman & Associates principal. About 50 percent more mid-market organizations rely on telepresence than desktop video conferencing, says Brockman.

Desktop video conferencing, on the other hand, is more significant among small businesses, says Brockman. That finding is congruent with Wainhouse Research findings as well. SME respondents report that Web conferencing is the most frequently used meeting medium.

Web conferencing now accounts for more than 41 percent of meetings. In fact, web conferences are more popular than face-to-face meetings, Wainhouse analysts note.

Almost three quarters of SMEs use Web conferencing to include participants who could not attend before (72 percent), and over two thirds use it to enable new meetings that could not be held previously (69 percent).

Almost two thirds (64 percent) use Web conferencing to replace in-person meetings. Perhaps most significantly, well over half of SMEs (56 percent) use Web conferencing to solve problems they could not solve before, Wainhouse says.

Users surveyed by Brockman were asked about their level of importance of each of five conferencing modes (face to face, telepresence, audioconferencing, Web conferencing and desktop video conferencing), with somewhat surprising results.

“For room video conferencing users the face-to-face meeting is the most important conference option after telepresence,” says Brockman.

So telepresence is not a substitute for local travel. Local travel is the substitute for telepresence, at least for local meetings where a drive of 40 miles might have to be made.

That doesn’t seem to be the case for desktop videoconferencing, however. Brockman finds that users consider audio conferencing the functional substitute for desktop video conferencing.

The reason, says Brockman, is that desktop video conferencing is used as an informal collaboration tool in smaller business.

Typical telepresence sessions last as long as the average face-to-face meetings, in companies that have high-end teleconference facilities, says Brockman.

Telepresence is the third most frequent conference type, averaging one every three days. Users say they have just about nine tele-presence sessions each month, about 19 face-to-face meetings and about 15 audio conferences each month.

Telepresence does seem to be used both internally and to extend communications with supply chain partners, clients and customers. About 44 percent of all room-based conferences occur with coworkers and executives. About a quarter of telepresence sessions involve suppliers and partners, while roughly a third are held with customers or clients.

Telepresence users also consider the use of telepresence 55 percent more valuable than their desktop video peers. Half of telepresence users would pay $131.25 instead of driving 40 miles away to attend a meeting. This contrasts with the half of desktop video conferencing users who would pay only $84.72 instead of driving.

A recent shift of perception suggests that the more traditional video conferencing service is differentiating from the new and higher-end tele-presence service. So managers, vendors and service providers should transition their use of the words ‘video conferencing’ as it pertains to room video conferencing and replace it with telepresence,” says Brockman.

Similarly, desktop video conferencing vendors and service providers ought to consider a movement towards ‘high definition’ to describe their offerings and capabilities, says Brockman.
Telepresence is a particularly high-end, high-definition room video conferencing approach popularized by the fall 2006 Hewlett-Packard and Cisco telepresence announcements.

Other notable participants in the telepresence market include Digital Video Enterprises, LifeSize, Polycom, Radvision, Tandberg and Telanetix. IP