The survey results, published under the name “End-User Survey: The ‘Real’ Benefits of Video,” reveals some notable insights into the business benefits of video conferencing, deployment trends, use cases, adoption and insights for future growth. These include:
The top benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency/productivity (94 percent), followed by increased impact of discussions (88 percent), expedited decision making (87 percent), and reduced travel costs (87 percent).
When asked how their companies are using video conferencing today for specific, newly emerging use cases, “Meet with Customers and Partners” is the top response (71 percent).
Quarter of respondents say they video conference daily, 39 percent weekly, 21 percent monthly, and 14 percent every few months.
Multivendor environments are the norm, so interoperability is critical – 60 percent say they “primarily use” more than one vendor’s equipment or software to videoconference; 32 percent use three or more.
Video helps remote workers feel more connected to their colleagues. Of the total respondents who work from home, 87 percent strongly agree or agree that the use of video conferencing allows them to work from home without feeling disconnected.
“This comprehensive study validates what we’ve been seeing from our customers for years. In or out of the office, employees do their best work when they are empowered to meet and collaborate, face-to-face, over virtually any device,” said Andy Miller, President and CEO, Polycom. “In addition to helping foster a more productive and engaged workforce, video collaboration helps enterprises and organizations thrive by enabling more effective sales and engineering teams, better customer service, and stronger partner relationships. The world is on a path to ubiquitous video, and Polycom’s goal is to drive that ubiquity by making video easy to use, secure and affordable for all, across the widest range of devices and environments, ranging from immersive theatres to conference rooms, desktop systems, laptops, PCs, browsers, tablets and smart phones.”
Key Findings
In December 2012, Wainhouse Research, underwritten by Polycom, surveyed 4,737 end-users of video conferencing systems. The survey respondents represent all global regions, with 63 percent from North America, 27 percent from Asia/Pacific, 9 percent from EMEA, and 1 percent from Latin America. All company sizes are represented, from small businesses with 1-49 employees (20 percent of respondents) to very large companies with more than 10,000 employees (17 percent) and all points in-between. Vertical industries are also well represented.