The study surveyed more than 400 CIOs and IT Directors across North America and Europe about their views on collaboration and communication technologies within and beyond the enterprise. According to the study, U.S. and Canadian respondents associate digital collaboration first and foremost with email and Intranets.
Video conferencing and extranets also were cited as collaboration tools, but enterprise search and presence were missing altogether in the collective response. Avanade defines digital collaboration as the convergence of traditional collaboration technologies - such as email and portals - with emerging unified communications technologies - such as presence and VoIP - to provide access to data and voice services anywhere, anytime on any device.
“Enterprises are excited about digital collaboration and the advancements in business productivity. They also see benefits in terms of communicating with customers, partners and vendors. Still, they’re struggling to realize the potential of their existing technology investments, which makes planning for the next wave challenging,” said Larry LeSueur, Vice President of Technology Infrastructure Solutions at Avanade.
“We’re working with customers to help them maximize the value of what they use today - email, websites, conference calling - while getting ready for the next wave of technologies - which will offer a deeper integration across collaboration, communication and presence technologies for huge gains in individual and team productivity.”
The research suggests a few reasons why only 45 percent of U.S. and 49 percent of Canadian companies say they are currently satisfied with the impact of collaborative and communication technologies:
• Only 11 percent of the U.S. companies surveyed have a fully documented and implemented collaboration and communication strategy across the enterprise.
• 22 percent of Canadian companies surveyed have nothing defined about collaborative and communication activity.
• 88 percent of U.S. companies and 91 percent of Canadian companies surveyed agree that digital collaboration needs to be extended within the business to allow the company to be more effective and productive, even though there are so many technologies in use today.
• 71 percent of U.S. organizations and 67 percent in Canada say they need to add new technologies to enhance their digital collaboration capabilities.
Indeed, in the next two years, these companies expect to extend their existing investments in collaboration and communication technologies as well as make new investments to integrate existing investments with the emerging digital collaboration technologies. Among the U.S. companies surveyed:
• 80 percent will have implemented VoIP in two years, up from 55 percent who say they have VoIP implemented today.
• 79 percent will have implemented enterprise search tools, compared to 59 percent who say they have enterprise search implemented today.
• 68 percent will have implemented virtual workspaces, compared to 48 percent who say they already use the technology.
Similarly, the digital collaboration technologies to be adopted most aggressively in Canada in two years are enterprise search, virtual workspaces, video conferencing and VoIP.
Though most U.S. and Canadian enterprises are not fully satisfied with their collaboration and communication technologies, their planned investment in this area signifies a growing awareness of the impact digital collaboration has on key performance factors. Chief among these is employee productivity. The research shows that 95 percent of U.S. and 98 percent of Canadian respondents see productivity as a key reason for further investment. Another important factor cited by 88 percent of U.S. and 95 percent of Canadian respondents is information management.
There also are some interesting differences between how digital collaboration is viewed in the U.S. vs. Canada. For example, more Canadian companies see reduced network traffic, the ability to meet compliance requirements, and improved security as key benefits. Increased job satisfaction and improved time to market for products and services are benefits highlighted by more U.S. companies.
digital collaboration, us business companies, communication
