In a recent online poll that I conducted, corporate productivity, operational efficiency, customer service, and revenue generation topped the list as to components that were strategic areas of focus, followed closely by product development/innovation and lead generation.
The most common questions executives asked were the following:
- Productivity and Time Management: How do I do more with less? How can I improve corporate efficiency? What much does one hour of lost productivity cost me?
- Revenue Generation: How can I expand my revenue opportunities? How can I increase my customer acquisitions?
- Competition: How do I differentiate myself from my competition?
- Customer Focus and Service: How can I quickly support my customers? How do I keep them loyal? How can I enhance customer value?
- Market Share: How can I capture market share and gain brand recognition?
There is a huge paradigm shift from conducting business face to face to meeting online in a virtual environment that enables even the smallest of small businesses to have the global connectivity and international presence that typically only Fortune 1000 companies enjoy. Web collaboration technologies level the playing field and help small and mid-size businesses penetrate new markets, generate revenue, increase customer acquistions while reducing operational expenses and lost productivity hours. In short, web collaboration/web conferencing helps companies address the questions listed above by most executives.
Whether you reference The Gartner Group, IDC, Wainhouse Research, AMR, the benefits of web collaboration are measurable and very, very compelling to the point that companies like WebEx now have over 23,500 corporate customers subscribing to their hosted solution. (This number alone is about 5-6 larger than their nearest competitor, Microsoft Live Meeting.) Though it has been documented that typical Total ROI can be 200%-500% (ROI from travel costs + ROI from increased productivity), the greatest value is the immediate impact web collaboration has on revenue growth and customer acquisitions. Most ROI calculations merely focus on the reduced travel costs and productivity gains.
The true measure and value of web collaboration is incorporating improved win-ratio, increased customer count, new markets penetrated, new prospects developed, larger average deal sizes, shorter sales cycles, faster product delivery times and happier and more loyal customers.
The reality is that the biggest competitive threat a company has is not what the competition down the street does but the companies that get creative and add web collaboration to their day to day work flow. They view web collaboration and companies like WebEx as a competitive advantage.
Translation: As you are trying to "figure things out," they take business away from you, and take it away quickly.
