Getting a business team to work together no longer depends on conference rooms. With an Internet Protocol (IP) network, your employees can work together anywhere and everywhere. And when it happens, there are big benefits.

"By improving collaboration, you make decisions faster, you have faster go-to-market time, and you provide better customer service by responding more quickly and efficiently," says Brent Kelly, senior analyst and partner of Wainhouse Research, a market research firm.

Small and medium-sized businesses are moving to network-based collaboration tools almost as fast as large companies are, according to a 2006 survey by Wainhouse Research.

Cisco talked with Kelly recently about the survey results, and how and why businesses are choosing network collaborative tools.

Cisco: Why are small and medium-sized businesses increasingly interested in IP network collaborative tools?
Kelly: Employees at small and medium-sized businesses have the same need to work together as employees in large businesses. Advanced collaboration tools have become more affordable, easier to use, and easier to deploy and maintain. The costs have dropped, because an IP network brings your transmission costs down. With unified communications, you can support voice and video on the same network, as easily as data. So if you already have a network, it can be very affordable to add unified communications with collaborative tools. And the quality is there: I've seen many videoconferences lasting over two hours that ran flawlessly over an IP network.

Cisco: What are the specific business benefits?
Kelly: Collaborative tools can boost the pace of business processes, which has many competitive benefits. One is that a small business can become global almost instantaneously.

For example, Wainhouse Research has a team of eight analysts who live in eight cities on three continents. We live and die by our instant messaging (IM) and phone "presence system," which tells us when employees are available and how to contact them. We no longer waste time playing voicemail tag. Any small or medium-sized business could benefit from these tools. You could quickly locate experts within your company on a topic and just contact those who are currently at their desks.

With videoconferencing, you can see facial expressions and body language, which helps you quickly recognize when someone doesn't understand or is uncomfortable. This is especially important in multicultural business exchanges. Videoconferencing also reduces travel costs and can greatly aid training.

Cisco: What are the financial, technical, and training resources a business needs to use network collaborative tools?
Kelly: It depends on your needs. If you have modest requirements, you can use free Web conferencing, IM, presence, and voice-over-IP phone services. If you need more advanced solutions, such as videoconferencing between multiple offices, you may spend up to about $1,000 per user to add a collaboration system to your network.

You don't need in-house skills to set up and maintain collaborative tools. You can use a managed unified communications service, where you own the system and it resides at your office, is but managed by a service provider. Or you can use a "hosted" solution, which you don't own or have on your premises and a service provider manages it.

Most of the small businesses I've talked to say user training is critical. I'd say the rule of thumb is "more training is usually better than less." The beauty is, you can use the tools themselves, such as group videoconferencing, to provide the user training.

Cisco: What were the results of the survey?
Kelly: More than four-fifths of all the businesses we surveyed said they use group videoconferencing, where multiple parties in various locations participate in a joint videoconference. Small and medium-sized businesses use group video nearly as much as all businesses we surveyed.

Small and medium-sized businesses are the leaders at desktop videoconferencing. With desktop videoconferencing, one person communicates with another over a Webcam or other desktop video tool. Nearly three-fourths of the small and medium-sized businesses surveyed reported using it, compared to only about half of all respondents.

Almost three-fifths of the small and medium-sized businesses reported they use IM and presence—about the same usage as all the businesses surveyed.

Our study focused on businesses in North America. It also included some businesses in Europe and Asia. The survey had a total of 375 participants, many of whom had previously shown interest in network collaboration. 122 of the participants were small or medium-sized businesses.

Next Steps

Learn about the Cisco Smart Business Communications System for up to 50 employees.

See a variety of Cisco Voice & Conferencing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

Learn about Cisco-recommended managed service providers for small and medium-sized businesses.

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