Survey of 513 businesses world-wide shows majority finding barriers to productivity; growing channel opportunity for unified communications
Value added telecommunications resellers across Europe have a growing opportunity to ease end users communications difficulties following new research by Siemens Enterprise Communications. The global survey shows that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are wasting as much as 40 per cent of productive time on a variety of different pain points associated with multiple and poorly integrated communications channels.
Conducted by SIS International Research for Siemens, the survey questioned 513 organisations across USA, India, Russia, Brazil and Europe - including 253 firms in Germany, Italy, France and the UK. Survey researchers interviewed different categories of company ranging from very small firms of 1-20 employees to mid-size companies employing between 300 and 400 staff.
The study categorised the top five pain points surrounding the management of different communications systems that together are seriously eroding employee productive time as well as quality of customer interaction. The top factors, experienced by 70 per cent of firms questioned, were:
delays in receiving information from colleagues receiving unwanted communications inefficient communications co-ordination between staff barriers to collaboration time lost answering customer complaints using different channels.
SMB respondents labelled waiting for information the No.1 pain point with, on average, the leading five communications pain points combining to drain organisations of 17.5 hours productive time every week.
Survey researchers calculated that on average, the annual financial cost of time lost to these five issues was 20,572 (17,383). They also found that a 100-strong company is wasting the equivalent of 4140 (3,498) for every employee and 414,000 (349,830) every year by not resolving these communication issues.
Unified communications (UC) are emerging technology platforms in SMB communications. UC platforms aim to integrate different communications technologies (fixed/mobile telephony, email, and IM, etc.) into one single unified platform based on open standards (IP) and to make employee availability easier and more efficient via presence management. The promise of increased staff availability will improve both customer service and internal communications. Many larger enterprises have already adopted these technologies to improve business processes, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.
The Siemens study suggests that SMBs are seeking answers to communications difficulties: although 60 per cent of respondents did not currently use UC, some 41 per cent of firms nevertheless stated that having a system to reduce the time spent dealing with communications issues was seen as a very or extremely high priority for their businesses.
But the survey found evidence of progress towards greater mobility through systems such as UC in Western economies: over half of companies (53 per cent) in US and European economies claimed to use unified communications or parts of such solutions. There was also greater incidence of mobile working in these two regions than in Brazil, Russia and India, particularly among SMBs.
Martin Northend, global head of SME marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications, said: European companies share a global problem theyve made heavy investments in communications networks and devices without being able to harness them for greater productivity. Companies need to bring disparate communications onto integrated platforms that support rather than complicate staff operations, as so often happens now.
As the downturn is forcing CEOs to find ways now to save variable costs or make staff more productive, there is an emerging opportunity for telecoms resellers to help customers eradicate these different pain points and show end users a smarter way to do more with less through innovations such as HiPath OpenOffice and other unified communications products.
Leon Mangan, Sales Director, Indirect Sales, Siemens Enterprise Communications, commented: The fact that mid-size and very small firms both identified the same five leading pain points highlights European business inability to manage and gain optimum value from expensive telecommunications investments.
Because so many firms are clearly experiencing communications pain, the channel can play a pivotal role in improving end users performance with network convergence strategies, optimising company LANs or WANs to slash costs and adopting unified communications platforms to put all personnel on a common footing. These approaches will avoid the complexity and waste of many of todays poorly integrated SMB communications platforms.
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Notes to editors
About the study The study was conducted from September to November, 2008. A total of 513 respondents were surveyed, with their origins evenly spread across Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, United States, and United Kingdom. Their numbers also evenly represented eight key vertical industries: communications, finance, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, professional business services, real estate, and wholesale or retail trade. To translate findings into hard costs, the researchers derived hourly compensation rates by vertical via salary information from www.salary.com. They then added a standard 30 percent benefits cost to each vertical and, to find country equivalents, factored the results by foreign exchange rates as of December 1, 2008.
About Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group) The SEN Group is a premier provider of enterprise communications solutions. More than 14,000 employees in 80 countries carry on the tradition of voice and data excellence started more than 160 years ago with Werner von Siemens and the invention of the pointer telegraph. Today the company leads the market with its "Open Communications" approach that enables teams working within any IT infrastructure to improve productivity through a unified collaboration experience. SEN Group is a joint venture between the private equity firm, The Gores Group, and Siemens AG and incorporates Siemens Enterprise Communications, Enterasys Networks, SER Solutions, Cycos and iSEC. In fiscal 2008, The SEN Group generated revenues of approximately 3.21 billion Euros.
