SMBs Continue to Drive Opportunities in Audio Conferencing
Posted by Kathleen S on Tue, Feb 02, 2010 @ 08:11 AM
As the world marketplace has merged into a global marketplace, the demands on the small business have changed. A vast majority of small business owners can no longer be profitable if they rely only on local business. As communications continue to evolve to fit the global marketplace, businesses of any size can take advantage of these technologies to drive global revenue.
With the evolution of the global marketplace, we have also seen the development of the global telecom infrastructure. This infrastructure continues to revolutionize the way businesses of all sizes communicate. One key element within this infrastructure is audio conferencing, which has become accepted throughout the world as a standard form of communication.
Standards Emerge
As Global Telephony standards have matured throughout the world, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been able to realize greater efficiencies, management, control and cost savings in their communications and conferencing strategies. Audio and Web conferencing in particular have erased the barriers that separated the corporate global village, making distance irrelevant in the overall corporate strategy.
The Global Delivery Business Model has emerged as a priority for companies throughout the marketplace and access to constant communication between workers and the corporation without excessive travel is important. Now that there is a massive global teleconferencing infrastructure in place, audio conferencing has become very affordable and easy to conduct on any telephony device.
Strong Spending
Interestingly, the SMB segment of the global market has been at the forefront of driving the conferencing revolution. In competing with much larger companies, SMBs often have to outsource back office, services and even product production to offshore companies. To ensure streamlined production and customer-centric strategies in doing business, audio conferencing is a necessary tool.
According to AMI Partners, now that the SMB sector claims more than 75 million companies throughout the world, this sector spends in excess of $900 billion each year on IT and telecommunications hardware, software and service. As companies continue to cut travel budgets to better manage budgets in a down market, audio conferencing is becoming even more important in the corporate strategy.
Anticipated Opportunities
The competitive nature of the global market is only expected to intensify as the recovery promises new opportunities. To drive effective communications, companies will invest in those devices and the infrastructure necessary to ensure that audio conferencing is no longer a communications option, but a communications must.
