Published on the 06/10/2010 | Written by Newsdesk

The Cisco study across 12 countries says the benefits of telepresence and video conferencing are now showing considerable benefits.

It found that 90% of frequent users say the technologies are saving them at least two hours of vcaluable work a week. One-third of survey respondents estimate they save close to one full day — seven hours or more — per week.

That adds up to more than two months of time a single employee can gain back over the course of a year.

Common benefits listed include as building trust, improving group collaboration, and increasing competitive advantage.

These emerged as nearly equally important factors that are also less commonly studied.

Other findings:

• Although both users and nonusers recognize the value of video collaboration technologies (76 vs. 60 percent, respectively), workers who frequently use the technology overwhelmingly value some of the qualitative benefits more than nonusers; for example, increasing competitive advantage (73 percent of frequent users vs. 42 percent of nonusers), bringing people closer together (71 percent of frequent users vs. 40 percent of nonusers), and improving work-life balance (70 percent of frequent users vs. 37 percent of nonusers).
• All respondents, including users and nonusers, agree that video collaboration enhances the communication experience when they are working from home (68 percent), helps maintain operations if work is disrupted (67 percent), improves group collaboration (67 percent), reduces confusion (67 percent), and projects a forward-looking view of an organization (64 percent).
• Globally, the highest percentage of workers who believe they can experience time savings of seven hours or more per week is China (46 percent). 20 percent of Russian workers report they are able to save more than seven hours per week through the use of video collaboration and telepresence.
• More than half (56 percent) of the respondents in China use video collaboration technology, more than double the respondents of any other country.
• More than two-thirds (68 percent) of all respondents perceive environmental benefits to using video collaboration technology, either through enhancing environmental responsibility or as a benefit of reduced travel. Across all 12 markets, at least half of the workers see some environmental benefit.
• One-third of those polled who are not currently using video collaboration solutions say they would be likely to do so if it were available to them. The percentage of workers who have the technology available but do not currently use it is much higher in France (54 percent) than other markets, such as the United States. (21 percent), Sweden (13 percent), Germany (13 percent) and Spain (13 percent).

The online survey, conducted by Ipsos Mori in May and June 2010, polled 500 workers in each of the following key markets: United States, Australia, China, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.