© 2014 Frost & Sullivan
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“We Accelerate Growth”
2013
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Product Leadership Award
2014
Customer Value Leadership
Aw ard
Audio Conferencing Services
Global, 2014
Frost & Sullivan’s Global Research Platform
Frost & Sullivan is in its 50th year in business with a global research organization of 1,800 analysts and consultants who monitor more than 300 industries and 250,000 companies. The company’s research philosophy originates with the CEO’s 360 Degree Perspective™, which serves as the foundation of its TEAM Research™ methodology. This unique approach enables us to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership. Based on the findings of this Best Practices research, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2014 Global Customer Value Leadership Award in Audio Conferencing Services to Dolby Laboratories.
Significance of the Customer Value Enhancement Aw ard
K ey I ndus t ry Chal l en ges
Audio conferencing services have become a staple for businesses to communicate with geographically dispersed employees as well as with partners, suppliers, and customers. The global audio conferencing services market is experiencing significant shifts with the emergence of price-based competition, ongoing market consolidation, and the shift from audio-only to audio enhanced with web and video conferencing services. Despite significant usage growth, revenue growth in this market has been marginal as the overall market has become more mature and commoditized.
Despite the strong user need, audio conferencing solutions have been plagued by call quality and user experience issues. Additionally, the shift to VoIP services and use of mobile devices for audio conferencing has resulted in significant changes in user behavior and expectations. Users have accepted poor audio quality as a norm for a large part of their voice communications. For the convenience of anytime/anywhere communications over any device, users often settle for less than the “landline POTS (plain old telephone service)-quality” voice experience.
Users are clamoring for the next generation of voice solutions that remove these barriers and enable a smooth flow of ideas regardless of the technology. Dolby understands the above challenges and has successfully extended its long heritage in developing world class audio technologies for the cinema, home entertainment, mobile, and gaming experiences to create better quality audio experiences at work with the introduction of Dolby® Voice™, an audio conferencing solution that enables virtual meetings to sound and feel more like in-person meetings.
Best Practice Aw ard
Analysis for Dolby
The Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Leadership is presented each year to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. This Award recognizes the company's acute focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately customer base expansion. Dolby’s Heritage in the Global Audio Technology Market
With a sterling reputation for best-in-class entertainment experiences through recorded media, Dolby has led the market in developing superior audio technologies for cinema, home entertainment, mobile, and gaming experiences. Dolby continues to find new commercial applications for its technologies including developing better-quality audio experiences at work.
In early 2013, Dolby announced a global partnership with BT, a leading provider of audio and video conferencing solutions. As part of this arrangement, BT incorporated Dolby Voice into their offerings under a limited exclusivity period. BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice has reported high growth in adoption and usage.
In October 2013, BT launched their BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice service. In March 2014, Dolby and BT made two key announcements. BT debuted the BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice mobile app, which provides access to the MeetMe service from an iPhone and Android device and Dolby announced the Dolby Conference Phone, an easy-to-use conferencing device that offers superior sound quality and capabilities (the phone will be available later in 2014). Factor 1: Enhancing Customer Value
The North American conferencing services market reached $4.1 billion in revenue in 2013.
Audio conferencing services are the predominant conferencing solution, registering 92.6 billion
conferencing services. Yet the quality of audio experience has been less than satisfactory. There is a pent-up demand today for high-quality audio conferencing solutions.
Dolby’s overall goal is to transform the user experience around conferencing and enable better quality business meetings and ultimately, better communications. The pillars to Dolby Voice’s superior quality are:
High-Quality Sound: High-definition audio combined with background noise reduction and audio leveling for each participant
Voice Separation: Participant voices are heard from different directions (just like being around the meeting room table)
Hear Everyone: All speakers can be heard at all times, even those with soft voices.
Dolby Voice features unique functionality that lets you hear each participant’s voice coming from a specific and separate location, so everyone is easily understood and distinguished. As a result, it is easier for callers to keep track of the conversation, which reduces meeting fatigue and lets users focus on the meeting's content.
The ongoing workplace transformation, consumerization, and the need for flexible work styles are making mobile devices the de facto devices for joining conference calls. However, most mobile users compromise on voice quality to get the anytime/anywhere convenience. BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice mobile app is available for both the iPhone and Android platforms. It provides a superior conference call experience from mobile devices and also makes it easy to start and join meetings; conference participants simply tap in from the mobile app. There's no need for participants to find the phone number or long meeting codes when dialing in from a mobile phone. Other features with the Dolby Voice mobile app include seamless handoff between Wi-Fi and mobile data, in-meeting reconnection options if the data signal is weak or variable, and PSTN dial-back or dial-in to reconnect.
On the whole, Dolby has applied its expertise in sound signal processing and compression technologies to enable considerable improvements in voice quality and clarity, making meetings more natural and productive. These attributes, among several others, underscore Dolby’s differentiated ability to deliver superior quality without sacrificing simplicity and ease-of-use.
Factor 2: Cost Reduction and Greater ROI
Higher-quality conference calls over Dolby Voice improve the way people communicate leading to enhanced business productivity and greater ROI. In addition, Dolby Voice reduces the total cost of conferencing allowing customers to achieve substantial savings off their total conferencing bill. It allows meetings over an end-to-end IP connection, which lowers network transport and connectivity costs for customers compared to traditional telephone access options using more expensive dial-in numbers. Dolby Voice eliminates the need for companies to choose between quality, convenience, and cost.
Factor 3: Strong Partnership Building on the Strength of the Dolby and BT Brands Dolby is building on the strength of its brand among consumers as a trusted provider of high-quality sound and imaging technologies and successfully extending it into enterprise markets. Its solutions are critical to providing high-quality audio and video experiences in the cinema, home, and at work. The inclusion of the Dolby trademark on a product or service instills confidence in customers about the quality standards, and it also helps OEMs and partners sell their products. Dolby’s partnership with BT provides excellent value to customers. BT has a global presence with operations in more than 170 countries and it offers a broad portfolio of UCC services. Furthermore, the integration of Dolby Voice in services beyond audio conferencing and into video and web conferencing will extend the reach and advantages of Dolby Voice to a wide range of applications and customers.
Conclusion
The audio conferencing services market is at a cross-roads with new market shifts and challenges. There is an immense unmet need in the market for enhanced audio communications that can lead to more productive, virtual meetings and get users closer to in-person experiences. Dolby is addressing these pain points that have hindered audio conferencing in the past. The timing is right as user needs in the overall collaboration market shift drastically.
To succeed in this market companies need to offer robust quality and low-priced services that incorporate a proactive approach to integration with other UC technologies. Dolby Voice allows partners and customers to implement audio conferencing as a true business enabler at affordable prices, allowing businesses to be more productive. For these reasons, Frost & Sullivan is recognizing Dolby Laboratories with 2014 Customer Value Leadership Award for its achievements in the global audio conferencing services market.
Critical Importance of TEAM Research
commission. Frost & Sullivan contends that successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. In that vein, the letters T, E, A and M reflect our core technical, economic, applied (financial and best practices) and market analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the TEAM Research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry players and for creating high-potential growth strategies for our clients.
C ha r t 1 : B e nc h ma r k i ng P e r f or ma nc e w i t h T E A M R es ea r c h
