Re-Evaluating the Role of
“Traditional” Audio Conferencing
The New Criteria for Selecting an Audio Conferencing Supplier
Andrew H. Nilssen Marc F. Beattie September 2014
Paper sponsored by:
Introduction
The adoption and use of conferencing services has grown dramatically over the past decade. Organizations of all sizes have grown to
understand its value and leverage its capabilities to get the right people involved to inform, discuss, gather opinions, and make critical decisions every day. In fact, Wainhouse Research (WR) estimates 100 million people worldwide will use over 100 billion minutes of audio conferencing in 2014.
A combination of need, familiarity, and new services that make
conference calls easier to join and participate in is driving use and greater demand. In a Wainhouse Research survey of users, over two-thirds (68%) of respondents report their use of conferencing increased over the prior year1. These per-user increases are compounded by the adoption of conferencing by more people in different roles throughout the organ- ization - product teams for development meetings, sales for customer presentations, operations for geographic updates, finance for investor relations, management for crisis control, and a multitude of other cases.
The way conferencing is accessed and being used is changing. Users are replacing their traditional fixed-line PSTN telephones with the devices they carry with them – smartphones and/or laptops equipped with softphones (utilizing VoIP) – which can make connecting to conferences more convenient and deliver improved audio. Audio-only conference calls are giving way to audio integrated with web collaboration so that meeting participants can share presentations and applications – which can dramatically increase a meeting’s
effectiveness. Thus, from a market perspective, while the use of traditional PSTN audio-only conferencing has become basically flat, WR forecasts the growth rate of integrated audio and web conferencing to have a compound annual growth rate of 27% over the next five years2.
So where does this leave traditional, stand-alone audio conferencing?
With this pronounced market shift away from PSTN audio-only
conferencing to integrated audio and web conferencing, WR believes it is imperative to re-evaluate your organization’s use of audio-only
conferences – or risk being left behind. This paper briefly covers the relevant trends that are affecting user behavior, and offers new criteria for selecting an audio conferencing solution provider that meets your
organization’s needs.
Figure 1 – Conferencing Solutions Growth 0%
27%
0%
10%
20%
30%
Audio-onlyPSTN Conferencing
Integrated Audio & Web Conferencing 5-Year Cumulative Annual Growth (CAGR) -Minutes
How Audio Conferencing is Changing
The growing use of smartphones and tablets – due in part to an increasingly mobile workforce and the desire for users to bring their own devices (BYOD) into the workplace – is changing how users connect to their conference calls. Carrying a mobile device also increases the chances that participants are available to attend a meeting.
According to a recent WR end user survey, 17% of users indicated that their mobile phone has become their preferred device for connecting to an audio conference.
In a similar vein, the ability to participate in an audio call from a PC or mobile device by using a softphone application (either stand-alone or integrated with a web conferencing application) has brought its own set of advantages.
Connecting to the audio call can be made as simple as clicking on a calendar or web link – which removes the need to dial an access number and enter a user PIN. Because the audio stream is transported over the device’s Internet connection, an additional phone line with a physical phone is no longer needed. A digital connection also makes it possible to use higher fidelity audio, which can dramatically improve call quality. Because the audio is transported “Over the Top”
(OTT, using VoIP) and not through the traditional phone network (PSTN or cellular), the cost of using a phone line or mobile minutes can be
eliminated (this is especially cost effective for international calls where rates can be very high). These advantages have proven to be popular:
28% of users surveyed indicate that a PC with a softphone is their
preferred way of connecting to an audio conference. Thus, in just a few short years, PC softphones and mobile phones have become the
preferred way to connect for close to half (45%) of all audio conferencing users.
The increase in BYOD in the workplace has empowered users with the freedom to find and use their own applications (BYOA) if they become frustrated by those provided by their organization. This has spawned the rise of “shadow IT” – the use of unsanctioned applications – which, left unchecked, can be especially detrimental to conferencing usage as it fragments the user base. This fragmentation results in different user interfaces, varied capabilities, uncontrolled costs, and confusion about who can call whom. Thus keeping your organization’s sanctioned conferencing application ahead of the curve and frustration-free should be a top priority – or users will look elsewhere.
Figure 2 – Preferred Way to Connect to Audio Conferences3
Desk phone 39%
Speakerphone 16%
Mobile phone
17%
SoftphonePC 28%
WR also observes that usage patterns are changing. As organizations become conferencing-enabled, there is evidence that basic one-to-one phone calls are declining and multi-point calls between three or more parties are increasing. A sampling of enterprises by WR shows that over half of their voice calls are connecting to an audio conference service.
While the simple conclusion may be that it saves time to communicate the same message to multiple people in a single conference call, a deeper message is that there is value when multiple people are given a forum to discuss what is being communicated – thus 1:1 communication is giving way to 1:N collaboration. This has interesting implications when deciding the priority of implementing PBX / unified communications capabilities (that enable 1:1 calls) or conferencing solutions (that enable 1:N collaboration).
The breadth and depth of the conferencing experience itself is expanding as users learn to take advantage of additional collaborative capabilities.
While the traditional audio conference was the baseline a decade ago, the baseline has now shifted to an audio conference with integrated web collaboration, optionally augmented with integrated personal video conferencing and increasingly started within a unified communication (UC) client. This shift is in full swing: users report that more than half (51%) of their meeting calls now use integrated audio and web conferencing4. What are the implications of these trends on stand-alone audio
conferencing? Here are four:
• Toll free dial-in is becoming less relevant. Due to the increase in use of mobile phones, which often include an “unlimited nationwide”
dialing plan, the use of softphones, which circumvent the phone network by riding over a data network or the commodity Internet, and availability of flat rate nationwide toll calling - incurring per-minute long distance charges is becoming increasingly rare.
• Joining an audio conference can be effortless. The leading
conferencing services provide calendar plug-ins (Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.) which create a conference call link that is automatically included in each meeting invitation. When the
scheduled meeting time arrives, each participant can simply click on a “join meeting” link in the meeting description and connect to the conference via automated dial-in, VoIP using a softphone, or optional (extra-cost) dial-out. This same experience can be extended to workflow applications such as Salesforce.com by any developer using APIs provided by the conferencing service.
• The conferencing user experience (UX) is becoming easier.
Smartphones and PC / laptops with softphones can present the user with graphical controls to join, control their participation in, and host
the conference – thus making obscure telephone keypad commands a thing of the past. No need to remember to “press *8” to mute, just click on or touch the “mute” icon.
• Most audio calls today include a web conference. With the demand for conference calls increasing and a majority of meetings shifting to integrated audio and web conferencing, it makes sense to provide a
“join the web conference” link with every scheduled audio conference.
New Criteria for Selecting an Audio Conferencing Provider
With the increasing use of integrated audio and web conferencing, organizations of all sizes should consider purchasing their stand-alone audio conferencing from a provider that offers integrated audio and web conferencing services. A number of efficiencies can be gained.
Purchasing will have one vendor to manage and can reduce costs by combining the organization’s conferencing volume under a single supplier. IT costs can be reduced by having only one solution to deploy and manage to the user base. From a user perspective, a single set of login credentials / PINs / dial-in numbers can be used to access either audio-only or web conferences, and there is a single solution to use – which reduces confusion and enables users to get into their meetings sooner.
The following criteria can be used as an aid when considering an integrated audio and web conferencing provider with an eye towards back-filling an organization’s stand-alone audio conferencing needs:
• Unlimited, “all you can use” audio conferencing. Look for a plan that does not impose per-minute charges for toll dial-in or Internet
softphone connections. Flat-fee plans make budget planning easy and removes any cost barriers that can potentially discourage increased use.
• Put toll-free dial-in on hold. With the increased use of cell phones (with nationwide dialing plans) and Internet softphone connections, having a toll-free number – which is usually provided at extra cost – is not as important as it used to be.
• Dial-out has its downside too. While the option to have the
conference dial-out to participants can be a nice-to-have feature, it usually comes with a per-call cost – which effectively negates the flat- fee advantage.
• International presence. Depending on your organization, having in- country numbers available to save international dialing costs may well be a requirement.
• Supports telephone keypad controls. Be sure traditional stand-alone audio conferences can still be hosted and controlled using a telephone keypad.
• Offers softphones and smartphone apps. The same client applications that users will install to host web conferences should be useable with audio-only calls – and, by displaying graphical controls, make audio calls easier to manage and escalate to web conferences.
• Works with your workflow. Look for integration with your organization’s meeting scheduling system (Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.). Other application integrations that may be considered include UC (Microsoft Lync, etc.) and CRMs (Salesforce, etc.).
Once the move to a single provider is completed, users that were
previously provided with access to audio-only conferencing accounts will still have this legacy capability – but will be enabled to host web
conferences as well. As these users discover and take advantage of their expanded conferencing capabilities, productivity across the organization will increase once more.
About Wainhouse Research
Wainhouse Research, www.wainhouse.com, is an independent market research firm that focuses on critical issues in the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C), including applications in distance education and e-Learning. The company conducts multi-client and custom research studies, consults with end users on key implementation issues, publishes white papers and market statistics, and delivers public and private seminars as well as speaker presentations at industry group meetings. Wainhouse Research publishes a variety of studies that cover all aspects of UC&C, and the free newsletter, The Wainhouse Research Bulletin.
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About the Authors
Andrew H. Nilssen is a Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research where he manages the firm’s coverage of audio and web conferencing solutions. Andy has been analyzing the rich media conferencing market for well over a decade. He previously held management positions in marketing, product management, and market research for PictureTel, Sun Microsystems, and two start-ups. Andy has over 30 years of experience in bringing high-technology offerings to market, holds B.S.E.E. and M.B.A.
degrees from the Univ. of New Hampshire, and has two ease-of-use related patents. Andy can be reached at [email protected].
Marc F. Beattie is a Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research where his area of expertise is hosted and managed collaboration services. He has authored public and private reports on product strategies, distribution structures, emerging technologies and industry applications and regularly consults with users, established vendors, emerging companies, and the financial community. Prior to joining WR in 1999, Marc was an early member of PictureTel and Polycom where he held positions in product management, business development, and sales management, and spent 13 years working within the industry. Marc can be reached at [email protected].
1 WR WW End User Survey of Conferencing Services 2013
2 WR Audio Conferencing Services Market Sizing and Forecast Studies
3 WR WW End User Survey of Conferencing Services 2013
4 WR WW End User Survey of Conferencing Services 2013
