Web meeting usage soars under fuel and travel cost pressures

Online meeting company Netviewer says it has seen a 40 per cent year on year increase in the use of its online meeting tools, which customer feedback indicates is strongly linked to the rise in fuel and transport costs across Europe. A total of 91.9m minutes of meetings were held online between January and July 2008, compared to 65.5m minutes for the same period in 2007.

Web meeting usage soars under fuel and travel cost pressures
Millions of extra online meeting minutes consumed as businesses go on an online efficiency drive.
Karlsruhe, September 8, 2008 – Online meeting company Netviewer says it has seen a 40 per cent year on year increase in the use of its online meeting
tools, which customer feedback indicates is strongly linked to the rise in fuel and transport costs across Europe. A total of 91.9m minutes of meetings were held online between January and July 2008, compared to 65.5m minutes for the same period in 2007.
“High fuel prices, climbing airline fares and fears of a slowdown, are driving companies to look for ways to work more efficiently”, said Dr. Andreas Schweinbenz, founder and CEO of Netviewer. “People now understand that with a standard PC or laptop, they can have effective meetings online, enabling them to replace variable travel costs with a fixed monthly fee. When you also consider that meeting online lets you have more productive meetings in a day by cutting wasted travel time and reduces your carbon footprint, it is easy to see why we are continuing to see such strong growth.”

Netviewer customers use the company’s tools for a range of meetings from sales, to customer support and project management. They are able to effectively
collaborate remotely with groups of colleagues and business partners from wherever they are. Netviewer enables them to share their computer screens to
show documents and applications, talk via the built in VoIP service, see each other on video via webcam and transfer files when needed. Craig Hodges, Account Director at Apollo Research who uses Netviewer says, “Netviewer is helping us to sell, enabling us to go after more client companies internationally, something we could not otherwise do cost effectively, due to the need for lengthy overseas trips. So far we’ve won over 20 clients using Netviewer; more than half of which would not have been won without being able to have online meetings.” He added, “We have also found that if a prospective customer turns down a face-to-face meeting, offering a short online briefing is often accepted. This helps us make the most of the leads we receive.”

The latest statistics from Netviewer also indicate that the average meeting length has grown over the last year, indicating that online meetings are being used for more detailed discussions.

About Netviewer
Founded 2001 in Karlsruhe, Netviewer (www.netviewer.com) is Europe's leading
provider of real-time collaboration software with currently over 280 employees
worldwide. The Netviewer service enables users to view each other's PC screen
simultaneously in order to work on all kinds of documents, calculations or graphs
together - regardless of where the participants are located. Real-time collaboration
and communication via the internet significantly reduce the time and cost of travel
and thus increase productivity.
More than 14,000 corporations and SMEs from over 55 countries, including Bayer,
BMW, Ernst & Young, SAP, Siemens, and Swisscom all rely on the ease of use the
Netviewer tools offer. With headquarters in Germany, Netviewer has subsidiaries in
Switzerland, France, The United Kingdom, The United States, The Netherlands,
Austria, Spain, Italy and Sweden.
More information:
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