Datamonitor Survey

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In September 2007, Datamonitor conducted an online survey of Fujitsu Services employees across EMEA to examine the environmental, economic and social impact of conferencing within the organisation and to explore the opportunities to replace in-person meetings that require travel with virtual meeting alternatives. Datamonitor’s analysis of the survey results reveals the following findings:

• Travelling to meetings is detrimental to the environment, costly to Fujitsu Services and inconvenient to the workforce, yet it is often avoidable.
• Virtual meetings are unified virtual communication and collaboration sessions that include audio conferencing, web presentation, application sharing, instant messaging and, optionally, video conferencing, in a single on-demand application that is delivered through a standard web browser.
• The integration of audio and web capabilities in one multimedia interface allows Fujitsu Services employees to meet remotely with colleagues, customers and suppliers all over the globe from their desktop.

Datamonitor believes that additional cost and emissions savings could be made if the following groups commit to a higher rate of travel reduction:

Fujitsu Services employee communities that participate in an above average number of in-person meetings;

Fujitsu Services employees in those countries in which replacing in-person meetings with virtual meetings is less common.

• The Fujitsu Services employees surveyed agree that audio conference calls are practically as successful as in-person meetings

The environmental and business motivations for reducing travel are complementary, and both the environment and Fujitsu Services's business would benefit from a sustained reduction in business travel.

Virtual meetings can be considered as a form of telecommuting, and the survey results regarding the frequency of and motivation behind virtual meetings confirm that their positive impact upon employee productivity, satisfaction and work/family balance is due to an increased control over business meeting arrangements.