Half of businesses would go virtual to beat credit crunch: survey
Published:01-December-2008
By Steve Evans
Is remote working the way forward?
As the credit crunch continues to bite across the world, a new survey by OnePoll has revealed that 43% of UK small and medium sized enterprises would consider abandoning their office space to operate entirely online.
The survey was carried out for web conferencing and remote working technology company Yuuguu and spoke to 2,000 SMBs.
It found that 72% of companies are already planning to make cutbacks to help them survive during the recession. Giving up expensive office space and the associated overheads would be one way of reducing costs, the survey said.
Other areas that companies are earmarking for cutbacks include unnecessary travel, which 38% said they wanted to reduce. This can include travel to and from meetings that could in fact be carried out online.
40% of SMBs said they believed that half of their meetings could be conducted remotely, and 29% were already using virtual meetings, where team members communicate via web conferences.
Reducing marketing spend, changing suppliers, reducing staff hours and cancelling or delaying new initiatives or projects were also mentioned as possible ways of saving money during the credit crisis.
Anish Kapoor, founder of Yuuguu, said: “Remote working is definitely on the rise, and virtual meetings are a key part of saving money. Users are giving presentations, sharing confidential documents and working together on the same documents without having to leave their desks. This is already making a major impact in terms of productivity gains and time and hassle reduced due to unnecessary travel.”
