Conversations, Conferencing and Collaboration: An Asia-Pacific investigation of factors influencing the effectiveness of distributed meetings

Foreword In today's economy, the best results are achieved by teams that collaborate on a global scale. We are a world leader in communications technology that enables better collaboration. We believe that better quality, readily available and cost effective tools will always deliver a better, more sustainable outcome. Our partnership with Dolby is testament to our commitment to helping our customers collaborate more efficiently. Working with the University of Cambridge and other leading experts from around the world, we have understood how to reduce barriers in global collaboration. This is valuable insight into how we work together across widespread teams and how best to deal with the challenges. As a leader of a global enterprise myself, I am passionate about the use of collaboration technology. They are critical to the efficiency and success of BT Global Services as they are to many other global businesses. But they only work well when they are simple to use and effective at what they do. Executive Summary Modern technology has made great changes to the way businesses work. In particular, business meetings no longer need to be held face-to-face. People from distant locations can communicate through technology, rather than wasting hours or even days in travelling. But are distributed meetings effective? This report investigates the factors that make a distributed meeting more, or less, effective and makes recommendations about how to improve them. The report examines the factors found in a study of distributed meetings in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, interviews and surveys were conducted with company professionals in both Australia and China. This allowed a rounded picture to be built up of how culturally different countries in this region use distributed working. This study forms part of a global study, which also examined distributed working in the UK and the US [1, 2]. The study investigated both factors to do with the Technology and those associated with the People. It reviewed current literature on the subject and interviewed experts in distributed working and audio conferencing. This was followed by interviews with ten experienced professionals in Australia and ten in China, and an online survey of 100 conferencing technology users in Australia and 100 in China. The research showed that both audio-and video-based conferencing solutions were used on a regular basis, with video interventions being used by more people than audio in the surveyed countries. Video-based solutions were used regularly by 85% …