The table below shows results from a Forrester Research study of the use of collaboration software in companies in North America and Europe. The numbers show that 64% of businesses realize between zero and four benefits from deploying collaboration software in their organizations, with the top benefits being reduction in travel costs and improvement in corporate communication.

At Discovery Energy Utility Audits the use of collaboration software has improved productivity by 275%, as measured by work hours necessary to finish utility bill audits and implement the cost reduction measures and process refunds from the utilities.

While many of the criteria of improvement analysed in the study can be found as positive changes in our organization, maybe the biggest benefit of the use of collaboration software has been on corporate culture. During the process of adapting to the collaboration software Discovery Energy changed from having a “folders mindset”, where a folder is passed from one department to the next as the project progresses; to a “collaborative effort mindset”, where the roles of different departments are clear from the beginning of the project, with every team member doing their part independent of “ownership” of the project.

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