THE CHALLENGE - A client approached Frost & Sullivan's research and consulting teams because it was engaged in product planning for its next generation Web conferencing solution and was particularly interested in knowing whether or not VoIP would be a viable direction to pursue in the product. If it was a viable direction, the company wanted to know what features should be incorporated into future products. The company wanted to know not only what the base felt about the current generation product, but also what its competitors' customers felt about VoIP in Web conferencing. In addition, our client wanted a comprehensive analysis of its competitors' solutions to determine where customer needs were being met and where needs were unmet. Frost & Sullivan's challenge was to discover awareness of, attitudes about, and if possible, preferences for IP-enabled features in Web conferencing and collaboration solutions.

THE PROCESS - Frost & Sullivan began by working with the client's team to develop a comprehensive questionnaire instrument to uncover consumer attitudes and awareness for VoIP in Web conferencing and to develop profiles of the types of features that VoIP Web conferencing users knew about, and those that were used, unused, and desired. The questionnaire was administered to 320 individuals, and the data was run through a series of analyses to develop the awareness, attitude, and usage profiles. Concurrently, primary research on each competitor's product team was conducted to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions, as well as to discover the development roadmaps and marketing strategies. Both sets of data were combined to identify the opportunities and gaps that the company could exploit in its next generation Web conferencing release.

THE SOLUTION - The final report presented the data, conclusions, and strategies that Frost & Sullivan felt would best position our client's next release to capture market share from its competitors and retain the loyalty of its customer base. In addition to these strategies, we also developed a brief White Paper highlighting the client's thought leadership in the Web conferencing arena. Today, our client is using this document as collateral in its direct marketing program.