Today Mary Meeker and her colleagues at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers released their much anticipated annual report, 2018 Internet Trends. Internet Trends is “…essentially the state of the union for the technology industry,” says TechCrunch. Its lead author, Mary Meeker, is a partner at KPCB and one of the most visionary and successful venture capitalists in the world.

In the report, Meeker focuses on Zoom in the Enterprise Software section. She explains how “Enterprise Messaging Threads” bring together information, teams, context, and history for greater productivity in the enterprise. We are honored to be mentioned among Slack, Dropbox, and Intercom as leading the charge to visually bring teams together.

2018 Internet Trends references a study that our Zoom research team recently completed. In the study, we set out to understand how the use of video communications (specifically Zoom) can impact a company’s productivity and culture. Research by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business showed that only 15% of businesses surveyed said their firm’s corporate culture was where it needed to be. Company culture can have a huge impact on workplace happiness, productivity, and ultimately, success.

At Zoom, we aspire to not just have reliable and innovative technology, but to change the way you work. As you can see above, the report shared that a large portion of our customers see their culture become more collaborative and productive, and have more openness to remote working when they deploy Zoom.

Internet Trends gets to the heart of our research, but we thought we’d take this chance to share a few more details. Several things surprised us as we tried to understand the intersection of culture, productivity, and technology.

-High growth companies experienced a more drastic impact from video. The majority of the benefits outlined above were even more pronounced in high growth companies. Intuitively this makes sense because high growth companies often leverage speed and increased collaboration as ways to gain an advantage over larger, slower-moving competitors.

-Saving time can have a major impact on productivity. Over 83% of attendees say it’s faster starting a meeting with Zoom than with their previous solution. While this might not seem like a big deal, if technology is cumbersome to use, your workers feel a negative productivity impact. A common theme we saw in the research can be summarized in one response from a research participant. When asked about how Zoom has positively impact their culture, they said, “Spending less time trying to get a meeting started and more time actually meeting.”

-Seeing people face-to-face increases understanding. In the same study, we found out that companies using Zoom see an 85% increase in video usage. The faceless conference call has been a way of life at work for decades, but it seems that workers are seeing the impact of meeting face-to-face virtually. An example of this was a comment from a participant who described their preference for face-to-face communication as follows, “More face-to-face causes more fruitfulness. Less wasted email communication. More collaboration. More inclusive.”

– Workers want to increase the flow of information. Logistically, sharing information with the entire company live over video has been challenging and expensive. Many Zoom customers have shifted large meetings or town halls to Zoom or a virtual/in-person hybrid. Zoom makes it easy for people to join from anywhere in the world from any device. Many of our customers have showed us how now they are more willing to bring in people that are outside of the office or even the floor they sit, as connecting with someone over video becomes almost as easy as asking the person next to you a question.

– Flexibility has a positive impact on culture. Many participants in the study explained that they have more flexibility when using Zoom since they can take a meeting on their drive home, or include someone from another office that they might not have before. One participant said, “Projects are run more efficiently now that telecommuting is not an excuse to miss meetings.”

As we look to the future, we will continue to focus on creating a positive impact on our customers’ cultures, productivity, and workflows. If you’d like to see how Zoom can help your company, please sign up for a 1-1 customized demo with a product specialist today.