The coronavirus and curfews mean that the majority of the digital sector currently works from home (national: 78 percent, international: 94 percent). Team meetings usually take place via video calls in the home office and quick questions are asked via chat. Due to the innovative and interconnected working structures of the digital economy, tools for cross-location collaboration were already widespread before the Corona pandemic (national: 72 percent, international: 78 percent). These applications are now in continuous use. The tools usually combine several functions. The three most important for home office were tested in the current DMEXCO trend survey: Text and file management, video and chat.
Google Drive is the most popular collaboration tool among the entire DMEXCO community for editing and storing documents across multiple locations. About two thirds (68 percent) of the international respondents use Google’s file hosting service for collaboration within the company (41 percent nationally). The project management software Jira is also frequently used, followed by Confluence and Trello.
Video calls: Teams, Zoom and Skype dominate
Video calls are also commonplace in the home office. This is where the preferences of the German-speaking and international communities differ the most: 45 percent of participants from the DACH region use Microsoft Teams for this purpose, 41 percent use Skype, which is also part of Microsoft, while Zoom is the most popular video tool in the international area (53 percent). Google Hangout is used less frequently in the German-speaking region (20 percent), but is frequently used internationally (43 percent).
The chat function of Google Hangout, on the other hand, is less common (national: 12 percent, international: 22 percent). The top three chat tools of the DMEXCO community are Microsoft Teams, Slack and Skype. While internationally Slack (48 percent) is the most popular application, in the DACH region Teams (40 percent) is ahead, as is already the case with video tools. Because Windows is still the most dominant operating system in this country, Microsoft also seems to benefit in the cloud-based collaboration tools.
And since the entire digital industry assumes that home office will be accepted by significantly more companies even after the crisis (national: 85 percent, international: 78 percent), the increased use of collaboration tools should continue in the future.
Milko Malev, Director Communications & Media of DMEXCO, sums up: “Our current trend survey shows that the digital economy was already using digital tools for collaboration before the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis is now shifting market shares and creating opportunities for new players. As remote working will continue to play a greater role in the future, collaboration tools are winners of the crisis and are becoming standard in digital communication and collaboration – even in industries that have not used them in the past. The increasing importance of these tools was already apparent at DMEXCO in 2019”.
About the survey:
The non-representative DMEXCO Trend Survey was conducted by DMEXCO as an online survey in March 2020. Responses from 527 national and 305 international participants from the DMEXCO community were evaluated. This group is composed of visitors, exhibitors, speakers and journalists.
Image material for DMEXCO is available online at https://go.dmexco.com/press-downloads-dmexco.
About #DMEXCO
DMEXCO is the meeting place and a community for key players in digital business, marketing, and innovation. We bring together industry leaders, marketing and media professionals as well as technology and innovation drivers at a central location to jointly define the digital agenda. DMEXCO offers an entire ecosystem of lectures by international speakers, exhibitions of top brands and practical seminars – all with a view toward digital trends and future business potentials.
Around 38,000 visitors, almost 1,000 exhibitors and more than 700 speakers from all over the world make DMEXCO the top event for the industry. In Cologne, we set the benchmark as the network and business platform for the digital economy. Decision-makers come for further training and are inspired, establish contacts and conclude deals. DMEXCO — where tomorrow’s digital business happens today.
Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW) e.V. – with the special participation of the Circle of Online Marketers (OVK) – is the ideational and professional partner of DMEXCO and the owner of the DMEXCO brand. DMEXCO is organized by Koelnmesse.
DMEXCO 2020 will take place in Cologne on September 23 and 24, 2020. All information, along with photos, videos and the original sounds of DMEXCO 2019, can be found at https://dmexco.com, www.facebook.com/dmexco, www.twitter.com/dmexco and www.youtube.com/dmexcovideo.
