But does collaboration help my business? In short, yes.

Baseline‘s Corinne Bernstein wrote this week about recent numbers supporting the business case for collaboration tools from a Frost & Sullivan study sponsored by Cisco and Verizon called “Meetings Around the World II: Charting a Course of Advanced Collaboration.” The study affirms what we’ve always thought to be true – collaboration means better business. Tools that make it easier to communicate and work across time zones, locations and departments will experience improved performance by making it easier for employees to work together to execute against goals and innovate.

According to the nearly 3,700 people surveyed, “nearly three-fourths of the companies that deployed collaboration tools said they experienced better performance, compared with less than half of the companies that did not.”

Bernstein also highlights that that big business impact of collaboration tools is found in “business-critical processes” in departments such as sales, research & development and marketing. This makes sense – these are all departments that need quick feedback and response from coworkers who may be working from a separate office or timezone.

As tech innovations such as virtual conferences and SaaS-based tools become ubiquitous in corporations across the globe, we’re sure to continue to uncover and realize the true business benefit not just of these tools, but of collaboration as a whole. It’s something we see across departments within companies across nearly all industries – from manufacturing to insurance.

This isn’t the first time we’ve highlighted a study on collaboration and it probably won’t be the last. We’d like to hear your views on collaboration, collaboration tools and how you have experienced the current evolution in the way to do business – collaboratively.