Over the last few years the practices of web conferencing and collaboration have become somewhat mainstream yet a train of thought has developed in which collaboration tools have been seen as applicable in the main to large enterprises. This is a profound misconception.

Collaboration tools are as appropriate for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as they are for the larger firms. In fact it could be argued that collaboration tools are more suited to SMEs as they give them the ability to adopt more streamlined processes, increase the breadth of the organisation and increase effectiveness without draining too much valuable inhouse resources.

The aim of this whitepaper will be to investigate what collaboration tools comprise, their typical running costs and the benefits that they can deliver to SMEs. It will look at the infrastructure issues that SMEs will face and the way in which SMEs can overcome these and use collaboration tools to improve their business performance.