It has now been officially acknowledged – the world is facing a serious economic setback; inflation is rising and the future seems unclear. Companies try to react and cut costs accordingly in order to be able to survive the harsh reality. But what can you do if you are not the size of GM and cannot afford to cut 10% of a 40,000-strong workforce? Small and medium-sized businesses seem very limited in terms of the savings that they are able to make.

Not necessarily, a new survey shows. It studied over 200 SMEs around the world, 73% of which stated that they have at least partially managed to cut costs in response to the global financial crisis. Here are some of the conclusions from this survey:

• Increased fuel and commodity costs have affected 80% of the small and medium-sized enterprises and has forced them to change their business practices.
• 73% of the firms have taken countermeasures, such as reducing office premises and introducing flexi hours, hot-desking, and home working.
• As a result, more people prefer to work from home and thus save transport costs.

While home working (also known as ‘telecommuting’) has often been referred to as the future of business, the present economic situation has accelerated the process and a growing number of professionals prefer to stay at home and work from there.

A recent development that has helped this process is the widespread popularity of the so-called ‘corporate instant messaging’. While phone and e-mail are still preferred means of business communication, instant messengers especially designed to meet the needs of businesses with many telecommuters or remote partners and clients are gaining widespread popularity, as they prove to be faster, cheaper, and more efficient that both phone and e-mail.

Brosix Corporate Instant Messenger is one of the most popular such solutions that were recently introduced and that a growing number of SMEs are now using. Brosix is a powerful and easy-to-use instant messenger which allows clients to create their own business instant messaging networks and organize a complete user selection which can be managed through an online control panel.

By using a corporate IM such as Brosix, firms can ensure the authenticity of network users and rely on highly secure communication for strict and confidential business purposes – which is indeed the main difference between a business IM and a free public messenger such as ICQ or MSN. Thus, SMEs get an optimized work process with additional features.

Brosix was founded in 2006 to develop simple, easy-to-use, secure communication tools for home and enterprises. Brosix goal is to enable people and organizations to benefit from innovative instant messaging and other Internet technologies without making substantial investments in hardware, software and infrastructure.