Immersive technologies have the power to revolutionize the way enterprises work & communicate as organizations today have started looking for new ways to streamline processes as well as build safer & more productive workplaces, & methods in order to capture attention & connect with customers.

The 1st step to explore how immersive technology could be successfully adopted in order to revolutionize your businesses is to understanding the potential impact of virtual, augmented and mixed reality and how they work. And here are the top five benefits of introducing immersive technology into a business environment that would help us in understanding this inspirational journey.

Connecting with customers

The consumer habits are changing in today’s digital age, right from how & where they access media, to how they perceive & associate with brands & this shift in having a profound effect on marketing & advertising activity, from attracting new audiences through to retaining the present customer bases. Therefore, brands can set themselves apart & connect with customers in new & exciting ways by embracing immersive technologies and a few of the approaches include:

Focusing more on the customer experience is highly imperative. Since Experiential marketing is one of the keys to businesses for building strong relationships with customers, immersive tech can help in augmenting it since it has the power to make customers physically connect with businesses, optimizing brand engagement.

Providing practical solutions is the key. At times customers would want to know how using the products & services will help them reap the benefits prior to making a purchasing decision. And this is one important case where immersive experiences can provide a quick & simple way to give audiences the chance to ‘try before they buy’.

Offering a gimmick to stand out from the other players in the crowd. For instance, let us look at the Pepsi bus stop marketing campaign. In 2014, this quirky short YouTube clip of a high quality and unique AR expensive grabbed the headlines & became one of the viral hits with over 4.7 million views on YouTube in less than a week.

Accelerating product design & development

Finding out new ways to design & develop products faster & also in a more cost-effective way is one of the driving forces for business innovations across diverse industries. By adopting immersive technologies, firms can augment the product development process & get products to market in less time.

Advances in Virtual Realty means that the R&D teams can fail fast & learn quickly. However, this is made possible only through innovative platforms like Future Visual’s VISIONxR. This renders collaborative virtual spaces for testing concepts & developing prototypes, without having to invest time & money in physical prototypes. Conventional workflows are thrown out the virtual window as interdependent processes can be carried out parallelly, significantly augmenting the development process. Furthermore, by being freed from expensive as well as time-intensive physical design processes, R&D teams are offered more freedom for thinking differently, testing new ideas & being innovative.

Employee training & development process

A key area that immersive technology has been embraced by businesses is for work-related training & there are numerous tangible merits in developing VR training programmes. These comprise rendering a safe, but realistic space for practical training activity. For several businesses, hands-on-training is not possible owing to safety issues. Therefore, by re-creating a virtual workplace environment, employees are able to learn as well as practice new skills without much risk.

Not only is VR training more impactful, but it is also a cost-effective option. Direct cost savings comprise eliminating the requirement for employees for traveling & reducing the cost of additional downtime & indirect cost benefits from possessing a more skilled & efficient workforce.

Enhancing efficiency

Immersive tech can also be embedded into everyday work routines for enhancing productivity & making workplaces safer & is it is being adopted across manufacturing, distribution as well as engineering landscape. For instance, AR is being leveraged by organizations such as Siemens as an operational support tool in helping the maintenance engineers in the field by relaying technical information via AR display screens. Other organizations like Amazon are also leveraging AR in conjunction with IoT devices in order to help employees manage their stock controls, & navigate their way around warehouse spaces.

Attracting & retaining talent

Immersive technologies can also enable organizations in not just attracting but also retaining the best talents. With numerous firms finding it hard to recruit the right employees, global recruitment drives as well as remote team working are an increasingly familiar business reality. Today, geographical location is increasingly becoming less significant since ensuring teams possessing the right people with the right skills becomes a key driving force behind – wherever they might be located across geographies. Technologies that include VR/AR can provide practical help for facilitating this shift towards remote working, by rendering team members with the tools as well as spaces for meeting & working together effectively.

In a nutshell

Immersive technologies possess the potential of streamlining business operations & engaging with employees as well as customers in new & innovative ways. However, recognizing the benefits of immersive technologies, along with a strong business case for adoption as well as a clear vision of what technology will work for businesses is the winning formula.