The business world is starting to embrace VR as essential to the strategies that impact bottom line results. And when that kind of new tech adoption kicks into gear, the message is clear: You need to get on board to stay competitive. Here’s just a handful of ways brands are leveraging virtual reality.
Training
There are 200 Walmart Academy centers across America, and the company plans to roll out VR training solutions to all of them by the end of 2017 to train new associates. It’s an investment in their employees that saves time and money, as well as boosting efficiency.
Maybe that’s why STRIVR, the company Walmart teamed up with, has Fortune 100 companies for clients, and even the Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals, and Minnesota Vikings.
Virtual environments can also be used to conduct role-playing scenarios and are a lower-cost option to the company retreats where someone always goes home grumpy and more rope climbing than training refresh gets done.
Data visualization
You don’t like enormous, slow-loading, unnavigable spreadsheets. Your brain doesn’t like them either. Because of the way your big brain processes information, using virtual representation of data makes it far easier to grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns. With VR, visualization becomes interactive, allowing you to watch as data is added or subtracted, and scenarios change, keeping you ahead of the curve and highlighting new opportunities to leap on.
Product development
Wish you could design a prototype like it was made of Legos or clay? In other words, build, experiment, tear apart, and rebuild and rebuild until it looks perfect? Companies are prototyping in VR right now, now that the technology has developed so it’s faster, and looks almost as good as the real thing, at a significantly lower cost.
Testing also becomes risk-free and low-cost, two phrases that brands hold close to their hearts.
Communication
Remote workers gonna work remotely. And while video chatting can help maintain a feeling of presence even when you’re absent, face-to-face meetings are not as efficient or effective, and often far slower. So companies are using virtual worlds for meetings as a way to not just boost communication, but make employees feel more connected, when they can “see” and interact with their co-workers.
Those meetings can also reduce travel costs significantly, when someone from the Paris office doesn’t have to fly in every week for meetings any more, and employees from all over the world can connect in one virtual room without leaving their real live office, or you can meet with a client and even offer them a 360-degree view of a product or share visualized data in a slick interface.
Cross-industry innovation
In the healthcare world, virtual reality has changed the game for professionals. Things like surgery simulation can teach them new skills, or let them refresh old ones, without damage to life and limb. Patients have been treated effectively for debilitating phobias, and face-to-face consultations become more convenient and effective.
In education, large groups of students interact with each other and the environment in a virtual landscape. VR can present complex data in accessible ways, making it easier and more fun to learn.
The entertainment industry will not be left behind. Games is the first thing most people think of when VR comes up. But virtual reality is offering the possibility of virtual museums with interactive exhibits, galleries, theme parks and discovery centers, where you can engage with the exhibits in whole new ways.
Right now, creating content for virtual reality is kind of like trying to catch a black cat in a dark room while wearing waders. Time, costs and technological limitations are your stumbling blocks. So don’t miss this VB Live event, with exclusive access to the latest research from VB insight, to learn how to kick the blocks out of the way and get to business.