Sandra Bergmeir
While the consumer world is still searching for a virtual reality ‘killer app’ and waiting for better and cheaper hardware, we see businesses clearly understanding the value of VR and act on it today. Especially in the marketing community, business trade publications such as B2B Marketing, Chief Marketer, or MarketScale report on how “VR is already having a big impact on marketing in 2017” (MarketScale), and we can confirm that. Having been pioneering VR technology for over a decade, we at WorldViz are excited to be moving from an evangelizing role to our core strength of consulting companies eager to adopt VR as the medium of the future for marketing, sales, and training.
What has changed and why are so many more businesses ready to dive in? We think that the consumer hype around VR has created the level of awareness that corporate decision makers realize they will fall behind the technology curve if they ignore VR. When they experience a WorldViz VizMove VR system for the first time, and meet someone else live in VR through our Viziblecollaboration solution, they viscerally understand VR’s unique ability to make someone feel “present”, and a light bulb goes on:
The sales and marketing manager realizes how they can invite customers from around the globe to captivating product presentations; the human resources executive starts thinking about company-wide employee training with much better engagement and retention rates; and the VP of Product Design gets excited about how much faster teams can make decisions, and how much more confident they will be about those decisions when they all meet in VR around the same 3D prototype they examine and approve collaboratively.
As we’ve worked with many large corporations over the years, we distilled distinct use cases that are common across many of our clients: Aside from sales and marketing professionals seeing gold in presenting products using VR SaaS sales solutions like Vizible, in research and development it’s the better experimental control, replication, and ability to create the perfect stimulus that sets VR apart from any other medium.
In architecture, engineering and construction, it’s about replacing physical with virtual mockups – VR makes that more efficient and improves communication and decision making among teams. In manufacturing, training is improved by better access to prototypes, and manufacturability at desired price points can be better anticipated based on design models.
What’s crucial though in our experience for businesses to successfully optimize systems across these applications – and where many VR startups fail – is deep VR consulting expertise and customized solutions design. VR is far from being a fully streamlined technology yet, and enterprise-scale solutions require precise understanding of what problems exactly need to be solved, and if VR is the right tool to do it.
“We worked directly with WorldViz to customize a relatively complex interactive model. WorldViz was always responsive and professional – willing to go the extra mile. The final product and their on-site setup was exceptional. The utilization of the interactive virtual environment allowed the design team to get immediate and real-time feedback from users. By utilizing the virtual environment, it helped us reach decisions and a consensus earlier within the design process and allowed the project to move forward without additional meetings.”
Jason Schroer, Associate Principal and Senior Vice President, HKS Architects
At WorldViz, we tackle this need for deep consulting by maintaining and growing a team that collectively combines 100+ years of VR experience and includes five PhDs in human psychophysics, behavioral psychology, and computer science. When you first call WorldViz, you will likely be thoroughly interviewed by one of our sales team members, so we exactly understand what problem you are trying to solve, and which of our VR solutions across software tools, motion tracking, 3D headsets, 3D projection systems, and custom 3D art and application design will get you to your goal fastest. We then take this information to our solution architects who work out a comprehensive proposal and quote. Once your solution is thoroughly tested at our technology lab, you will likely get a visit from our solution architects team who will install your gear at your site and give you a full onboarding training on operating your system. And this is often the beginning of a great long-term relationship.
Are you ready to talk to the WorldViz team about VR for your business? Give us a call or email us, and we look forward to meeting you!
