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Enterprise

4 Ways CMOs Are Transforming Their Marketing Mix with AR

Leading CMOs are using augmented reality (AR) to expand the engagement, awareness, and value around their products. Organizations of all shapes and sizes in the B2B and B2C spaces are differentiating their products and services with AR, but it’s also changing how marketers are pricing, placing, and promoting their products as well. Here are four ways that brands are using AR to transform their marketing mix.

1. Showcasing the product

It’s one thing to tell a customer why your product is different – but it’s another thing to show them. When demonstrating the superior inner workings of a car, auto companies normally remove the vehicle’s separate pieces or physically cut the car in half to show off its various components.

With the help of Visionaries 777, Infiniti created an interactive X-RAY application to help consumers visualize what makes the inner workings of the QX50 unique. Their AR-powered application showcases special components like a VC-Turbo Engine, high strength steel, smart packaging and other features, resulting in an experience that’s more impactful than simply observing an analog model.

Oftentimes differentiating features cannot be seen. Immersive experiences like this make it easier for today’s customers to understand exactly what it is that they’re buying – improving their purchase confidence and thus shortening sales cycles.

2. Justifying the price

Enhancing products with AR increases their inherent value, but many B2B and B2C companies are also using AR-driven product enhancements to differentiate their brand. As a result, customers may be willing to pay more for their products – for both the value of the built-in AR experience and the satisfaction of owning something from an innovative brand.

One example of this is LEGO bringing their Hidden Side LEGO sets to life with gamified, smartphone-driven AR experiences. Adding this digital element creates more entertainment value and helps LEGO engage with customers in new ways, while also showcasing the brand as innovative and forward looking.

3. Changing the place where customers buy

AR-powered virtual product demonstrations help speed sales cycles by enabling customers to experience full-scale versions of physical products on-the-spot, removing the need for follow-up meetings and back and forth shipping. As a result, AR is changing where the purchase journey happens by offering customization and personalization anywhere the customer wants.

There are examples of this happening today across a variety of industries. For retail and automotive consumers, AR offers convenient customization and personalization anywhere and anytime they want.

In the industrial sector, AR enables buyers of built-to-order equipment to place customized “machinery” on their factory floor and reconfigure it as needed before purchasing.

Companies like GSI/AGCO are using augmented reality to visualize storage facility plans on location. This takes the ambiguity out of built-to-order products and allows changes to the project in real-time. Using AR saves potential costs of re-working a project once it’s been built and helps solidify the confidence of expansions down the road.

4. Transforming promotions

Advertisers are increasingly leveraging AR to develop fun, creative experiences that break through the noise. Innovative product promotions can provide a way for brands to reach a new audience, as Burger King’s “Burn that Ad” AR experience does by promising users of their app a free whopper. Imagine your competition’s marketing real estate becoming your marketing real estate by merging the physical and digital worlds!

Quelle:

https://www.ptc.com/en/thingworx-blog/4-ways-cmos-are-transforming-their-marketing-mix-with-augmented-reality

13. Mai 2020 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Where Can AR Have the Greatest Enterprise Impact?

As augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR – collectively mixed reality, or XR) technology and hardware continue to evolve and become more accessible, enterprises are expanding the range of use cases for XR across their organizations. What used to be seen as merely a marketing “gimmick” has evolved to now measurably impact the entire product lifecycle and customer experience.

Here are three critical areas where industry leaders in automotive, transportation, manufacturing, and more are seeing real ROI from interactive, immersive experiences:

More cost-effective and collaborative product design and development

— Since implementing its Collaborative Human Immersive Lab VR solution, Lockheed Martin has seen a tenfold ROI by building products virtually versus physical builds and testing, saving more than $10 million in costs last year with VR-assisted validation.

More efficient and effective maintenance and training

— Taqtile’s Manifest AR solution helped the U.S. Air Force dramatically reduce the number of errors made by its recruits on aircraft maintenance tasks to virtually zero.

— In a specific VR training pilot for the T6 Multivan, Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge (Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles) found the potential of reducing training time by 50 percent over conventional on-the-job training. The pilot also revealed that applying VR can save as much as one-third of the training cost. More engaging sales and marketing

— A real-time 3D activation by Visionaries 777 for INFINITI increased tradeshow booth leads and retail engagement by 35 percent.

Real-time 3D: Powering immersive XR experiences

Every manufacturer across the automotive and transportation, consumer products, and industrial equipment industries needs to design, engineer, produce, sell, service, and maintain products. Many processes and technologies, such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and 3D design software, have helped streamline these workflows.

Until recently, real-time 3D – technology for creating interactive and immersive visualizations for AR, VR, and other platforms in which virtual objects look and behave like reality – was largely deployed for siloed visualization use cases, often peripheral to core product development. Most companies felt that 3D design and engineering tools sufficed for visualization, especially since preparing CAD data for real-time 3D required many cumbersome steps for data conversion and adjustments.

All that has changed as real-time 3D technology has become significantly easier to use. This can be attributed to multiple factors: Data preparation is now almost fully automated; integrations with 3D design tools have improved; visual scripting tools were introduced to reduce the need for programming experience; millions of assets are now available for download to speed up development; and more professionals are trained in this technology.

Now, we’ve crossed the tipping point for scaling real-time 3D. Most automotive OEMs and many manufacturers have started deploying real-time 3D for AR and VR in a more integrated way across their workflows and value chain – for not one, but hundreds of use cases.

By bringing interactivity and immersion to the entire product development lifecycle, real-time 3D experiences in VR and AR unlock synergies across departments, ultimately accelerating the product lifecycle. From initial product design and development to equipment maintenance and training, and all the way through to how consumers interact and purchase your products, real-time 3D is used to create and simulate digital twins that enable a new world of immersive visualization and simulation experiences.

For instance, with new industrial equipment or vehicles, design and engineering teams can reduce time for design review and optimization with interactive 3D models, while training and marketing teams can leverage these real-time renderings to commence their respective functions without the traditional delays of waiting for physical prototypes of static 3D models.

Many more synergies and benefits are unlocked when companies establish a real-time 3D end-to-end workflow for creating, building, and monetizing their products. These include significant cost and time savings, fewer errors, faster time to market, and increased efficiency – impacts that are only expected to grow as additional use cases and applications are realized in coming years.

Full Report

Quelle:

Where Can AR Have the Greatest Enterprise Impact?

12. Mai 2020 0 comment

Examples

Unlocking The Potential Of Enterprise XR

How are companies investing in, implementing, and evaluating the ROI on VAR in enterprise markets?

On Thursday May 5th, Amanda Clarida, Manager of Learning Design and Development at Volvo Trucks; Jeremy Balkin, Head of Innovation at HSBC Bank USA; and Szczepan Baran, Head of Emerging Technologies at Novartis, spoke at the online XRIntelligence conference on the adoption challenges of XR for enterprise.

Volvo Trucks and Novartis began to implement VR into their workflow in 2017, and in the same year, HSBC began market research in the VAR (VR & AR) market.

“We wanted to give [our team] the best opportunity to see and interact with the trucks and products and we considered Virtual Reality to be the best option at the time,” said Clarida. Volvo initially used VR as a delivery platform for training sales teams on new truck models. Even then, not everyone could attend the bigger launches that the company was planning. In the last few years, Volvo has also used VR for testing and in the product design pipeline, in addition to training.

At Novartis, the pharmaceutical company is consistently monitoring emerging technologies that can expedite the go-to-market process for new medical products. Beginning with the early stages of R&D, chemists and biologists used VR to look at proteins and how they would interact with certain molecules.

“We also used Virtual Reality later on in the development of medicines for production and teaching associates aseptic procedures. That was challenging to do in physical environments. Doing it in virtual environments helped us to expedite training and medicine delivery to patients,” said Baran.

Telepresence is another use case that Novartis is exploring through their partnership with Microsoft, using the Microsoft HoloLens. In a basic application, telepresence can bring together key stakeholders to make medical decisions, and then, when paired with AI, databases, and the ability to collect images and videos, Baran predicts that in two to three years we will be able to use predictive analytics on this information for far more advanced decision making techniques.

After use cases, the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue is how much budget is going towards the implementation of XR in enterprise applications and what is the state of the market?

“Digital technologies require pretty significant investment, not just financial but also the expertise,” said Baran. In pharmaceuticals, the bar is also high from a regulatory aspect. For this reason, the company has focused on preclinical implementation to show real value and impact in the earlier stages where there is slightly less regulation.

At HSBC, their innovation team is closely monitoring the value, risks, and disruption of VAR technology in multiple markets. “Fast forward to where we are today, and every company is thinking how do they onboard new staff in a COVID-world where people are working remotely, indefinitely” said Balkin.

In competition with VR there are also other priorities in the digital space for consumer experiences. VR is still competing with desktop and mobile applications for teleconferencing and collaboration. We are seeing a steady rise in the adoption of VR headsets in both the consumer and enterprise markets, although, until more intuitive and high-quality content and tools are available, we will continue to find significantly higher audience numbers attending in 2D formats.

“When you think about allocating resources and budgets, there are a million different priorities and the cost of investment. And, like all technologies and new technologies, there’s diminishing costs as there’s more R&D and adoption,” said Balkin.

Looking at the current adoption rates, specifically at AR in the consumer marketplace, Balkin said that as adoption becomes ubiquitous, companies that do not provide AR experiences will become irrelevant. “These technologies are going to be adopted regardless. In a socially distant world and in a new normal- we don’t know what it’s going to look like- all the more reason why these things are going to be considered very valuable,” he said.

In the past 8 weeks while most of us have been stuck at home, the adoption curves for digital technologies have abruptly changed, supporting the idea that a new normal is upon us. Companies that have been working with immersive technology for a few years are well equipped to expand their VR programs, and across the board, technology adoptions that would usually take five to 10 years are now happening in weeks, “This is one of the positive changes that will come in the industry for new customer experiences,” said Balkin.

Echoing this, Clarida said that we will soon be looking at a new normal that includes more teleconferences, virtual interaction, and investment to reach audiences as consistently as we used to in person. “This could be a really good time to explore these platforms,” she said.

For companies who are looking to invest in VAR for the first time, the cost of entry is far lower. Measuring the ROI can be difficult, although from the perspective of early adopters and researchers of immersive technology such as Volvo, Novartis and HSBC, innovation and market readiness is clear.

Some would say that necessity is the mother of all innovation, while I say that the innovation is here, and a necessity, or crisis, is what will spur the change. It was a pleasure to moderate this panel with Szczepan Baran of Novartis, Jeremy Balkin of HSBC and Amanda Clarida of Volvo Trucks.

Quelle:

Image Credit: Microsoft Corp

https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-oculus-amazon-2020-05-06?open-article-id=13655396&article-title=are-human-sized-hamster-balls-the-future-of-vr-&blog-domain=vrscout.com&blog-title=vrscout

11. Mai 2020 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Key considerations when scaling virtual reality across the enterprise

Currently most large companies and educational institutes have only just started their exploration of virtual reality technology.

Some have engaged third party organisations to develop “one off” applications with no strategic approach, while having some initial success, many are disappointed with the ongoing value.

My team and I have been exploring solutions to ensure we can deploy virtual reality across a large organisation and the applications add value to our current curriculum.

In our research we have see a lot of focus placed on headset hardware and its maturity, but this is only the beginning:

Hardware Maturity

The market has been waiting for headsets to have the necessary features to deliver quality virtual reality content via self-contained unit.

These features include adequate processing power, high resolution, accurate tracking, battery life at an acceptable price point. The Oculus Quest has delivered these five features (and we’ll hopefully see their competitors following their lead). Headsets as cheap as a tablet and requiring minimal ICT support are crucial for any large organisation to consider them as a viable technology tool.

Standalone devices will be the most viable technology option for many organisations. However, PC powered headsets will still be required for more graphically intensive content and it is good to see some great innovation continuing in this space.

Device Management

While not as interesting to many as VR headsets, the ability to manage these devices at scale is crucial for successful and continued adoption. Device management encompasses:

Maintenance and control of the device software, including firmware, OS updates, and network credentials.

Device hygiene, charging and security – this is usually an unidentified issue initially when most organisation begin to explore VR. Shared devices require hygiene solutions; like replace face covers or something more sophisticated like the Clean Box. Charging will become a vital requirement especially with controllers and standalone headsets. Security is important, both device tracking and data security.

User profile management to ensure users have a frictionless onboarding experience which is crucial to adoption. It will also be invaluable for continual engagement.

Sophisticated Content

Current VR content is simplistic, single use experiences with little depth. For users to find ongoing value creators need to begin to develop deeper and more sophisticated content. This includes experiences will replayability, randomisation and gamified profiles which allow users to have true progression and ongoing achievements.

Data and Analytics

Most organisations are still enamoured with hardware tech and 3d simulations. While hardware and content are still important, measurable outcomes are the most valuable component. For an implementation of virtual reality inside an organisation to be successful, data is key. Whether it be for training or marketing, all content should have a data layer capturing both objective and subjective feedback. This should be reviewed and adjusted to ensure the experiences are delivering the expected value for the organisation. By continually edited content an enterprise organisation will continually increase the value of VR.

Developing a comprehensive strategy for virtual reality is critical and requires dedicated resources within an organisation to ensure success.

Quelle:

by Joe Millward, VR Producer & Filmmaker

Key considerations when scaling virtual reality across the enterprise

1. Oktober 2019 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Vive Enterprise Solutions Unit to Help Businesses Expand XR Portfolios

HTC Vive has four headsets geared towards business solutions.

Consumer virtual reality (VR) may have restarted the industry as a whole but solutions for business have become a key part of many immersive companies strategy. Today, HTC Vive has announced a new business unit which aims to help in that endeavour, Vive Enterprise Solutions.

Having launched the HTC Vive Pro Eye and Vive Focus Plus headsets, both squarely aimed at the enterprise market, the new business unit will help companies integrate XR hardware, software, and services for their professional needs.

Vive Enterprise Solutions will address four key areas where enterprises are investing today, Training and Simulation, Design and Visualization; Virtual Collaboration and Location-Based Entertainment and Attractions.

“With enterprise VR rapidly becoming the ‘killer app’ in the industry, we are providing solutions for small to large commercial creators to be successful and solve business needs,” says Daniel O’Brien, Head of Vive Enterprise Solutions, HTC Vive in a statement. “We’re in a unique position to offer enterprises a comprehensive business solution in part due to our own hardware innovation and collaborative industry relationships. We’re thrilled to continue to work with professional users to provide the best hardware, software, and services to help them succeed.”

While developing integrated software solutions and professional services to provide the service and support corporate clients require, at the core of HTC Vive’s business solutions are of course its headsets. Companies have four devices to choose from depending on requirements. For high-fidelity, PC-based VR there’s the HTC Vive Pro starting from £1,082.50 GBP or the HTC Vive Pro Eye from £1,250 (great for analytics). Or when portability is high on the list then there’s always the HTC Vive Focus starting from £532.50 or the HTC Vive Focus Plus which retails from £639.00 (all prices exclude VAT).

Businesses looking to deploy more VR solutions are being spoilt for choice when it comes to new hardware. Training is a big part of why a lot of companies are investing in XR solutions and with that come hand interaction. Manus VR is one company at the forefront of this development, recently announcing the new Manus Prime Haptic glove. Offering a slightly different take is Dexta Robotics with its Dexmo Enterprise Edition force feedback glove. As more XR business solutions are developed VRFocus will keep you updated.

Quelle:

Vive Enterprise Solutions Unit to Help Businesses Expand XR Portfolios

9. Juli 2019 0 comment

Knowledge Research

HTC Vive: Neue Geschäftseinheit für VR-Unternehmenslösungen

VIVE Enterprise Solutions ermöglicht neuartige Entwicklung, Zusammenarbeit und Interaktion durch leistungsstarke XR-Angebote

Seattle (Washington, USA) – 1. Juli 2019 – HTC VIVE, der führende Anbieter von Premium Virtual Reality (VR), hat eine neue Geschäftseinheit und Strategie eingeführt: VIVE Enterprise Solutions bietet Unternehmen und Entwicklern weltweit ein umfassendes Portfolio an Extended Reality (XR)-Lösungen. Die neue Organisation unterstützt Unternehmen mit vollständigen XR-Angeboten, die Hardware, Software und Dienstleistungen für professionelle Bedürfnisse integrieren.

Als Pionier in der VR-Branche arbeitet VIVE seit über vier Jahren mit kleinen, mittleren und großen Unternehmen zusammen. Da Hardware alleine heute nicht mehr ausreicht, kombiniert die neue Geschäftsorganisation Software, Hardware, professionelle Dienstleistungen, Geschäftslösungen und Support für wichtige Bereiche wie:

Training und Simulation
Design und Visualisierung
Virtuelle Zusammenarbeit
Ortsbezogene Unterhaltung und Werbung

„Da sich Enterprise VR schnell zur ‚Killer-App‘ in der Branche entwickelt, bieten wir Lösungen für kommerzielle Entwickler an, damit sie erfolgreich sind und Geschäftsanforderungen erfüllen“, sagt Daniel O’Brien, Head of VIVE Enterprise Solutions, HTC VIVE. „Wir können Unternehmen eine umfassende Geschäftslösung anbieten, auch aufgrund unserer Hardware-Innovationen und Branchenbeziehungen. Wir freuen uns sehr, weiterhin mit professionellen Anwendern zusammenzuarbeiten, damit sie durch optimale Hardware, Software und Dienstleistungen Erfolg haben.“

Business Transformation
Im vergangenen Jahr brachte VIVE sein erstes Head Mounted Display (HMD) für gewerbliche Anwender auf den Markt. VIVE Pro bietet optimale Audio-, Bild- und Komfortfunktionen für anspruchsvolle und innovative Arbeitsumgebungen. Aus der engen Zusammenarbeit mit Unternehmen und Entwicklern auf der ganzen Welt berücksichtigt VIVE wichtige Erkenntnisse und Feedback beim Aufbau einer eigenen Organisation für diese Kunden.

Das Team konzentriert sich auf das Angebot hochwertiger Hardware – darunter VIVE Pro, VIVE Focus, VIVE Focus Plus und das neu eingeführte VIVE Pro Eye – sowie auf die Entwicklung integrierter Softwarelösungen, professioneller Dienstleistungen und Geschäftslösungen. Damit erhalten Unternehmen die richtigen Produkte, Services und Support, unabhängig von ihrer technologischen Umgebung.

Innovationen für die Zukunft
Als Marktführer im Bereich Hardware nutzt VIVE sein Know-how, um ein vollständiges Portfolio von Produkten und Anwendungen für Kunden in allen Preiskategorien und für eine Vielzahl von Hardware-Anforderungen zu bieten. Zum Beispiel richtet sich VIVE Pro Eye an Unternehmen, die ein tiefes Eintauchen in die Materie für Training und Simulation mit detailliertem Nutzerfeedback und Analysen bereitstellen wollen.

Viele Trainingsszenarien erfordern eine mobile Nutzung. Dafür verbindet VIVE Focus Plus hohe visuelle Qualität mit der Freiheit eines All-in-One-Headsets. VIVE Focus Plus ist eine Weiterentwicklung der eigenständigen Produktlinie VIVE Focus, die sechs Freiheitsgrade ohne PC beinhaltet.

Über VIVE Studios, seinem Entwicklungs- und Angebotsbereich für VR-Inhalte, entwickelt das Unternehmen ein Business Collaboration Tool. Mit VIVE Sync können bis zu 30 Personen weltweit in einem virtuellen Meeting-Raum zusammenarbeiten.

So möchte VIVE Unternehmen jeder Größe helfen, ihre Geschäftsprozesse zu optimieren und zu verschlanken, um Produktivität, Effizienz und Sicherheit zu steigern sowie gleichzeitig Kosten zu senken und Zeit zu sparen.

Weitere Informationen zu VIVE Enterprise gibt es unter: https://enterprise.vive.com

Über HTC VIVE
VIVE ist eine einzigartige Virtual-Reality-Plattform, die für raumbezogene VR-basierte und realitätsnahe Interaktionen entwickelt und optimiert wurde. VIVE erfüllt das Versprechen von VR für wegweisende Technologien und erstklassige Inhalte durch das stärkste Gesamtsystem für VR-Hard- und -Software, das VR gleichermaßen für Verbraucher, Entwickler und Unternehmen zugänglich macht. Das VIVE-Ökosystem basiert auf der besten VR-Hardware im Markt und wird unterstützt von: VIVE X, einem 100-Millionen-Dollar-Accelerator für VR- und verwandte Technologie-Start-ups, VIVEPORT, einer globalen Plattform mit App Store und dem weltweit ersten VR-Abo-Modell, das in mehr als 60 Ländern verfügbar ist, sowie VIVE Studios, einer Initiative zur Entwicklung und Veröffentlichung von VR-Inhalten. Weitere Informationen über VIVE finden Sie unter: www.Vive.com
# # #

HTC und das HTC-Logo sind Warenzeichen der HTC Corporation.
Alle anderen Warenzeichen sind im Besitz ihrer jeweiligen Eigentümer.

2. Juli 2019 0 comment

Hardware Knowledge

Oculus Go & Oculus Quest: Enterprise-Edition soll 2019 erscheinen

Oculus arbeitet derzeit an neuen Enterprise-Editionen der beiden VR-Brillen Oculus Go und Oculus Quest, wie ein kürzlich veröffentlichtes Stellenausschreiben bekannt gibt. Während die Quest-Brille in der normalen Variante erst im Frühjahr 2019 erscheinen wird, ist von der Oculus Go bereits ein Business-Bundle für Unternehmen verfügbar. Die Enterprise-Versionen sollen noch 2019 erscheinen.

Oculus Go und Oculus Quest – Enterprise-Edition sollen 2019 veröffentlicht werden

In einem kürzlich veröffentlichten Stellenausschreiben sucht Oculus nach einem Software-Entwickler für das AR-/VR-Enterprise-Team, um AR- und VR-Plattformen für Unternehmen bereitzustellen. Genauer wird das Ziel beschrieben, eine Enterprise-Edition der Oculus Go sowie Oculus Quest noch 2019 zu veröffentlichen. Dadurch soll eine Technologie geschaffen werden, “die VR und AR allgegenwärtig und universell macht.”

Ein Sprecher von Oculus bestätigte gegenüber Variety, dass die Produkte im Zuge des Business-Angebots des Unternehmens entwickelt werden.

Innerhalb des Anforderungsprofils an die Jobsuchenden kann man einige mögliche Features der neuen Versionen der VR-Brillen herauslesen. Demnach gehört es zu den Aufgaben der Devs, Enterprise-Features für Apps und mobile VR-Systeme sowie VR-Frameworks für praktische Anwendungsfelder in Unternehmen, wie beispielsweise VR-Trainings, zu entwickeln. Sicherheitsmaßnahmen zum Datenschutz werden ausdrücklich hervorgehoben. Ebenso soll mit externen Entwicklern für zukünftige Projekte zusammengearbeitet werden.

Somit tritt Oculus in direkte Konkurrenz mit HTC rund um das Business-Segment. HTC kündigte erst kürzlich seine Vive Focus Plus mit 6DoF-Controllern an, die ebenfalls für den Einsatz in Unternehmen infrage kommt.

Weitere Informationen rund um die neuen Editionen der VR-Brillen könnten uns auf der kommenden GDC 2019 im März oder spätestens auf der Entwicklerkonferenz F8 2019 von Facebook Ende Apri bzw. Anfang Mai erwarten.

Quellen: Road to VR | Variety | Linkedin

Oculus Go & Oculus Quest: Enterprise-Edition soll 2019 erscheinen

12. März 2019 0 comment