6 Oct 2023 | Dace Campbell

How Enterprise Requirements for Innovation Are Addressed with AR & VR Use Cases

AWE EU 2023 Virtual Reality Augmented Reality

As the worlds of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies have continued to mature and grow in public awareness, global industries are turning to adopting XR tools as a tactic to solve common enterprise pain points and leapfrog their competition. Though, before any enterprise business can get serious about adopting a technical innovation like XR – the sum of all things AR, VR, MR – there is much homework to be done. 

Meaningful change never starts from a technology-first approach, whether the solution is XR, digital twins, AI, IoT, or any other emerging technology. In fact, those who don’t do the work to tie their digital innovation to real business needs are almost guaranteed to fail, no matter how impressive the new hardware or software solution may sound.  

Digital transformation initiatives must be crystal clear in how they solve specific business challenges; only then does it make sense to search for technical solutions available in the market. 

For more context read: 5 Signs That Even Your Traditional Enterprise Should Consider AR or VR Innovation.  

Enterprise Value Proposition of XR 

At its core, XR enables effective decision-making for businesses and professionals. When applied correctly, enterprises can use XR to increase collaboration, communication, coordination, comprehension, and ultimately: confidence. XR can increase engagement and empathy between businesses, their customers, and their employees. And it does so by providing spatial experiences that are intuitive, immersive, and interactive. 

For anyone considering XR tools, Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the premier event to learn about industrial applications, pain point, and case studies. Attending these global events gives business leaders an unparalleled opportunity to survey the landscape of XR hardware, software, and service, and the chance to interact with like-minded XR and enterprise experts across multiple enterprises.  

A Special Enterprise Invitation 

In a few weeks, I will be joining AWE EU, Oct 24-25 in Vienna, Austria, as a program expert for Enterprise AWE—an invitation-only, curated experience to help Enterprise stakeholders accelerate their change efforts with additional context and resources.  

Enterprise leaders and stakeholders are encouraged to apply for Enterprise AWE. 

As a part of the program, a group of experienced industry strategists will be facilitating peer conversations between enterprise stakeholders about their business drivers, risks, and pain points; the value proposition of industrial XR; and use cases and opportunities to impact the bottom line that are common to enterprises across industries. We’ll also have exclusive VIP access to the conference, parties, and vendors on the expo floor.  

Common Enterprise Business Drivers 

Individual businesses and industries have their own motivations for how they go about conducting their operations. However, there are several themes and motivations that serve as near-universal business drivers for innovation and digital transformation.  

We’ll review these common motivations for enterprise change and how XR tools can deliver value at enterprise scale.  

Enterprise Business Driver 1 – Revenue 

Businesses depend on income. They crave opportunities for market differentiation to stand out in their crowded fields, as well as increased engagement with their customers as ways to solidify and increase revenue streams. 

XR grows enterprise revenue with differentiation. 

With XR, your business can stand out in a crowded market. You can engage your customers in creative and immersive ways that provide people with memorable experiences that they will associate with your brand. 

Enterprise Business Driver 2 – Profit 

In addition to taking money in, businesses strive to protect that income as they operate. This is often expressed as increasing productivity (doing more with the same resources) or efficiency (doing the same while consuming fewer resources), as well as increasing understanding and predictability. 

XR grows enterprise profit through intuitive creation. 

For businesses that produce information, materials, or other resources, XR provides the opportunity to create intuitively, tapping into your spatial awareness as an evolved primate. This can boost creativity and productivity as you actively generate and analyze data with natural interactions. 

Enterprise Business Driver 3 – Quality 

Enterprise businesses look at maintaining the quality of their product or service from three points of view: planning, to ensure quality of what will be produced; quality control in the present, to ensure quality standards are met; and inspecting what was produced in case any adjustments are necessary. 

XR enhances enterprise quality through visualization.    

XR gives your staff, partners, and customers the opportunity to see – and experience! – data of all kinds, to predict, analyze, compare, contrast, or confirm their decisions and behaviors. The spatial nature of XR enables you to see anomalies in complex patterns of data, identifying and solving issues faster. 

Enterprise Business Driver 4 – Business Continuity 

The recent pandemic has highlighted the need for resiliency of businesses in the face of risks, whether that is disease, recession, natural disasters, or socio-political conflict. Businesses need to continue their operations across multiple geographies and support remote and hybrid collaboration. 

XR enables business continuity with collaboration. 

As an immersive and intuitive medium, XR fosters full-frontal collaboration between individuals and teams in a way that spans geographic, social distances, and boundaries. Unlike audio- or video-based conferencing, XR gives you a spatial, task-based medium—a sandbox in which to engage with your project partners. 

Enterprise Business Driver 5 – Sustainability 

Many businesses operate under the awareness that they must reduce consumption of finite material and energy resources to reduce costs. Beyond this, however, is a growing trend to reduce carbon footprint and emissions to mitigate climate change, as well as corporate social responsibility initiatives to protect and improve the world in which they operate. The complexity and abstract nature of climate change do not elicit behavior changes by themselves. 

XR promotes sustainability through education. 

People learn what they remember, and people remember spatial experiences more than abstract, academic data points. Because XR boosts understanding and confidence through spatial experience, it empowers people to distill, relate to, and retain complex topics like sustainability, and their retention begets behavior change. 

The X-factor of AR and VR for enterprise. 

There is an element of “magic” associated with the delight and distraction of XR, and enterprises can exploit this to entertain and retain customers and partners through more engaging experiences. 

These are all rather universal enterprise themes, and all deserve your consideration and attention if you’re serious about adopting innovation like XR, as you explore a fit between your needs and what an XR solution may offer.  

We’d love to hear from you! 

What do you think? Are there any major enterprise business drivers we left out? Any cross-industry XR use cases you disagree with?  How do these apply to your industry, or to your business? 

If you‘re an Enterprise leader interested in joining the conversation as part of AWE’s Enterprise AWE VIP program, please apply by Wednesday October 18th.