Virtual Reality (VR) is taking the world of business by storm across many industries like construction/architecture, shopping, clothing, and interior design. Most of us think of entertainment uses for virtual reality like video game simulators. We don’t often look at exactly how VR is changing business.
Some business analysts have claimed that virtual reality will be a short-lived fad but technological improvements in the workplace and in business have already proven that the numerous possible applications available make it a long-term solution.
What defines Virtual Reality (VR)?
Virtual reality is software-based technology that enables users to immerse themselves into an alternate, virtual environment that oftentimes looks and feels real thanks to the level of detail put into the design.
How VR Is Changing Business
- Helping Employees Become More Empathetic. Non-profits have started to use VR to put their prospective donors into the shoes of the people they are working to help in order to give them a day-to-day experience in order to understand the struggle. Businesses are using VR to train sales employees by immersing them in a customers life to better help them understand their needs in order to become better salespeople for that product or service.
- Lower Business Operational Costs. The bottom line is important to every business and each is always looking for ways to improve profit margins or decrease costs. This is how virtual reality is changing business, if a business is able to reduce training costs by employing VR to streamline the process, they may be able to reduce man-hours spent on training and focus on money making activities. Virtual reality may someday reduce the number of mobile technicians needed if customers are able to troubleshoot problems themselves from home.
- More Options for Working Remotely. The workforce is slowly transitioning into offering remote options and VR can aid in this trend. Facebook is already working on creating virtual reality chat rooms and this will help remote workers connect to each other digitally to improve working environments. The possibilities for this are endless! Workers from all over the world can communicate with each other virtually to work on projects. This expands the reach of a business and provides varying perspectives that can increase globalization. Employing workers from other countries can decrease operational costs because many virtual workers will accept less pay for the option to work remotely.
- New Avenues for Marketers. Marketing dollars are now being spent more on digital ads than TV ads for the first time ever. The next step is to create virtual reality ads and content. YouTube is already looking into offering VR marketing options to businesses via mobile apps.
- Quicker Product Development. Military contractors are training their employees using VR environments to aid in the idea generation processes by simulating live military scenarios without having to actively deploy employees to combat zones. Virtual reality options could be used by car manufacturers instead of needing to use clay models or scale drawings to convey design concepts in the near future.
- Developing Safe Testing Environments. Medical procedures are delicate matters and can mean the difference between life and death. Up until now, the most practical way to practice delicate procedures has been on cadavers (dead bodies). Using virtual reality, doctors and doctors in training could practice their skills on a “live” patient. By practicing more, this increases confidence in their skills and decreases risk for actual patients.
- Recreating a “Second Screen” Experience. Many of us focus on more than one screen while we are working, like working on your computer while playing around with your smartphone. Imagine in the near future if you could use virtual reality to have two or more screens in front of your eyes at one time. This could increase productivity and organization while freeing up space in our offices. Offices could be smaller and/or less cluttered. And remote workers would literally be able to work from anywhere and not be tied to their home offices.
In the world of business, those with the edge have a leg up on their competition have the upper hand. Virtual reality options, when implemented well, offer that leg up in any industry from medicine to the military to working remotely. Virtual reality is not the short term fad that many have claimed it to be. It is the next stage technology that will improve the quality of life for people all over the world. Just imagine the endless possibilities and how VR is changing business.
We’d like to thank Instageeked for their thoughtful insight on our blog this week. Visit their website to view more of their work here!
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