Covering a range of topics to reflect upon over the past 9 years of working in VR, be sure to read Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4, Pt.5, Pt.6 & Pt.7 first…
Enterprise
Avoiding any “worlds first VR” nonsense, the studio was right at the forefront of educating, introducing and deploying immersive technologies into enterprise organisations since 2014 onwards (at least for this current wave).
As covered already, clients like EDF Energy, RS Components, McDonald’s and Vodafone were there at the bleeding edge with us. Many others wanted to get onboard but were unsure how to utilise the technologies within their organisational departments or sector. But there were many who were keen to work with the studio to best understand how they could, what the barriers were and try to find ways around it, successfully or not. Happy to say most of those have successfully found valid use cases for xR within the organisation.
Even to this day, no matter how many newsletters, blog posts, events, webinars etc etc we and countless other studios have outputted, enterprise organisations still need a lot of hand-holding to get onboard with xR. It is getting easier but there’s still such mis-understanding and mis-conceptions around the costs, process and factors around design and comfort to overcome.
Ideally there would be an internal champion, someone who believed in the potential power of the technology, when applied to validated use cases. The studio was approached frequently by organisations who wanted VR but they didn’t know why or what for — deploying technology just for the sake of ticking an innovation box, or keeping up with their competition or because it was cool was never going to cut the mustard and provide value.
It takes a long time, a long lead time from initial discussion to sitting down and defining the scope of a project, something not all studios can swallow in terms of cost or pre-sales overhead. Many studios promised the earth and delivered little, or relied upon gimmicks to get a quick sale and a quick buck. Thankfully, most of those withered and disappeared in the drought of 2017–19, reducing the harm to wider adoption.
Enterprise organisations can also be huge, with multiple departments looking at the same areas without communicating with each other, either through poor systems, silos, internal politics and competitiveness. The studio typically deals with the L&D or innovation teams but xR covered a wide range of departments as something to potentially investigate, depending upon the nature of the business. But then ideally you need all these departments onboard as early as possible so one of them doesn’t become a blocker later on as you’re about to deploy within the organisation.
We typically avoid working with marketing agencies and creative service studios looking for a technical partner for a pitch. Whilst the budgets were always considerably larger, the hyper-focused nature of each project until delivered, then forgotten, or late, vague requirements coupled with not being able to pitch or speak to the end client/user, meant we were being asked to spend weekends putting slidedecks together at short notice with no control over the outcome.
At one point we measured the success rate of creative agency pitches we’d been approach to provide late on a Friday for an early Monday morning presentation (that we wouldn’t be part of) and over 2 years it was about 2%. At that point we decided when a creative agency called up, we’d be polite and hear them out but unless they would tell us who the client was and would allow us into the pitch presentation, a thanks but no thanks was their answer.
Learning to navigate the political inter-department minefield can sometimes be a challenge, especially when dealing with global organisations. Sometimes a project could be buried by one territory when it made their own efforts look poor, in terms of quality or value, or country-locale-specific challenges saw reduced impact upon deployment. Once a department has something to show off however, it often leads to others wanting something of their own and a bit of an arms-race can develop.
But that was all just making stuff, getting it into organisations was harder and much more lumpy over the years. Thankfully due to more awareness and more mature supporting systems being available, this is much smoother over the past few years but each deployment brings its own headaches and issues to contend with.
Each headset manufacturer has had forms of enterprise support, from just being more open in terms of device access and control, to creating whole departments and big marketing pushes designed around business use. Thankfully now you can get any device and configure it with a 3rd-party MDM (mobile device manager) tool without being reliant upon the manufacturer supporting, or not supporting enterprise deployments with effective, up-to-date tools.
It’s a double-edged sword for a studio looking to gain exposure and awareness within a sector, overly relying upon one manufacturer for inclusion in promotion whilst at the mercy of the engineering team and whether or not features will continue to be supported in the short-term future, with rapid development occurring elsewhere.
So how to do it effectively? The studio always keeps a straight-forward message: start small and iterate. Time is spent carrying out discovery days where a mix of theory and practical hands-on time with devices and demos allows a department to fully grasp the possibilities, but also the limitations. Honesty and transparency is key to relationships moving forwards, building trust and being known for integrity. Unless you are looking for a one-off project quick-win, it’s worth to build these partnerships up from low-cost proof-of-concept, to pilot to full-scale rollout across the organisation.
Ultimately you often have a one-shot chance to make an organisation or a department become believers and likely to create more internal champions, who in turn will open doors elsewhere and wider adoption will occur. As the market grows and opportunities increase, beyond the hype and marketing fluff, a rising tide floats all boats in the longer term, why jinx that for a quick buck that damages wider adoption overall?
Membership Organisations
Worth a quick note here at the end of this post about immersive technology membership organisations. Over time, the studio has been part of most of them and like all things, you get out what you put in, to a certain degree.
I appreciate these organisations need funds to continue operations but there’s times when as a studio you feel you have to be a member to be validated but you don’t really get a lot back or out of it. Some are more US-centric, others better for studios located in EU (or UK), some have great deals and opportunities at events for exhibiting or speaking, some host industry awards to drive everyone forwards. Others are a bit cliquey and feel very much like an inner circle if you are on the outside of looking in.
You have to do your research and determine which one best suits your studio needs at that time, or in the near future, and how much you can afford to pay to become a member, in financial terms but also your own time investment. What they should all be doing though is not hiding member lists behind the membership subscription, so that studios can promote and be found easily to help with awareness and lead generation, if they opt into being publicly listed.
