The immersive experience of a computer-generated world has long been associated with video games and entertainment allowing players to influence and interact with their virtual surroundings using headsets and other wearables which generate tactile sensations.
The virtual reality (VR) industry is growing at a fast pace, with its global market size projected to increase to more than $22 billion by 2025. In recent years, VR has also made its way into the business world as many companies have begun to realize the benefits this technology can bring to their organizations. This article will look at some of those benefits in more detail below.
Marketing Presentations
VR technology can take sales and marketing presentations to a new level as they enable clients and potential customers to sample products and services in a more interactive and immersive way. Rather than traditional means of reading marketing content online or in a magazine, VR can give the customer a virtual experience of the product or service being sold.
Whether it’s taking your audience through your product lifecycle in a way that generates an emotional connection to your offering or a virtual fitting room that allows shoppers to try before they buy on similar-sized bodies, the use of VR in introducing and showcasing a product or service to your customers can greatly influence their decision to make a purchase.
Training Programs
Many businesses have made great strides when it comes to improving their sales, customer service, employee safety, and more. Virtual reality training can be used in particularly hazardous industries such as oil and gas or nuclear power to help employees practice their technical skills in dangerous or stressful situations giving them the preparation they need to deal with real-life situations with minimal risk.
VR also has beneficial applications when it comes to disaster training by equipping employees with the know-how needed to effectively respond to emergency situations without the effort and expense of recreating these in reality.
VR has uses in corporate training, particularly customer service training, to improve employee communication and empathy skills, teaching staff to be effective and productive in handling a variety of customers and conversations. Used in this way, VR also helps businesses identify gaps in their skills and training that they can then address.
Prototyping
Developing a prototype from concept to design is a time-consuming and costly exercise for most businesses and the resources needed to test a product with no guarantee of a successful outcome can lead to less-than-desirable results. VR has made the prototyping process more cost-effective and faster than before finding applications in a number of industries including aerospace, automotive, healthcare, electronics, and more.
VR allows manufacturers to test the performance of a product and identify any design flaws enabling them to be corrected before the physical build is initiated. Not only does this significantly reduce the need for materials and their associated cost but it also cuts the product development cycle making the time-to-market much faster.
As highlighted above, these are just some of the many practical benefits of using VR technology in business.