Engineering for the enterprise: how to add the metaverse to your toolkit

The metaverse brings virtual experiences to life by making them immersive. Through a combination of many well-known technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and the internet of things, the metaverse offers immense opportunities for enterprises. Product development, employee experience and customer experience are immediate areas for companies to get started using the metaverse.

 

As we at Virtusa start to explore the metaverse, we’re seeing all the value it can bring to companies worldwide. Here are my top five recommendations for enterprises to leverage the metaverse:

 

1. Collaborative design. Moving beyond the 2D space to an immersive experience allows engineers to develop, design and test products in a new way. Rapid prototyping is possible with metaverse-based products and applications, where teams can collaborate, test and problem-solve faster and with less overhead cost. Additionally, digital-twin experiments and prototyping facilitate and speed up overall product development and testing capabilities.

 

2. Immersive marketing. The very nature of the metaverse allows customers to gain a whole new way of understanding product features. This elevated technology field can also attract many customers through remote collaborations and events. The metaverse is truly set to become a platform for global marketing and advertising for new launches, promotional activities, testing and pilot launches of products and solutions. Such use of technology helps organisations in their brand-building activities, too.

 

3. Wellness and remote care. Covid-19 has impacted people around the world, directly affecting mental health and stress levels. Leveraging the metaverse boosts employee wellbeing and enhances organisational culture. It provides a safe space for employees to get the physical and mental healthcare they need and for your organisation to facilitate it. Health insurers also can participate through the same channels.

 

4. Training. Developing immersive content, such as learning modules and designs, is now possible and can be delivered via the metaverse for enhanced learning. Enterprises can even take their rewards programs one step further by offering new collectibles or NFTs, on milestone achievements, bringing in a whole new way to train employees and acquire new skills.

 

5. Employee onboarding and collaboration. A shift in employee onboarding has also taken place as a result of the pandemic and an increase in remote work. Employee experience is just as important as customer experience, and leveraging the metaverse can help companies with ways to provide a better onboarding experience for empoyees – creating opportunities for them to tour facilities or meet with senior leadership, for example.

 

In a remote work environment, it is also important to capitalise on virtual opportunities for organisational culture. Companies can share messages and updates, facilitate interactions with mentors and help employees stay connected. Further, without the travel limitations, you can connect employees all in one place. With the metaverse, enterprises can organise employee meetups, fun events and global and annual meetings, changing how we interact and connect.

 

Focusing on these five areas will benefit every enterprise, especially as the capabilities of the metaverse expand.  

 

Add the metaverse to your 2023 strategy

The pace of innovation has accelerated to the point that no single enterprise can succeed if it tries to innovate in a silo. Now more than ever, organisations need a systematic and highly collaborative approach to driving innovation. This requires an openness to rapidly onboarding partners and tightly integrating their business models and customer experiences with those of external ecosystems. These external ecosystems can span across niche capabilities, from external partners to entire virtual worlds.

 

An important first step towards this process is building awareness across the organisation of the diverse intersection of technologies and capabilities that make up the metaverse. Understanding AR and VR as capabilities is simple enough. But how these technologies intersect with many other Web 3.0 technologies such as blockchain, as well as brand new business models with examples, is critical. Targeted workshops and interactive sessions with expert consultants can certainly help accelerate this process.

 

An organisation’s engineering capabilities need to be enhanced to meet the demands of rapid experimentation in a set of technologies that may not be mainstream for many enterprises today. The sad reality of the software industry is that the same mistakes get repeated every time new technologies are adopted. This has led to many early disasters and quality, delivery and security issues which, in hindsight, could be avoided by adopting best practices and automation.

 

The metaverse is shaping the future of how we live, work and learn, and is one of the biggest trends shaping 2022 and beyond. It offers enterprises more opportunities than they have had in the past, all in one place. So how can you ensure your enterprise is prepared to capitalise on the metaverse?

 

Getting your employees to learn the metaverse and creating a space for your enterprise in the metaverse is the first step to setting yourself up for success. It will create new opportunities for ROI at a lower cost and enhance the customer and employee experience to improve your enterprise’s culture, efficiency and ability to learn, test and use new technologies.

 

The metaverse can lead to immense benefits, and starting sooner rather than later will ensure you do not get left behind. For ideas on how to get started and to see how other organisations are adding the metaverse to their toolkits, read Virtusa’s 2022 Trend Almanac. By getting started today, you can capitalise on the opportunities in the metaverse as part of your 2023 strategy.

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For more information please visit www.virtusa.com

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by Ram Meenakshisundaram, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Virtusa