With high-speed connectivity bringing billions of people online, digital content and services are poised to revolutionize the global economy. This surge in digital consumption, catalyzed by advancements in Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI), the cloud, and innovative business models is escalating the demand for robust infrastructure and services that help enterprises augment customer experience (CX). Now, evolving work styles and new communication modalities are casting the limelight on immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and the metaverse. This is unleashing new opportunities to infuse real-world environments across healthcare, design, manufacturing, retail, automotive mobility, entertainment, and marketing with innovative digital features. But enterprises are grappling to harness the full potential of the metaverse, plagued by the complexities of integrating the right technologies that support their growth goals.
As consumers change their primary means of consumption, embracing 3D worlds to leave behind traditional channels like TV or internet browsers, businesses face the pressure to build their brand presence in immersive environments of the future. The question arises – How will you equip your teams to track and analyze the impact of different immersive technologies against the growth opportunities they spark?
Grabbing the Immersive Technology Advantage
Did You Know:
- The top 3 applications of immersive services are workforce communication and collaboration (48%), marketing and advertising (46%), and product design and development (46%).
- 65% of IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) have moderate to low levels of knowledge about immersive digital services and the metaverse. This highlights the need for providers to drive customer awareness around new solution portfolios and capabilities.
- Technology giants like HP, Meta, Microsoft, and Lenovo are rapidly accelerating innovation in extended reality (XR) to commercialize and democratize XR devices.
- Tapping into new customer channels, supercharging marketing strategies, and augmenting internal workflows emerge as the top 3 benefits of capitalizing on disruptive metaverse technologies.
As the next iteration of the internet, the metaverse opens a world of opportunities for industry incumbents to leverage cutting-edge technologies to drive better business outcomes. However, high investment efforts to integrate these immersive technologies hamper the rapid deployment of advanced metaverse applications, slowing the journey from proof-of-concept to commercialization. Today, the following emerge as key customer concerns about implementing immersive services:
- High price points of device/software implementation (40%)
- Privacy, data security, and regulatory compliance (38%)
- Finding and capitalizing on the right business models (33%)
- Bridging potential technology/skill gaps (33%)
- Limitations of untested technologies (33%)
This implies that before providers successfully democratize immersive services, they face the imperative of developing/scaling innovative solutions and establishing structured key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help their customers evaluate the value versus cost of investing in new technologies – How is your leadership committee strategizing to circumvent growth barriers in immersive digital services?
Capitalizing on Emerging Growth Opportunities
The metaverse is still viewed as a new technology. But accelerated developmental efforts from technology giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Apple are rapidly bringing it to life, making it the channel of focus for businesses to digitally engage with their customers and maximize brand reach. This is creating new growth opportunities for content creators, software developers, hardware vendors, and ICT providers to supercharge CX, enhance connected work, deliver personalized marketing, and create new revenue streams by leveraging:
- Innovative GenAI Applications: Integrating GenAI into products and workflows, while introducing new capabilities like improved video/image creation from text, humanizing responses with chatbots and conversational AI, and automating code creation.
- Industrial Metaverse: Reshaping the way manufacturing operates, by introducing an ‘always-on’ 3D environment where digital twins serve as virtual replicas of physical machinery, production lines, vehicles, energy grids, entire cities, and even human personnel. This will help enhance product reliability, deliver unparalleled personalization, enable predictive maintenance, and facilitate responsible manufacturing.
- Disruptive XR Technologies: Leveraging the potential of XR in verticals like mobile gaming, entertainment, real-time collaboration, eCommerce, healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, training, education, and remote expert services.
- CPQ Solutions: Embracing advancements and customization in configure, price, quote (CPQ) software to automate quote creation, contract negotiations, and product configuration for complex products and services.
- Digital Advertising: Capitalizing on online ad spaces and programmatic advertising to digitize direct-to-consumer services, while incorporating advertising as an additional revenue layer in digital services leveraging advanced AI models and strategic partnerships.
In-house development, third-party metaverse platforms, or hybrid partnerships – Do you know which growth strategies and best practices can help your teams capitalize on new opportunities in digital content services?
About Frost & Sullivan
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