As a surprise to no one, there is a great deal of focus on the metaverse right now. Blogs, vlogs, articles and everything in between are filling up our newsfeeds about how the metaverse will modify human behavior and social interaction, reshape the office, and so much more. Despite the hype, the media consensus indicates that the metaverse is far-future and unobservable …a blending of physical and digital in a way that is seemingly inaccessible today. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Admittedly, it’s early. At Avanade Australia, we believe the metaverse spans physical places and digital spaces, enabling us to collaborate and exchange value through shared interactions and experiences. Today, we’re helping organizations explore how to strategically bring physical and virtual together for team collaboration, field service, manufacturing production and disaster recovery, among many other use cases. This is happening now to help organizations drive efficiencies and save costs, enable and upskill employees, and engage customers.

Bringing employees and clients into the metaverse
The only way to really gain an understanding of the metaverse is to experience it. Avanade is making that experience possible. Not only are we engaging new and existing employees with metaverse experiences internally, but we’re also bringing our clients into the metaverse.

For example, our clients interested in the advanced track of our Global School of Innovation program put their hands up to learn more about what might be possible in the metaverse. We curated a series of metaverse immersive experiences across multiple environments including Altspace VR. Despite these organizations coming from completely different industries such as Healthcare, Sustainability and Financial Services, it was clear that everyone was curious to try the immersive experience with a VR headset and touch controllers.

With the help of our Advisory and Technology and Experiences teams, our group heard world-first metaverse thought leadership and use cases, explored presentation and video media, participated in games, and started to get acclimated to what a physical-virtual experience could be.

Together, we explored the art of the possible across enterprise, industrial and consumer use cases all whilst being immersed in the metaverse.

Exploring what is possible in the metaverse
Together with our clients over 3 weeks, we embarked on an immersive experience to explore the metaverse in a way that focuses on business value in employee (workplace) and customer experiences.

Workplace Experiences (WX)

• Remote collaboration uses virtual spaces and extended reality to streamline collaborative design, construction and maintenance with customers and colleagues.
• Remote operations are more viable as physical automation increases, providing opportunities for humans-in-the-loop to operate machinery from a safe distance with precision.
• Meetings and events take advantage of the ubiquity of digital tools for remote and hybrid work, providing a virtual space to collaborate and connect.
• Training is a natural fit for metaverse spaces, which work especially well for simulations of unsafe scenarios and for generating empathy.
• Disaster recovery/catastrophe modeling allows utilities, insurance companies and other organizations that manage physical infrastructures to envision and model various scenarios using historical data.

Customer Experiences (CX)

• Digital marketing is becoming richer and more responsive as marketing organizations create new channels and immersive experiences for customers to learn and interact with organizations before buying.
• Retail has become increasingly popular in the metaverse, with social shopping, virtual stores (either through Snapchat “lenses” or in a virtual shopping gallery) and try-on-at-home experiences in virtual fitting rooms.
• Digital goods provide virtual things for virtual worlds, and luxury brands in particular are excited to offer non-physical goods for sale to show off status in the metaverse.
• Community brings people together for shared experiences that persist over time and space to create larger communities of interest.

Beyond the technology and collaboration opportunities of WX and CX, Avanade’s global experts over 3 weeks, spoke about the immersion of data, decentralized identity and value creation of the metaverse. Our thought leaders presented diverse topics including Next Gen Identity, Extended Reality 101, the Connected Store, the IOT of Health, Connected Factory and Connected Worker, Healthcare use cases and Workplace experience of the future.

Interacting in the metaverse
It was great to work with our clients to experience the metaverse in new ways across multiple spaces and explore a diverse range of industry use cases. As humans, it is great to experiment with haptic and other sensory actions, and generally move out of our (physical) comfort zones.

But once those initial stimuli are subdued and new users settle in a bit, the magic happens. The opportunities for metaverse are both inspiring and limitless.

Engagements such as this have been helping our clients see the potential. Our clients were energized by their metaverse experience and are now considering their next steps to dive in deeper.

Step into the metaverse
At Avanade, we believe now is the time to prepare for the metaverse with a pragmatic approach. We meet clients where they are today, then map a journey to take advantage of their organizational investments in data, design and technology to capitalize on the metaverse as it evolves.

If you’re looking to cut through the hype and jump in to the metaverse with practical scenarios, we can help. Check out our perspectives on metaverse, and contact us to learn more.