Three Ways Augmented Reality Has Become A Utility In Business

CEO and co-founder of SightCall, the fastest-growing AR-powered visual assistance company in the world with customers on all continents.

Utilities are any item or service essential to the operation of a home, business or public space. If asked to define utilities, people tend to include water and gas, electricity services, telephone and trash collection. In these globalized times, digital services like broadband internet are considered essential enough for economic functioning that they are treated as infrastructure.

For businesses, there is arguably another digital tool that deserves recognition as a utility of sorts: augmented reality.

My organization is an AR-powered visual assistance company. Based on my experience, I’ve found this technology well-positioned to help businesses in today’s increasingly noisy business environment. I’d like to cover three ways AR can change how businesses operate in the digital age. The first is that the power of this technology can extend the reach of essential business functions. The second is its ability to drive better workforce utilization. And the third is its current potential to generate a higher level of user engagement and satisfaction than traditional interactions and interfaces can. 

While there are requirements for and potential impediments to successful implementation, augmented reality’s exponential rate of expansion and growing role in services like machine maintenance and telehealth combine to make it technology well-suited for next-generation enterprises. 

AR Can Broaden Essential Enterprise Functions

The traditional business is constrained or limited by geography, physical borders and supply chain fluctuations in delivering its goods and services. But in the new economy, this is costly. Companies need the ability to continue operations as normally as possible regardless of external conditions or disruptions. 

To use one example, augmented reality can help ensure service level agreement or regulatory compliance in performing safety audits, enabling remote experts to either walk local technicians or service personnel through an inspection or, depending on the tools available, through a machine or drone. This also drives unique, collaborative experiences. Without the need for a separate training session, workers either new to the job or unfamiliar with a particular task can benefit from an immersive learning experience. 

However, properly carrying out inspections using devices like drones or remotely operated cameras will require precise tools at a company’s disposal, which themselves require regular maintenance and improvement. To go back to the example of remote audits, because these differ from in-person experiences, I’d recommend for this to be part of a company’s regular practice, and not simply as a contingency measure, allowing for worker training to be better optimized. 

AR Cultivates More Agile, Future-Oriented Workers

Augmented reality can create more efficient workforce utilization, both at the management or planning level and the worker or execution level. Take the example of a plumber that uses AR-powered visual assistance to triage a problem before anyone is dispatched to the site. That plumber may find that a part can be ordered and applied remotely, or action can be taken by the customer themselves to resolve a minor issue, preventing an unnecessary dispatch. Management, in turn, can use the insights gained from visual assistance for scheduling and resource planning, contributing to higher profitability by digitizing certain tasks and freeing workers to use their day more creatively.

Still, augmented reality is not a replacement for a culture fix. For system-wide adoption, the goals of AR implementation need to be properly aligned with worker values and behaviors. The exact role of the technology and workers’ relationships with it needs to be clearly defined by leadership. Furthermore, overlaying new digital tools on top of wider company operations that are inefficient or non-responsive to worker or customer needs will create needless complexity rather than driving positive change.

AR Generates A New Level Of User Experiences

As technology becomes a greater part of everyday life, this raises the bar in nearly every sector, from food delivery to healthcare. Customers will go where the most advanced services are. The immediacy of things like problem diagnostics with the click of an app or link, or machine repair turnaround improving from days or weeks to mere hours, generates an irreplaceable part of the user experience. This in turn can produce higher loyalty to a business and greater satisfaction.

Augmented reality is well-suited for companies that have embraced a business of experience model, where every aspect of growth and improvement has customer and worker experiences at the center. The insights they gain from using these tools need to be channeled into constant experience improvements. Companies that take the time and apply the proper resources to this effort will find success.

Technology is not traditionally perceived by the business industry as being a utilitarian part of day-to-day functions. This is perhaps less of a surprise when one considers that smartphones, 4G and 5G networks, and teleconferencing are relatively recent innovations. But as enterprises search for positive transformations to their operations that improve both customer and worker experiences, there are numerous reasons for sufficiently prepared businesses to embrace augmented reality as a unique, differentiating service.

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