Filed under: Research, Reviews by Digado

Good times for the research agencies. As more and more depends on predicting the outcomes of hypes and trends in the ever increasing phase of internet developments, companies become more and more insecure whether their investments are well spend. R&D departments need a more convincing pitch as they are competing amongst each other, - should it be social media, virtual worlds, instant messaging or that viral campaign over twitter…

In light of that, one of those research agencies Gartner seems to do a great job of milking the virtual worlds trend for all its worth. It was only recently they published a report on how 90% of a ll ventures into virtual worlds would fail (and why that is not a bad thing) and recently they have followed this up with a report containing the ‘elevator pitch for virtual worlds’. The report costing 195$ and consists of no less than 5 (five!) pages according to their website and should tell you how exactly to convince your boss virtual worlds all well worth of their/your attention.

”How to Justify Enterprise Investment in Virtual World” sees three big motivators in virtual platforms (as taken from the press release):

Stage 1: Virtual Worlds as Training Environments
Every organization has a training budget, and role-playing and scenario-based training exercises are well-established in many fields. Virtual worlds with strong development tools (such as Second Life) can be used to replicate specific environments (such as a retail location or a street scene) in which trainees can interact with each other, the environment and their trainers via their avatars. On a larger scale, substantial virtual environments are being used in training emergency services and military/law enforcement services to simulate real-world scenarios, — especially complex scenarios involving multiple agencies, such as biochemical emergencies or terrorist incidents in urban locations.

The ability to stream media into virtual worlds and embed documents into display objects enables trainees to proceed at their own pace to assimilate material, and then interact with each other and their trainers to explore their understanding and knowledge. The benefits of improved employee knowledge and training can be clearly enumerated, and the savings (or transference of funding) compared with established training methodologies can be reliably calculated to build a credible and substantiated business case.

Stage 2: Project-Based Avatar-Enhanced Collaboration
Having established a viable presence for virtual-world technology inside the enterprise, and begun to build basic virtual-world skills in the employee base, the second phase involves extending virtual-world deployment to support collaboration and employee interaction. Examples of successful projects of this type include worldwide product launches involving training, presentations and project planning that eliminate the need to bring employees from multiple locations to a single site, with substantial savings in travel and associated costs and time.

Apart from project-based success metrics, the ability to show cost savings — for example, reduced use of expensive videoconferencing or telepresence facilities, as well as reduced international travel and “downtime” — to support and offset the initial investment forms the basis for a credible and defensible business case.

Stage 3: Nonspecific Social Collaboration
Employee interaction and collaboration are well understood as key drivers in employee satisfaction, productivity and innovation. However, in the modern distributed business environment, with employees working from home offices, on the road or in multiple locations overseas, “casual social conversations” that once took place around the water cooler no longer occur. Employees increasingly work in isolation and broader-based interdepartmental discussions that are often the source or seed of new ideas and innovations no longer take place.

A virtual-world recreation of the social environment — seating areas, white boards, even a virtual water cooler — can serve a valuable function in recovering the disassembled social cohesion of the workforce.

The benefits can be significant, but will be hard to enumerate, because they will be predominantly in the “soft benefits” area of employee satisfaction, morale, retention and innovation. Nevertheless, with a proven record and established management acceptance of virtual-world projects, the business case for this final stage should be acceptable.

After reading the press release (and the assumption those 4 remaining pages are not going to provide that ‘eureka moment’ we’ve been waiting for) I’m just going to say I’m not convinced Gartner is really providing ‘essential insights for success’ here. Getting Real Work Done in Virtual Worlds by Gartners competitor Forrester is a little more beefy, and though both cover nothing new to the informed, it explains in a human language the potential of virtual worlds for the everyday work floor with examples, applications and a nice overview of its benefits versus 2D environments.

Posted on: June 23, 2008 | Share on: