The Arrival of Metaverse & Its Implications for Businesses

Originally, the #metaverse was the vision of sci-fic author Neal Stephenson in the year 1992. Now 30 years, a pandemic, and a generation of digital products later, the author is finally teaming up with another crypto OG to bring his vision to life.

That’s alongside thousands of other engineers who are excited to bring forth 3-dimensional virtual worlds where people can interact, connect, and do business and pleasure.

#metaverse is a phenomenal concept. Imagine taking meeting notes while floating around space, teleporting from your London office to New York, and vacationing in the Maldives while you hold a conversation with friends in the other room. Actively having its moment internationally, the concept of metaverse has been fueled by COVID-19’s impact on digital-based economies, the rise of blockchain, digital assets, and nonfungible tokens (#nfts ).

Technology titans and gaming plants including #facebook , #microsoft , #epicgames, #roblox , and others are creating their own virtual worlds on metaverse. Since it encompasses different technologies ranging from virtual reality platforms, and machine learning to the blockchain, digital currencies, and sensors, the metaverse can be accessed with a VR-enabled headset for a full 3D surround experience. In many workplaces, however, metaverse solutions require no more than a computer, mouse, and keyboard keys, thus making it more conveniently accessible.

We can talk for hours on the metaverse but the question that arises, rather prominently, is how this technology will affect businesses. Banishing boundaries is a whole new concept; one that can impact business operations extraordinarily.

Let’s discuss what executives are saying and how metaverse will impact major industries.

What the experts are saying:

According to an Accenture survey, 71% of respondents say that the metaverse is likely to have a positive impact on businesses. Whereas 42% of them claim it to be a “breakthrough” or “transformational.”

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta (previously called Facebook) says that the metaverse is the biggest opportunity for modern businesses since the creation of the internet. He plans to spend more than $10 billion on developing the software and hardware of his metaverse.

Other big companies like #nvidia, #sony, #decentraland, #amazon, and #disney have patented metaverse technology to improve their product offerings. Disney has created its theme park while Warner Bros hosted a party in Roblox to celebrate its musical film. Gucci, similarly, constructed a garden experience in the metaverse.

And would you want to know why all these companies are flocking towards the metaverse? It’s called #money . The big money that they can’t churn in otherwise.

Reportedly, a digital version of Gucci’s Dionysus Bag was sold for a whopping $4000 in the Roblox marketplace – quite much more than the original price.

#bloomberg Intelligence predicts that the metaverse is anticipated to reach nearly $800 billion to $1 trillion by the middle of this decade.

In essence, companies are already scrambling to define their terms of the metaverse, carve out a niche, and snap a virtual world with 3D avatars and immersive surroundings.

With that said, here’s the extent of the impact that metaverse is said to have on businesses.

3 Ways Metaverse Can Shape Enterprise & Business Operations

There are plenty of ways in which the metaverse can impact modern businesses – three of which I’ve narrowed down to carry the most weightage.

1.?????New Modes of Customer & Business Relations

Besides high-end tech and the pandemic, another driving factor in the dawn of the metaverse was sophisticated customer expectations. There’s no doubt about the fact that metaverse will empower customers to traverse the virtual and physical worlds of businesses when interacting with the brands of their choice.

Entirely new modes of customer and business relationship, within the metaverse, comes in the form of digital twins, avatar skins, direct-to-avatar (D2A), and the omnichannel experience.

The most fascinating aspect of the metaverse is in the first three modes of extending customer experience. Businesses allow virtual representations of physical objects, products, and services that spans their lifecycle and are updated using real-time data. It even extends to buildings, cities, people, and processes within the virtual worlds using machine learning, simulations, and reasoning.

Direct-to-avatar (D2A) is a business model in which customers arrive as avatars, that they are free to design as they wish, with products “sold” directly to their avatars or digital identities in the virtual worlds.

2.?????Ushering in the World of Digital Currencies

The digital assets sold in the three-dimensional universe use NFTs and #cryptocurrencies to make the transaction.

Users can design, trade, and wear these assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a metaverse. A type of blockchain technology, NFTs as digital items can be bought and sold over the metaverse, while not being fungible, and based on value and popularity.

Thus, in a nutshell, the metaverse is a whole new universe where cashless transactions take place in the form of NFTs, bitcoin, crypto tokens, and the similar. In the new decade, the metaverse is money and crypto is the king.

3.?????Streamlining Remote Employee Communications

There’s a lot that metaverse in conjunction with AI can do to workplace operations, from HR onboarding to connecting different offices and finding new opportunities.

The meta-office has immense potential in the post-pandemic world. The parts of remote working that were damaging to the office culture and productivity – such as gaps in networking, lack of physical presence and collaboration, and accidental interactions – can be remedied by Metaverse to a far extent.

Remote employee communications can be streamlined, starting from employee training and mentoring. As per Dale’s Cone of Experience, people remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, and 90% of what they do. Activity wins at all costs, which is why many companies have incorporated VR and AR to train their teams. Now with the advent of the metaverse, it is predicted that VR will be used in 23 million jobs worldwide.

Apart from employee skill development, the meta-office connects people from all over the world in more than one way. Using digital identities, team members can collaborate, discuss, interact, and teleport to others parts of the world for ramping up business partnerships and creating more opportunities.

This magnifies employee communication across all borders, leaving no room for interruption or limitations to hamper workplace dealings. It can also change employment practices by modifying the way we perform job interviews and tests. This is another prime example of streamlining processes, thus saving time for both companies and candidates.

?To make it easier for you, I’ve categorized impacts on different industries such as financial services, automobile, real estate, retail, and education. As we enter 2023, we are to see these unprecedented changes for the next five years and beyond.

1: #financial services

Traditional financial services are facing continuous blows in terms of security, data confidentiality, and seamlessness. Customers are inclined towards cashless transactions and online banking to evade long queues and in-person dealings.

The metaverse has immense potential in financial institutions. In Asia, banks are creating virtual spaces for branding and customer education. On the other hand, universal banks are creating metaverse for training and education of internal stakeholders as well as external clients.

Similarly, crypto and NFTs are aggressively developing their propositions. Augmented and virtual reality are narrowing the difference between online and offline, ultimately driving greater participation and engagement as well as converging traditional banking and the new era of innovation.

2: #automobiles

An online space powered by a combination of VR, AR, and MR (mixed reality) can enable the automotive and manufacturing industry to become deeply entrenched in the metaverse. Using different types of reality, digital twins, and NFTs, automobile manufacturers can enjoy AR and VR for on-site auxiliary installations or skills training.

There can be a shared digital space where people can come together to work and collaborate, guided by AI to correct errors in real-time without requiring to be present on-site.

3: #realestate

The real estate industry appreciates the metaverse most. While virtual tours and immersive spaces simulating land and real estate for buyers and visitors have long been integrated into the industry offering, experts expect metaverse to mirror and adopt characteristics of the real world.

The question is whether land and real estate hold the same value in a metaverse that it does in the real world. Assumedly, the location is a key factor. The distance from the center of the metaverse and the quality of the neighbors come in second. Thus, the buying behavior of many international celebrities has sparked heated discussions.

In brief, investments in metaverse of the real estate are hot cake in the West more than it is in the East.

4: #education

The education industry will see spatial changes in the next five years. Think of it like this: pursuing knowledge would no longer be confined to words and lectures on demand. It will be reimagined to include an immersive experience accompanied by digital records.

Students, whether academic or corporate, can study space and history in the metaverse in an unlikelier manner. All in all, top players are already foraying the metaverse experience in the education sector, ready to unlock an infinite number of possibilities that can revolutionize the way we learn.

5: #retail

Since the early era of digital consumption, retail brands have been the quickest to evolve their approach and establish Direct-to-Customer channels of communication.

The advent of digital twins, avatar skins, and direct-to-avatar transactions has opened up various business opportunities in the retail sector. Put simply, not only retail brands can collaborate with game developers to embed their products, they are offering a complete shopping experience to consumers by breaking boundaries between virtual and reality to create their own bespoke games.

Final Words

For many years, consumers and brand owners had gotten used to integrating virtual spaces and digital product offerings into their business models. The metaverse, however, is a whole new universe that blends physical with virtual reality to span worldwide and across all dimensions. And without a doubt, like any other world, it opens the doors to numerous possibilities with consequential impacts.

What’s your take on Metaverse and its impacts on businesses? Join in the conversation.......