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BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES
What to consider before adopting AR?
Using AR effectively is no simple matter. As with any and reduce the time and money needed to help them
innovative technology, new benefits come with new reskill.
challenges. Before embedding an AR solution in your
business, it’s important to consider four questions: The next stage is to validate your use of AR technology
through small scale tests of your proposed solution.
1. What research should you complete before These tests help troubleshoot potential issues before
adopting an AR solution? committing to larger scale investment and provide
quantifiable evidence of the technology’s usefulness to
A good answer nearly always starts with good questions. senior management.
To deploy an AR solution effectively, you need to
understand why you’re using it. Educate yourself and 2. How can AR drive profitability and improve
your team on what AR technology is, what problem productivity?
you’re trying to solve and in what specific and
measurable ways this technology can mitigate the AR’s ability to supply accurate, easy-to-use and
problem. contextual information makes it useful for supplying real
time guidance to employees while on-the-job.
First, you should identify and analyze a problem within
your business. Maybe a routine activity within your Within the logistics industry, AR is already improving
workflow is suffering from inadequate communication, the efficiency of stock picking and movement within
under trained staff or fiddly information delivery. Are you warehouses. There are multiple actions associated with
perhaps relying on outdated or difficult-to-use instruction this job: identify the item, calculate an optimal route,
manuals? and then physically transport it. AR is being used to
streamline this process by automatically logging the
With this research in mind, you should evaluate the item and displaying the most efficient route in the user’s
potential for AR technology to mitigate high importance view. This has a positive impact on the worker’s
factors and solve the problem. Crucially, this research productivity and the company’s bottom line in several
should take into account the financial feasibility of ways. First, it removes the possibility of the employee
investing in an AR solution. It’s unlikely to be worth taking an inaccurate or inefficient path towards their
attempting to embed AR into simple, everyday tasks, target, increasing their work speed and reducing error
where staff don’t require advanced training. Whereas rates. By taking responsibility for calculating directions
complicated activities within your business often require within the warehouse, it also reduces the user’s mental
staff to undergo retraining. If they’re high-risk tasks, it load, lowering stress levels and improving focus.
might also be that it’s absolutely essential for your staff Importantly, all of this is achieved while leaving the
to avoid making mistakes. AR can reduce error rates employee’s hands free to scan and package products.
10 December 2019 - Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) in Marketing