The virtual world at your feet

“I have been working with virtual applications for quite some time”, says Leusink. “I met Johan a few years ago, and we realised that so much is possible with these techniques. That is why we started a BV together in 2019, and we now have a team of 11 full-time employees and several freelancers. It is all going very smoothly, and we are grateful for the opportunities that we have. We work with virtual reality to digitally capture a product, training, or entire company in 360 degrees. We also work with augmented reality, where we can place a digitised object in reality. This is very easy to apply and very accessible. We digitised all models from a producer of scratching posts for cats, for example. Customers choose a model on the website, and they can place it in their living rooms using their mobile phones. You can see exactly what it would look like since it is true to size, and you can even walk around it. The number of returns decreases drastically as a result because people know exactly what they are buying.”

Brinkman adds: “We can do this for all sorts of other products, from furniture to e-bikes. You no longer need expensive product photoshoots; we build a digital studio where we place all models, which will then be captured with just one press of a button. Google is also increasingly focusing on 3D: a new tab where you can search specifically for digitised products will be added to the search engine soon. Consumers can then click on a certain food processor, place it in their kitchen, and buy it. So search engine optimisation will become increasingly important too, from that point of view.”

Virtual and augmented reality can do much more than just selling products online. Brinkman: “We also offer virtual training. We imitate real situations and record them in a virtual environment so that people can experience them. For example, you can be a helpdesk employee, and an angry customer comes to your desk. How should you respond? We make extremely lifelike recreations of these situations in our virtual environment by using a 360-degree video to train this. For example, the employee will receive four choices, and each choice leads to a different reaction from the angry customer. I used to work in education, so I love these kinds of applications. People learn much more in this way, compared to reading something or watching an instructional video. And it is scalable: you only have to make the virtual training once, and then all employees can use it.”

Leusink adds: “We can also see this scalability in our virtual employer branding. That is a fancy term for capturing your company in 360 degrees, with all kinds of added interactions, information, moving images and calls to action. We do this for Randstad, for example. Everyone can then virtually visit the company or view a job in practice. What exactly would my position be if I applied here? This leads to much better matches between people and companies, resulting in less turnover. It is also highly efficient. Virtual reality can quickly take you to places you would otherwise not be able to go. A company like Randstad cannot give guided tours all the time, so this is a perfect solution. It also makes you very accessible to potential employees: just come and take a look around. That creates opportunities in the labour market. You can also see this in another project that we are currently working on, in collaboration with ROC van Twente. We are creating 360-degree views of many companies that are open for internships, and we also organise digital open days. This can be done in very interactive ways by asking all kinds of questions, conducting surveys and collecting data.

There are plenty of opportunities in the digital world, in other words. And there is another significant advantage: all data is recorded. Leusink explains: “We always build a dashboard, a kind of overview for all data. If you make one of these virtual trainings, you would want to see how your employees did. How did they score? How long did it take them? Everything can be easily measured since everything is digital. It is built in a very result-oriented way. We really want to show that virtual and augmented reality can be used to achieve great results. It is not just for entertainment. More and more companies are realising this, fortunately, especially now that we are less dependent on a location. Our services fit in perfectly with this.”

Brinkman concludes: “There are so many possibilities for so many companies. We want to be the partner that thinks along with you: can virtual or augmented reality provide significant added value within your company? If the answer is ‘yes’, we will start looking for the best way to get started. You will not have to digitise everything straight away. We look at the desired result: if investing 5,000 euros halves the turnover within your company, it is probably worth it. The virtual world is relatively new, so it will always be fun, of course, but it is much more than that. It increases your conversions, strengthens your brand experience and generates attention for your company. Enough reasons to give it a try!”