Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Strivr, a leading provider of virtual reality-based, immersive learning and training solutions for enterprises. Based in Santa Clara, California, Strivr has trained more than one million workers at some of the world’s largest companies using its proven, proprietary immersive learning platform. Strivr’s VR training platform helps enterprises increase the efficiency and efficacy of their employee skilling and upskilling initiatives, while also delivering data-driven insights that further inform and enhance their broader enterprise talent development efforts. As per reports, learning through virtual reality is 30% to 40% more productive than traditional means, and Accenture wants to make a great use case of that in its work environment. Recently, the company has launched the Accenture Metaverse Continuum business group, which uses Web3 and Metaverse technology to create products that can transform our virtual experience. This business group is led by Paul Daugherty, who also serves as the chief technology officer at Accenture.

One Accenture Park is a shared virtual space that enables immersive onsite experiences, interactive showcases, and hands-on demonstrations. In one virtual space, teams of new joiners are introduced to a fictional client, separately exploring the virtual space, new joiners review stories about Accenture’s real-life clients before reuniting to share what they have learned and determine how they can best help the fictional client.

As the core capabilities needed for workers across industries change and new skills are increasingly required, more than one billion workers are expected to need reskilling by the year 2030, according to research from The World Economic Forum. A recent Accenture study found that 90% of executives believe that their existing training methods need to be more effective and efficient, and 94% of workers indicated they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. Immersive learning using extended reality (XR) technologies offers opportunities for employees to participate in “hands-on” learning that has been shown to lead to greater learning retention.

Accenture recently announced the launch of the Accenture Metaverse Continuum business group, which combines metaverse-skilled professionals and market-leading capabilities in customer experience, digital commerce, extended reality, blockchain, digital twins, and artificial intelligence and computer vision to help clients design, execute and accelerate their metaverse journeys. As shared in the Accenture Technology Vision 2022 report, entitled “Meet Me in the Metaverse: The Continuum of Technology and Experience Reshaping Business,” the metaverse continuum is a spectrum of digitally enhanced worlds, realities, and business models that will transform nearly every aspect of life and business in the next decade and beyond.

Strivr is the latest company to join Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program focused on investing in companies that create or apply disruptive enterprise technologies. In addition to funding, Project Spotlight connects emerging technology software startups with the Global 2000 to fill strategic innovation gaps, and offers extensive access to Accenture’s domain expertise and enterprise clients, helping startups harness human creativity and deliver on the promise of their technology.

• “Bump into” experiences: Metaverse technology allows you to see your colleagues’ avatars in real-time, making it easier to stop them for a chat when you bump into them in the virtual workplace. Informal and spontaneous conversations account for a huge amount of business communications — research suggests up to 90% in areas such as R&D — and during the pandemic, we lost a lot of this vital communication.
• Well-being spaces: These are dedicated areas for users of the world to take a break and experience something different.
• Delivery to your physical space: Clients can add features such as the ability to order take-out food or books and other merchandise within the virtual environment and have these delivered to your physical location (e.g., home).
• Live status tracking: Just as in the physical workplace, you can walk around and get that panoramic sweep of the office floor, see where colleagues are located, who’s free, drop in for a quick chat, and so much more.

In addition to onboarding, Accenture is also successfully using the technology for staff training because it offers a more engaging experience than face-to-face training. In the metaverse, employees can go to places like ‘Phishing Pier’ where they can get interactive cyber security training. They can also experience metaphorical interactive experiences like ‘climbing a leadership mountain’ or visiting a skills fountain to ‘collect’ skills coins. According to research, people forget 70% of training content within 24 hours, after a month they’ve only retained 10% of the content. Immersive training is far more engaging which could be beneficial for a business’s training ROI.