Marco Delvai

Don't improvise, have a mid-to-long term approach and hire the right people with the right, demonstrated skillsets (whether as FT employee, individual consultants or external companies). Make sure to assess that they have hands-on experience not only in divulging concepts and ideas, but also in executing/building and shipping real world products and experiences to real users.

As I mentioned before, each "sprint" or milestone previously set against the POC or test (part of the broader 3-5 years plan), should be evaluated, adapted and continued/stopped (depending on the results) every 6-9 months, with shorter period of time suitable depending on the concrete use-case being tested. In marketing specific use-cases, for example, a company that hasn't tested AR yet, should do so by looking at the different technologies available to launch mobile AR marketing/education/brand building activities (in conjunction with its broader multi-channel marketing mix) and test specifically against: -native AR as part of existing mobile Apps (when relevant) -webAR -social AR

Most companies don't have the time, resources, skillsets and adequate network of external advisors (in the form of agencies of all sort or professional consulting firms) that can create, iterate and excute against a broad Innovation Roadmap (of which AR should be a key constituent). The first step I would recommend would be to hire a small in-house team tasked exclusively to research and devise what the right Innovation plan (or narrowed to just VR/AR if those technologies have demonstrated to add value to that specific business category) for the business is and, secondly, start delivering and iterating against it. Time horizon (and associated KPI) should be on a 3 to 5 years time horizon, with sprints and iterations every 6-9 months

Analyse, test and research the best platform for the project you are about to start, taking into account critical aspects such as: -Expertise of your in-house team vs external partner in developing on the selected platform. Best to go with a tool where some demonstrated and pre-existing expertise versus a “learning by doing” approach, specially if the project is for a paid client -Features supported -Performance aspects -Commercial model -Duration of your project -Versatility of the tool in integrating with the various development frameworks available

As seen in the great points and contributions of this article, AR in retail and e-commerce has already proven to be one of the strongest and most promising use cases for this technology as it directly and positively correlates to metrics such as basket-size, conversion and returns. However, for retailers to really scale AR across their omni-channel strategy, 3D (and more specifically, digital twins of their catalogue) is the common denominator and input data that is required. Retailers should therefore start their thought process regarding AR (mirrors, AR VTO, smart fitting rooms etc) and other innovations by looking at them as "outputs", while 3D should be the input that is fed into all these amazing innovations available.

If an organisation has decided that they want to test VR/AR technologies for an area (or multiple) of their business or instead want to deploy something consumer facing after tests and POC have been completed and (like the vast majority) the same organization does not have an in-house XR expert (or teams of) and cannot rely on external agencies of record for example for that expertise, I would strongly recommend to hire a professional with "hands-on" experience. The advantages of this small upfront investment are various: -briefing and scope definition -RFP process management with the right "prospect" partners identification -budget audit and negotiation once the proposal(s) are in -support with project delivery across all phases