Dusseldorf In the future, applicants at PwC Germany will no longer have to worry about whether their suit or costume will fit properly. You can conduct job interviews from your home computer: as a self-designed avatar in a virtual office of the auditing and consulting company.
A few days ago, PwC launched a platform for meetings and teamwork in a three-dimensional digital world. “Virtual Spaces” should not only change the recruiting of new employees in the next few years. The company wants to relocate parts of internal teamwork and collaboration with customers to virtual space.
According to PwC, it is the first step into the so-called metaverse – a digital environment in which people move in the form of avatars and which is intended at best to create a hybrid business world of virtuality and reality. The technology behind it is also, but not only, virtual reality (VR), which users can take with them into the digital world using video glasses.
The bet on this virtual environment is substantial. The metaverses, which are mostly fragmented and geared towards individual brands, have so far only shown a rudimentary concrete benefit. Hardly any company makes money with it.
But PwC believes in a trend that cannot be stopped. “The Metaverse is there and will remain,” says Managing Director Clemens Koch in an interview with the Handelsblatt. “We see it as a disruptive technology that will be part of the coming new web age. And we want to be there early on.”
Koch sees the habits of young employees as one of the drivers. “We are witnessing a generation that grew up in a world with numerous technological possibilities,” he says. Topics such as gaming and computer game competitions such as e-sports make the use of virtual spaces attractive and natural for them. “This will change the entire economy in the coming decades.”
To date, PwC has invested a mid-single-digit million amount in “Virtual Spaces”. The world was created together with the Hamburg technology agency Demodern.
From the novel to the Apple stage
Metaverse is a term that is as dazzling as it is vague. The concept of a virtual world in which users travel with their avatars has become popular through science fiction novels such as “Snowcrash” or “Ready Player One”. Exponential advances in computer power, sensors and internet bandwidth make it possible today.
Technology providers are now selling a wide variety of products under the keyword – from online meetings in which office workers show themselves with digital figures to highly complex games in which users can be put with VR glasses, as Apple is expected to do at the developer conference next week WWDC will announce. However, access is often simply via the browser on the computer.
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The “Virtual Spaces” are offices in the virtual world, through which PwC employees and customers navigate with self-designed avatars, similar to a computer game. Chance encounters in the lobby are just as possible as job interviews and meetings in rooms where presentations appear on virtual screens. However, PwC does not want to do without video conferences entirely: callers can be seen on the edge of the screen in a tiled look.
Access to the “Virtual Spaces” is also via a browser, so a separate program is not necessary – the installation of new software on company PCs is often not allowed anyway. The use of virtual reality glasses is currently not possible, but the developers are working on it.
The platform is to start with internal training and applicants. During the conversation, the job and career opportunities as well as the brand should be brought closer to them visually. So it’s all about marketing first, to gain plus points in the battle for talent in the consulting industry. And the way via the browser is usually shorter than the way to the next office.
Hybrid work instead of maximum presence
The ambitions are high. PwC is banking on a trend that shook up the consulting industry during the corona pandemic. Up to 2020, the maximum on-site presence at the customer was mandatory for the consultants.
During the pandemic, however, clients were forced to learn that collaboration in many project phases also works via video meetings and virtual instruments. A common office world on the Internet should be the next step.
“Virtual spaces will not replace physical meetings, but we want to build a hybrid world in which the opportunities of virtual spaces are used,” says Holger Kern, who leads PwC’s Metaverse project.
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The advantage from his point of view: Unlike in the physical world, virtual rooms are saved for eternity – with all the documents and projects that have been developed. PwC wants to use the rooms until joint product development with customers and make the technology palatable to them there.
Important: While access to the platform is possible via any browser, the portal itself runs on specially developed software. “We want to protect the data and provide the infrastructure when we work with our customers on projects worldwide,” says Managing Director Koch.
Many companies are still waiting
However, this will still require a lot of persuasion. A survey of almost 800 international executives by PwC’s competitor KPMG revealed that 60 percent see potential for using the Metaversum to increase sales, make business more efficient and serve customers better.
However, they want to wait and see what happens next. The budgets for the metaverse are correspondingly low and are viewed critically in the current weak economic phase.
There are certainly examples. One of the first movers in Germany is the Dax group BMW, which launched the Metaverse platform Joytopia for the IAA 2021, where Coldplay, among others, will perform. Volkswagen, in turn, has created a virtual brand world and will give its employees technical training using VR glasses. In a “mini-metaverse”, the insurer Ergo simulates sales talks in the virtual living room, where the salespeople are supposed to prove their powers of persuasion.
And the automotive supplier Schaeffler equips the maintenance teams in the factories with augmented reality glasses so that they can call in experts from headquarters in the event of difficulties – the glasses display digital content in the current environment. PwC has positioned itself for further projects.
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