BRITISH START-UP PARTNERS WITH OCULUS TO POWER GROUND-BREAKING VR LEARNING FOR DHL
DHL begins roll out of virtual reality to boost learning across its global workforce
British virtual reality start-up, Immerse, announced that it has begun building a pioneering virtual learning world for the world’s largest logistics company, DHL, in partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus.
The global initiative was announced by Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and Hugo Barra, who leads VR efforts for the company, live on stage during a keynote speech at the Oculus Connect 4 conference in California.
The announcement is one of the first signs that major global corporations are putting VR at the heart of learning programmes for hundreds of thousands of staff.
Immerse has created an interactive VR experience where users can move between a DHL aircraft, facility and renewal area. Users can interact with numerous objects in the scene using Oculus headsets and handsets, moving and stacking boxes, operating cargo lifts and meeting virtual avatars of colleagues from anywhere in the world.
Inside DHL’s virtual reality training environment: watch the phase one demo here.
Rick Jackson, Global Head of CIS DHL Express, said, "This is about simulating complicated scenarios in our operating environment. It provides a realistic way to practice skills and interact with global colleagues using role plays and gamification. We see VR as a powerful tool for employee engagement and motivation. This is the first stage of a three year process of embedding VR at the centre of how we build and train teams across our global network."
This first scenario will be used to build awareness of the possibilities and applications of VR across DHL before its roll out as part of the company’s Certified International Specialist (CIS) program in 2018.
CIS is arguably the biggest corporate change management and employee engagement programme of all time, involving more than 100,000 employees of DHL Express worldwide. It is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group’s overall Certified programme, being delivered to 508,000 employees.
CIS aims to drive engagement, innovation, motivation and leadership in education across 47 different languages across 220 countries and territories.
Tom Symonds, CEO, Immerse, said, "We're hugely excited to be powering such an ambitious VR initiative at one of the world's largest companies. We can record and analyse every action performed in the platform, so that both trainer and trainee can be monitored for progression and success, and meaningful dashboards can be created to track an individual’s activity."
DHL has a strong track record in using the latest technology to improve the effectiveness of its workforce. It has already transformed the way orders are picked in its warehouses around the world, with its "Vision Picking" augmented reality solution.
The market for enterprise VR hardware and content is forecast to grow from $592.3 million in 2016 to $9.2 billion by 2021, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 59.6%.
The announcement of the DHL partnership was part of Oculus’ wider launch of its Oculus for Business offering.
About Immerse
Immerse is an award-winning British technology company providing industry with both fully designed immersive VR environments, plus a platform and tools that empower enterprises to create, distribute and track their own solutions. We believe the future of VR lies in enabling people to collaborate in previously impossible ways, transforming the way we explore, interact and learn. Our mission is to bring this power to the business world via scalable, accessible and cost-effective technology. Immerse customers include Air France, GlaxoSmithKline, Inmarsat and Qinetiq.
Media contacts for Immerse: Gareth Thomas / Max Foster [email protected] / +44 (0) 207 924 5656 / out of hours +44 (0) 7793 597406