In The Arena by TechArena - The Emergence of the Metaverse with Accenture

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Accenture’s Astha Bhardwaj on initial use cases of the metaverse emerging today and where Accenture sees immersive environments evolving in the future.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Asta Bhatwaj, Managing Director of Communications and Media Industry at Accenture. Asta, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Alison. Very happy to be here.

Asta, why don't we just get started with an introduction of Accenture? I think everybody knows the name Accenture, but this is the first time Accenture has been on the tech arena. And specifically, what is your practice at Accenture and how it relates to our topic today? Sure, Alison. So let me talk a little bit about Accenture. And I think as many of our listeners would know, Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps different businesses, governments, and organizations around the world do three things, right? Build their digital core, optimize their operations,

accelerate revenue growth. And while doing so, also enhance their citizen services. Now, by doing so, we also enhance their citizen services. Now, by doing so, our endeavor is to create tangible value for our clients at speed and at scale. We have about 738,000 people who serve clients in more than one-pengi countries. Specifically talking about myself and my role within Accenture. So I am a managing director, as you mentioned, within the Accenture strategy and consulting group. I'm part of the communications and media industry, and I drive some of our B2C growth solutions in the APAC region for our Temco clients.

So that's a little bit about Accenture and myself. Well, Accenture has a long history of working with leading providers all over the globe to innovate and deliver new capabilities to clients. Can you speak a little bit about this work and how you engage telcos in defining what their future vision is for their networks? So, Accenture's communications and media industry group helps CSPs or communication service providers, as well as media and entertainment organizations, become leading providers of next-generation IP services and immersive customer experiences. So we work with the leading telecom and media companies across the globe. And one of our key differentiators is that we help unlock what I would say end-to-end value because we have a breadth of synergistic services across strategy, across technology, across operations, and across

industry, eggs, and so on, which kind of allows us to, you know, bring this set of synergistic services with an ethos that the goal is greater than the sum of the parts. With regards to network also, I mean, that's an area which is definitely a very, very important and critical area. And to your question, yes, we work with our Terragon clients extensively and intensively in helping them on various pursuits related to the network, whether it's in terms of optimizing the networks or it's in terms of leveraging networks for newer business models, or it's in terms of, you know, using network as an enabling technology for new products and services. So we work across the spectrum when it comes to network as well with our telecom companies. Now, I love the topic of networks because there isn't many areas in technology today that hasn't gone through more innovation, the communications networks, over the last five years. And today's topic is Metaverse, which is a wonderful example of an application that is so innovative and runs on top of those transform networks that you're speaking about at MWC. Let's start with your vision for Metaverse and how you

see your clients coalescing on a shared definition of Metaverse today. It's been a topic in the industry for a few years now, and I think we're finally getting a clear picture of what this transformative experience really is. It's been a topic in the industry for some time now. In fact, I won't even shy away from saying that, you know, there have been some recent qualms in the industry about concept and the value that the metaverse brings. But I do believe that there is real value that can be reaped in the metaverse in the near future. And so do executives, right? So we did a survey recently and we found out that 89% of executives agree that the metaverse will have an important role in the organization's future growth.

So the belief continues to be strong. However, what is important is that one should look at metaverse as a continuum and not as a stop concept the initial period when we were talking about the metaverse there was awareness there was you know setting of a common vernacular people were discussing the art of the possible but now there is a shift in gears right the now and the next will be more about identifying real, tangible value from metaverse use cases and also the technology that powers these use cases, which is why Anil said it's a bit of a continuum. It's something which is kind of evolving. And while the initial

discussions were more in terms of the art of the possible, discussions and deliberations are now shifting towards the specifics. I just wanted to call out one other important thing, which is kind of a little bit of a shift in the mindset is not to look at the metaverse as a siloed technological innovation, but to look at the metaverse also in context of the converging technologies like generating AI, IoT, 5G, AR, VR, etc. Because it's this confluence of technologies which I think will open new and unimaginable doors for organizations.

And the organizations that invest in these tech innovations, even in these very turbulent times we live in, they will be the ones which will headline the future metaverse. I love that you talked about the confluence, because I think that's so true, that all of these technologies are coming together at this perfect time to enable something like the metaverse to really take form. You know, I think that many folks who first heard about the metaverse first went to use cases around gaming or more consumer applications. But I've heard that Accenture is actually using a metaverse with your employees. And I was fascinated by this. Can you talk about how you've applied it and what you've learned from this experience?

The obvious suspects were some of the use cases around consumer, etc. But I'm sure while consumer use cases are important, we have, you know, applied Metaverse extensively for our onboarding experience. And just to kind of give you a little bit of context, right? We've been experimenting with extended reality for several years. We recognize that distributed workforce flows between in-person, 2D, 3D virtual moments, right? So in early 2019, we created a space called Accenture Nth Floor, which is like a virtual floor across offices that enables our people to engage with colleagues. Then, of course, the pandemic happened and we were all in a state of flux and change. And that's when we also redesigned our onboarding experience, which I was alluding to. And a core component of that onboarding experience is Accenture's virtual campus.

Where new joiners are introduced in the Accenture family. We are onboarding close to about 200K people in this one Accenture path. And to be honest, feedback is very important for us. So we did a lot of surveys to figure out whether we are doing things right or not. And the ratings for the experience of the onboarding was 4.7 out of 5, which is significantly higher than it was pre-COVID times. So, you know, it just shows that people are really enjoying and engaged in this kind of

virtual onboarding experience, which is powered by the metaverse. But having said that, it's not just about looking at the onboarding experience. We are looking at it much more realistically, and we've extended it to a set of omni-connected experiences that we call. So whether it's learning, whether it's collaboration, whether it's events, whether it's a business, all of these experiences are something which we are leveraging using our oneX in Joppa and these kind of assets in infrastructure. This also is good from a KPI or a metric standpoint because if you look at some of the learning use cases in the metaverse,

there is almost a 33% higher learning retention with immersive VR compared to the video. So from a metric standpoint also, some of these use cases are really generating a lot of value for the organization. You brought up the pandemic, so I have to ask the question. People are really hungry for face-to-face engagement. I think we're seeing this with how many people are going to mobile world next week. Do you see this impacting growth of metaverse deployments or do you see this as absolutely complementary and we've shifted

into a hybrid world where online experiences are always going to be a deeper and more immersive part of our lives. So I believe that these two modes will be complementary rather than substitutes. And while face-to-face engagement will continue to be important, and it'll also depend on the context. For example, just, you know, talking about some of the use cases I was talking about earlier, there might be certain use cases where there is a career counseling kind of a discussion which is needed on a sensitive topic between a reporting manager and their team. And for some of those use cases, maybe the physical connects might be more effective

than the virtual connects. So it's important to take the context in mind as well. Having said that, I also feel that it's not always either or, right? In fact, one of the reasons we dwell on this whole concept of only connected experiences is that there are certain interactions, which in my opinion, can start physically, but they can end in the virtual world or vice versa as well. And there are these handoffs and synergies which kind of seamlessly can work between the two modes. A classic example, and just going beyond the internal employee use case, I mean, a classic

example could be a retail journey for a consumer, which could start online and then end offline, right? So it's also not just about, you know, looking at these as two disparate modes, but there is a high degree of seamlessness, connectivity, and handoffs, which can also exist between the physical and the virtual spaces. Now, we've talked about employee onboarding. You mentioned retail. We've talked about gaming. Are there any other

use cases that you think are really compelling as you talk to your clients to bring to life and you think they're going to really be disruptive in the way that we live or work? So that's an interesting question, right? I would probably take a little bit of a telecom lens here in terms of use cases, because that's the industry I focus on. And even before I talk about use cases, it's also important to know that in the last couple of decades, the internet, I would say, has reshaped our world. And telcos have played an absolutely fundamental role as enablers, right? But unfortunately, they haven't gotten most of

the value. They haven't got most of the value. And when it comes to metaverse, again, they're at a critical juncture where they need to recognize the value that metaverse brings for products and services or for customer experience. But they need to really kind of plant a flag here. And we're sort of noticing or observing three different archetypes that are emerging from a Dengom standpoint. And across these archetypes, there are a plethora of use cases which are gaining some or attraction. So for us, those three archetypes are one are the disruptors

who are going to go ahead and they create a disruptive set of Medaverse experience and platforms. The other are the orchestrators who are going to go ahead and they create a disruptive set of metaverse experience and platforms. The other are the orchestrators which are going to look at more consistent, relevant and seamless experiences. And the third archetype is what we are calling the performance players who are going to provide best-in-class network to connect people to the metaverse. And based on these archetypes, there are different use cases which are going to come to the fore.

But on the other side, like one of the use cases, for example, are around digital wallets, which are more, I would say, also some of the disruptors are doing well. Or there are also very interesting use cases which are coming. Some of the orchestrators may also try their hand on, which are around virtual and immersive retail experiences, where you almost create a digital twin of the retail store

and let the consumer experience that retail store in their own place of convenience. The other thing to also interestingly to note about these use cases is that these use cases

are not always standalone. They can also be looked at holistically. And a great example is what I would say SK Telecom is kind of trying to do, right? Of course,

powered by various partners, SK Telecom is growing if they haven't do a global better-worth platform that provides social capabilities, commerce, entertainment,

virtual careers, in a virtual space which is inhabited by virtual identities. So there is a lot of stitching together of use cases which is possible. From a B2B standpoint, some of these were probably more B2C oriented as well but from a B2B standpoint of course we can't ignore the writing on the table which is around the digital twin as a service. Those are the use cases which will generate value and they will help improve the manufacturing and industrial operations. So those are the other use cases, which, of course, and especially with the combinatorial

impact of 5G, cloud and edge, telcos are very sweetly positioned to have a play in these B2B use cases as well. That makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I'm excited to see the next couple of years of the innovation that's being driven in this space, because I think we're just scratching the surface of what's capable. But as we do, I think that we need to look at some key priorities like privacy and security. Anytime that you move into a more immersive environment, you've got to be thinking about those things, about how to make this a safe environment for people to engage. Do you think that there's anything unique in this technology arena

that we need to keep in mind regarding these topics? You're spot on, right? I mean, these are extremely important elements and in fact we have a very strong point of view on this we call it the responsible metaverse that covers many of these elements and what's different here to your question is that in the past organizations have worked to almost retrofit privacy security and other consumer protection elements into the internet. And they've always been, I would say, one step behind. It is essential to embed this responsibility into the metaverse's very design.

Not as an afterthought, but embedded within the design. And when we talk about these responsible practices, we can broadly classify them into sort of two dimensions, trust dimensions and the human dimensions, right? So the trust dimensions include things like privacy, security,

resilience, IP. Then there are the human dimensions which include things like inclusion and diversity, sustainability, well-being, safety, right? And it's important to make sure that practices for both these dimensions are seamlessly embedded while designing the metaverse and not as an afterthought. For instance, when you talk about privacy, the primary purpose of collecting, processing, sharing user data should be to

deliver value to the users and the user need to be informed clearly about their privacy options. Same goes for security. You need to have security by design where you're focusing on hardening both the infrastructure but also the software against threats such as social engineering attacks. You need to have robust encryption and interoperable authentication protocols which prevent certain things from happening which should not be happening. So responsible metaverse is something which is of paramount importance very early on in the journey and not as a retrospective lead. Now we're recording this episode for MWC. You're speaking there on this topic. Obviously, Metaverse could be viewed as a killer app for five and future 6G networks. Yes, I said 6G. Tell me about how comm service providers in your mind are building out their

network capabilities that are going to be resilient and performant enough for metaverse because it is a very performance and latency sensitive use case. Where in the network is there more work to be done in your mind, if anywhere, to deliver a great experience for all Metaverse users? So there is definitely work to be done because when some very basic Metaverse use cases can perhaps ride on current networks, it's the expansive Metaverse experiences of tomorrow which cannot be delivered at scale on just the VAU infrastructure. We at Accenture call this sort of shift, which CSPs have both the responsibility, but also the opportunity of doing so. We call this shift to be the four Ps of Metaverse ReadyNet.

What are those four Ps from a network perspective? Those four Ps are performance, platform, partnerships, and products. So just to unpack them briefly. So performance like you touched upon already, right? You need that end-to-end connectivity performance. You need low latency, symmetry, stability, and that exceptional technical capability when it comes to that. But then once you have that connectivity foundation, the second is the platform component. So you need to enhance your core BSS, OSS, your orchestration layers, your security, your marketplace, your intelligence.

You also need to support that with more cloud-native, programmable, scalable, distributed, and standardized platform across your network. So that's the second B, which is our platform. The third is the partnership. So again, connectivity for the metaverse in all its complexity, in all its scale, cannot be delivered independently. There is a high degree of collaboration across multiple industries, but also multiple ecosystem partners, whether it's the content providers,

the platforms, the device providers, or even industry standardization bodies. You need all of them kind of coming together for the collective goal. And lastly, from a network perspective, it's the product. So you can start as a CSP exploring more future network products, including, say, things like quality of service or enhanced service tiers or bundles, or even things like usage-based pricing, network slicing. And so, and these will help you also create new revenue streams, new business models, et cetera, as well.

So those are the four P's, which is performance, platform, partnerships, and products, which we feel are the essential four Ps that CSPs need to work together and work towards for metaverse reading. You've taught me a lot in our conversation, so thank you for taking the time today. I just have one more question for you. I'm sure that people are going to want to talk to you about metaverse and learn more about what Accenture is doing in this space. Where would you send them to engage at MWC and online to continue the conversation? I think the question is very important. So like you said, there is a physical aspect and then there's a virtual aspect and both of them are connected.

So from a physical point of view, we will, as Accenture, be in Hall 4 and vote for B30. We are also GSMA Industry City's knowledge partner. We'll also be having a set of speakers, including myself, talking about different topics. I'm going to be on stage talking about metaverse. We also have other SMEs talking about, you know, Tango Cloud, BSS, sustainability and other areas.

You can also reach out to me online. Feel free to look me up on LinkedIn. So my name is, full name on LinkedIn is Aastha Bhardwaj Gupta. You can also find more details about our program and go to

Accenture.com Events UC Barcelonaona so that's where you can also find a lot of information about we have and you know what are the different solutions accidents etc which we will be showcasing for our clients at mwc so we'll be more than happy to connect with you either virtually or in person or in the metaverse to talk more about all of these topics and anything else which is of interest. Asa, thank you so much for your time today. I can't wait to attend your session

and hope to catch up with you in Barcelona. Thank you so much, Alison. Likewise, look forward to meeting you. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena. Alison, likewise, look forward to meeting you.