Tridion launches solution to help clients futureproof field service productivity

With nearly 80% of service leaders planning to deploy virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology in the next five years, Tridion has launched a new solution to help organizations easily embrace AR and VR, and prepare for future digital channels.

 

“Recent developments in VR and AR hold enormous potential for field service teams,” explains Elsa Sklavounou, VP of AI Alliances for Tridion. “The issue is that field service companies have adopted a traditional, unstructured content approach as their foundation for AR/VR experiences – which makes publishing to these channels extremely complex and costly.” 

 

Working with partners, including Enosis VR, Fluid Topics, JANA and Zoomin, the new Tridion solution offers clients a structured approach to the way content is created, managed and then delivered to digital devices. Structured content is information broken down into small, reusable, topic-based chunks, known as ‘components.’ All components are managed from one central location – a component content management system (CCMS) – and delivered to VR and AR applications. 

 

A CCMS addresses several issues related to implementing VR and AR experiences:

 

If updates aren’t published quickly across all channels, AR could overlay old, inaccurate information on new equipment – potentially resulting in further damage, or even injury. With structured content, changes are made once, by updating the component that contains the relevant information. This change to the single, authoritative source can then automatically be replicated everywhere that component is used.

 

Even up-to-date, accurate information is useless if it is not findable. Technicians need to be able to quickly search for or navigate to the content they need. In structured content, the components can be tagged and semantically enriched, allowing technicians to quickly narrow down their search results by filtering for content types or topics. 

 

Field service engagements often occur in remote or underground areas with limited internet access, so the information to be pushed to the AR/VR platform needs to be available offline. With Tridion, technicians can gain offline access to information and experiences – regardless of location.

 

AR relies on a portable device with a camera – which could be a phone, a tablet or, for hands-free convenience, glasses or a similar wearable. When a content management system holds information in predefined formats such as Word documents and PDFs, the number of channels it can be published on is limited. A headless CCMS system means it is not tied to a particular mode of presentation. It stores its content in components free of any formatting, allowing it to be published in any format, to any device.

 

Tridion, an intelligent content platform, enables organizations to create, manage and deliver multilingual digital content to their customers, employees and partners. Some of the world’s largest brands rely on Tridion to deliver multilingual digital experiences across any channel. 

 

If you’re looking to introduce AR/VR experiences across your organizations, click here to learn about how Tridion can help.