This article previews a report, co-written by Re’Flekt and AR Insider’s research arm ARtillery Intelligence (see disclosure below). The report’s takeaways and executive summary are included, and you can download it in full here. 

One of AR’s biggest proposed beneficiaries is industrial enterprises. We’ve been hearing and studying for a few years about the operational efficiencies AR can bring, including everything from faster task completion to error reduction and institutional knowledge retention.

But to realize those efficiencies and bottom-line gains through real deployments, there are lots of barriers to cross. For example, the dreaded “pilot purgatory” looms as a sort of siren song that beckons AR vendors, only to get stuck in investments that don’t yield the intended returns.

So what are the ways around this? Our research arm ARtillery Intelligence got together with Re’Flekt to research and provide insights on this ongoing AR pain point. To differentiate from all the glowing reports on Enterprise AR blue-sky benefits they wanted a “reality check.”

The result is Enterprise AR: Breaking Free of Pilot Purgatory, co-written by ARtillery and Re’Flekt. Using the former’s data and insights along with the latter’s ground-level perspective, the report was born. The goal: to cut through the hype with real tactics about avoiding pilot purgatory.

To do this, the firms devised the construct of the ‘3 Ps’. Comprised of People, Product and Process, they’re the sources of conflict and stumbling blocks that lead to pilot purgatory. They’re therefore the areas where tactical avoidance of pilot purgatory should focus.

This makes the report a sort of public service announcement (PSA) for AR. And the biggest beniciary is enterprises themselves. The industrial companies investing in AR risk squandering that investment by falling into common traps. So ARtillery and Re’Flekt wrote them a map.

As a sneak peek, the companion video, executive summary and table of contents are below, and you can download the full report for free here.

Enterprise AR: Breaking Free of Pilot Purgatory

Optimizing People, Product & Process for AR Success

Executive Summary

Technology continues to transform the workplace. Emerging tech like AI and the Internet of Things
improve automation, data-driven insights and operational efficiency. But the technology that holds the most potential bottom-line impact is Augmented Reality (AR).

There are corporate AR applications such as data visualization, but greater impact is happening in
industrial settings. There, AR is being used in to streamline machine maintenance or complex assembly. This includes hands-free instructive graphical overlays in workers’ line of sight.

Companies from ABB to Siemens are realizing strong ROI from such deployments, including
more output, faster work and error reduction. For example, project uptime can increase by 20
percent while error reduction can improve by 90percent. These gains can add up within largescale
operations.

But though this signals exciting opportunities and transformation on the horizon, there are
also real challenges to acknowledge. These challenges map to the three P’s: People, Product
and Process.

Like many technologies before it, AR will experience adoption friction in these key areas. That can
happen on an organizational level or through inter-departmental barriers, as change agents
champion AR while others resist.

The three P’s are also at the heart of the most prevalent failure for enterprise AR: ‘Pilot Purgatory.’ As its name suggests, this is when AR is adopted at the pilot stage, but never progresses to full deployment. It happens when AR strategies aren’t aligned with, or optimized for, the three Ps.

What are the main causes of this resistance and how can they be alleviated? For product, it’s
about alignment with solving real operational problems. For people, it’s about customizing
AR’s ROI story for their benefit. For process, it’s about multidisciplinary input rather than topdown
innovation.

In this report, we take a deep dive into AR’s enterprise challenges and the art of resolving
them. We’ll outline messaging that can counter objections from internal stakeholders. The name
of the game is to set AR up to succeed by optimizing its deployment around these critical
factors that can make or break its success.

Find out more or download the free report here.

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Disclosure: AR Insider’s research arm ARtillery Intelligence co-authored the report featured in this article as part of its custom publishing services. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.