Jan22205 Visions Of The Future Corporate Vision’s Corporate Excellence Awards showcases the best and brightest of what business has to offer around the world. The world of AR and VR is one that is fast becoming familiar to many, with the team at Paracosma leading the way for several companies. Having achieved the prestigious award of Most Innovative AR/VR Technology Company – 2022, we caught up with Founder and CEO Ken Ehrhart to discover how he and his team have done it. With Mark Zuckerberg pushing the boundaries of technological innovation through the Metaverse, it’s little surprise that companies around the world are exploring how AR and VR could influence the ways in which they work. The team at Paracosma have made their name through working with businesses to leverage this exceptional technological resource and we were delighted to catch up with Ken Ehrhart to discover more. Firstly - please give us an overview of your company, the work that you do, your clients and the services you offer. What are your core values and have these core values changed at all since your establishment? Paracosma is an Augmented and Virtual Reality Solutions Provider offering both custom AR/VR application development as well as 3D content creation ranging from 3D models to 360 video production and distribution. Paracosma was founded at the start of 2016 to focus exclusively on VR, AR and 3D, without any legacy web development or mobile application businesses to distract from developing deep AR/VR expertise. As we have grown to over 100 employees, we have become a one-stop-shop for large enterprise companies looking for an expert partner to realise their AR/VR vision. What kind of clients do you serve and how do you approach them? How do you stand apart from the crowd? Historically, Paracosma’s clients have been large enterprise companies. Because of Paracosma’s size and experience, we are an easy partner for enterprise customers who expect a certain level of maturity and reliability in their service providers. We have the scope of expertise to cover any AR/VR platform and type of implementation. Having focused in my career on partnering with globally leading businesses, to cofound Concur Japan, Marketo Japan, Demandware Japan and others, I have a good understanding of both how to partner with such enterprise companies and the extreme demands they put on their vendors. What role do your staff play in the success of your firm? How would you describe your internal culture and how does it contribute to your company’s success? Paracosma was founded in 2016, when consumer VR was just launching, so experienced VR developers were not available. That was the premise of Paracosma’s founding and also the challenge we ourselves faced. Consequently, we built a practice of hiring the best computer science graduates from the top public and private Universities along with the most talented artists we could find and then trained them internally at Paracosma. From this standpoint, we have been able to cultivate a large team of highly capable and well-trained experts. Can you detail any specific industry-based challenges you are facing now and may face in the near future? With the pandemic, every company experienced periods when all their staff were working remotely. With time, most companies have adopted a longer-term or hybrid remote work policy. Thus, companies have been forced to seek out and adopt better remote collaboration tools. For Paracosma and our clients, AR/VR have been hugely beneficial in this transition. Paracosma has established its own virtual offices and auditorium for company-wide meetings in VR. We have created virtual reception halls for VR networking events for conferences and trade shows. We have produced a three-day, three-venue virtual movie festival, with streaming films and videos, seminars and esports. We believe that the pandemic has accelerated experimentation with and adoption of these virtual meeting and event opportunities. And, as more employees experience VR, we will see broader adoption. Do you have any plans for 2022 and beyond that you would like to share with our readers? Paracosma’s biggest current challenge is expanding our teams to meet skyrocketing demand. Thankfully, we have deep operational experience to recruit, train, onboard and manage new employees. We are also investing in technology resources to create tools to expand the productivity of our developers and artists. Ultimately, we are developing AI-based systems to disrupt our own manual labour. Thank you, Ken, for speaking to us! The success of Paracosma showcases the immense demand there is brewing for this innovative technology. As time goes on, it’s certain that AR and VR are innovations set to become a regular part of our lives – we just don’t know it yet! Company: Paracosma Inc Name: Ken Ehrhart Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.paracosma.com
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