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Deloitte is adding a new capability to its list of consulting services: guide to the metaverse. The company announced its new Dimension10 Studio on Thursday. The service will help customers create “Unlimited Reality” experiences that combine artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, Internet of Things architecture and 5G connectivity.

The studio team will help clients design, prototype and market test virtual services. Frances Yu, partner, Deloitte Consulting, said that Dimension10 studios is both a virtual and physical space, a business concept, as well as the “maker” engine of the Unlimited Reality services.

“The studio is a multidisciplinary team of AI/ML engineers, spatial designers, UX designers, software architects, game developers, XR creators and strategists from across our sector portfolios,” Yu said.

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Deloitte has been working with virtual worlds in several contexts, including:

  • A virtual space for Deloitte employees where the company has hosted 50 events and 4,000 attendees from 15 countries
  • An AR + AI solution for a U.S. power company that includes wildfire hazards, a 3D virtual transmission substantiation environment and VR training experience
  • “Factory of the future” and “Warehouse of the Future” for industrial clients that integrate AR, 5G and edge computing
  • Augmented reality app for major sporting event

As part of this work, Deloitte will extend its collaboration with NVIDIA, specifically the company’s Omniverse Enterprise platform for 3D design collaboration and virtual world simulation.

Yu said the success of an unlimited reality experience depends on how well it creates the perception that it is both “virtual” and “physical” as well as how it fuses the natural world and digital augmentation.

“More practically, our success will be measured in how broadly we can apply this new technology and embed these solutions into everything from unique entertainment experiences to everyday experiences such as driving to visit friends and buying groceries,” she said.

Success varies by industry as well, with some companies looking for exceptionality while others are looking for consistency in operations.

“A sports team may want excitement, and a school may require calm,” she said.

Some of the specific metrics Deloitte uses to measure the success of a virtual world implementation include:

  • Time to launch
  • Brand equity growth, awareness and associations
  • Brand consistency
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Cross-platform retention
  • Coherence: How seamless the transition is from “reality” to “reality”
  • Engagement, reach and impressions
  • Distinctiveness
  • Understandability and explainability of an experience

The studio’s name is a reference to the tenth dimension, according to the company. In theoretical physics, the tenth dimension captures the unlimited possibility of the universe in a single point, much like the promise of virtual worlds for businesses.

Artificial intelligence is key to the entire enterprise, according to a new report. Deloitte analysts explain the potential benefits of wider adoption of artificial intelligence in a new report: The AI Dossier. Nitin Mittal and Irfan Saif, both U.S. AI co-leaders at Deloitte Consulting, wrote the report. They see these six ways that AI can create business value both in general and for specific industries:

  • Cost reduction: Automation of data entry and scheduling using natural language processing
  • Speed to execution: Speeding up the process of drug approval by running synthetic clinical trials
  • Reduced complexity: Predictive analytics that could reduce factory downtime with proactive maintenance
  • Improved engagement: Conversational AI for managing customer service
  • Better support for innovation: New product ideas based on data mined from social media
  • Increased trust: Improvements in cybersecurity based on anticipating cyberattacks