VEAR EXPERIENCE

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are Arcos Dorardos, McDonald's parent company for all of Latin America. We are approximately 100,000 employees in more than 20 countries in the region. My position is as training, educational technology, and innovation manager. My role is to look for alternatives to improve our teaching and learning processes, always innovating and considering the new generations in which we lean on to develop our business, consisting of young people between the ages of 17–20 who listen and learn in different ways.

For this reason, we have to be smart and disruptive on how to train them so they can be part of the business. Basically, we started working a great deal on different e-learning modules. We reached out to Vear Experience because we wanted to work and integrate our main processes with potential 360° virtual and augmented reality technologies in order to replace our processes on paper for something way more advanced in order to meet the needs of these new generations of employees at McDonald's restaurants.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vear Experience?

We worked together to develop tools used for training in 360° virtual reality. We then used Cardboards, which we acquired, and through our employee-owned or company-owned mobile devices, we developed procedures in virtual reality. This way, any employee that starts working at our company is able to experience in virtual reality how it feels to be working in the kitchen, working with coffee, and feel the ambiance. They have a step-by-step, practically live experience, of how different procedures are developed even though they’re not physically there.

Later on, we developed different augmented reality alternatives. Through tablets and other devices, we developed apps in which the employees scanned different codes in different stations in the restaurant and could follow the step-by-step operations of a specific machine. We worked with processes, and with tips and ways to interact with employees. We opened the "restaurant of the future" in Argentina. All training methodologies on how employees and clients interact with different machines or devices were developed in augmented reality.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We developed the projects with a project lead and a technical lead. I believe they used Unity as the main framework.

How did you come to work with Vear Experience?

We started working with them after they approached us. One of their team members previously worked for one of the advertising agencies we use. That's how they had our contact. Generally, our department and other departments in the company want innovative providers. We make a deal with companies starting with a prototype; we then test it and see how it evolves.

Since we were looking for new alternatives, we did a low-cost proof of concept which was later reviewed by management and other teams. This is how it became a training materials tool today.

How much have you invested with Vear Experience?

We have invested between $5,000 and $7,000 for each developed application.

What is the status of this engagement?

All the projects are developed and now we're expanding. All of the training material in Spanish will be translated to Portuguese and will continue expanding to all Arcos Dorados markets. We are advancing slowly with them because we're not opening many restaurants. We start from the premise that in order to offer a great experience to our clients, we also need to offer a great learning experience to our employees.

Since we are changing our layout and technologies in our restaurants, we also think our employees need to learn and train in innovative and alternative ways. As we open new restaurants, we add these new training methodologies.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The first metric I can mention is that we stopped printing paper. Everything was migrated to a digital medium. Second, our employees were previously not reading the paper-based training material or couldn't understand it. Today, practically after only 20 mins of interacting with the application, they understand their roles and what they are operating.

As an employer, we need to be aware of new training and learning technologies, and we need to understand how new generations want to train. We need to be at that level. Last year, 20% of people that left our organization were not pleased with the training methods. Now, that has been reduced to half.

How did Vear Experience perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked a lot with Slack in order to be in contact between projects and understand requirements, advances, and to communicate with the development team. They quickly understood what we wanted. We gave them the printed materials and in 3–4 that meetings we had, they presented the development.

What did you find most impressive about Vear Experience?

Our marketing team has their own providers for campaigns. When I compare Vear to the other teams, I can highlight their cost as a competitive advantage. They're an energetic, young team that understands what we are looking for. We're very pleased with the product they've delivered and we're looking forward to continuing our interaction.

Are there any areas Vear Experience could improve?

When they started developing functionality prototypes, they developed the prototypes based on the devices they had available in their office, but they didn't do the tests with our tablets or devices. When this was passed to production, we needed to do some retouching in terms of camera and focus because they had used iPhones and we needed it developed in Samsung. It initially needed to be developed understanding that we used Samsung since the beginning. It was understood and resolved but this was an area for improvement.