Western Digital uses Arthur to organize multi-enterprise collaboration

Western Digital is a Fortune 500 company known for designing, manufacturing and delivering hard disk drives, data storage products and services worldwide. The company was founded in 1970 and now has reached $20 billion dollars of annual revenue and over 70,000 employees worldwide.

Since its inception, Western Digital has been at the forefront of innovation. From the invention of the first hard drive to the recent advancements in 3D flash memory, which is used to meet the exponential demand for data storage, Western Digital is regarded as an innovative pioneer. To produce such widely impactful innovation, Western Digital regularly engages with other enterprises in their ecosystem. With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Western Digital was looking for ways to maximize their multi-enterprise collaboration output. Additionally their logistics, operations, finance, analytics and IT teams faced challenges to stay connected internally and externally with their innovation partners in a remote setting. Using video conferencing and 2D tools left the employees feeling disconnected and exhausted. This is no surprise, as studies have indicated that 4 in 10 remote workers suffer from mental and physical exhaustion due to the increased screen time and the lack of face to face interaction during the workday.

As an innovation driver, the company is always looking at engaging with emerging technologies that will shape the future of work. Teams from Western Digital turned to Arthur’s VR office solution to overcome the limitation of 2D tools and harness the power and immersive nature of VR technology to hold highly engaging meetings whilst participants were still located remotely.

The intuitive nature of Arthur enabled the company to use the solution for varied purposes and groups of varying sizes. Western Digital used VR for multiple motives including; onboarding new employees, social activities such as playing Pictionary to boost connectivity amongst employees, and team meetings which allowed them to enjoy the benefits of VR through enhanced internal productivity. Western Digital Logistics team led a multi-Enterprise collaboration in Arthur with Agility, a leading innovator of supply chain solutions, and additional logistics partners. They used the infinite space and productivity tools like whiteboards, 3D objects and pinboards for generating innovative ideas and project solutions.

Spatial audio and photo-realistic avatars recreated the feeling of in-person meetings and made teams feel considerably more connected with their peers, more so than when using 2D meeting solutions. The wide range of productivity tools enabled Western Digital to better visualise its ideas and be increasingly productive. By using VR they were able to look into how to engage and brainstorm through this emerging technology and get attuned to the future of work. By adopting VR in their regular work schedule Western Digital used Arthur to effectively engage with partners as well as customers.