Hands-free

AR devices like those made by Kognitiv Spark are changing the way we

work by helping us all work smarter, not harder. CEO Yan Simard drops

in to remind enterprises shy to get started enhancing the workplace

with XR technologies will -- should they wait too long -- be left in

the dust.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for

Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is Yan

Simard, the CEO of Kognitiv Spark. He's designed and led many

innovative business ventures through his own startups. He also has

extensive professional experience with companies such as CGI, Zaptap,

Vision Coaching, AIS, Incite Wellness, Bell Canada, Industrial

Alliance, and more. I'm just going to read this quick quote from Yan.

"We believe that mixed and augmented reality, if used right, can

not only allow frontline and field workers to stay relevant, but make

them more crucial than ever before." With that, I'd like to

welcome Yan and it's kognitivspark.com.

Yan, welcome to the show, my friend.

Yan: Thanks, Alan. It's a

pleasure to be here.

Alan: It's my absolute pleasure to have you. And I can't wait to dive in here. Maybe just give us a 10,000-foot view of Kognitiv Spark and the great work you guys are doing there.

Yan: So Kognitiv Spark, we do mixed reality communication technology to better provide support to our remote field workers. Our product is called RemoteSpark. It's an application that has been optimized for the Microsoft Hololens platform. In a nutshell, what it does if you have a field worker that is facing a piece of equipment that stopped working and that worker doesn't know what to do, that worker can put on the Hololens, start RemoteSpark, and communicate with -- let's say -- an engineer at the head office that can help out. The engineer, through a computer, is able to see in real-time what the worker is seeing. They can talk to the person, but they can also provide 3D holographic guidance on top of things. So as an example, if they have a 3D CAD file, that could help the worker figure out what are the steps that need to be done to perform a repair, the expert can drag and drop that on the computer side of things, and the CAD file is going to show up as a 3D hologram in the field of view of the worker, so that the worker can perform the repair.

Alan: So if a field worker's

either in a factory or a warehouse and they're looking at a machine,

the machine breaks, why don't they just pick up the phone?

Yan: Yeah. And while most of the time that's what they do right now, the problem with phones -- or even tablet-based chat systems, or phone-based ones -- is that you have to hold something in your hand, so you can do the repair or do the process or the task that you have to do, at the same time as you're getting the information and the knowledge. So it's always a two-step process. With mixed reality, you can just do it all together at the same time. So they're doing the work, they have their hands greasy and dirty, and they getting the knowledge at the same time. So it's much more efficient. And also, there are many studies that show that in terms of knowledge retention, it's about 80, 85 percent higher when you learn about a given task at the same time as you're doing it with your hands.

Alan: If you look at this from

an ROI standpoint, what is the investment to get started with

Kognitiv Spark? Obviously you need a Hololens. So that's, call it

$3,500. And then what else do you need after that?

Yan: Yeah. So our software is a service one, and we have two offerings. One is on public cloud, the other one is on private cloud. Most of the time we sell the public cloud version of it. It's a yearly fee of $6,000 a year -- Canadian -- to activate on