BrazilAccenture helping Louvre museum digitise its art experience
France’s iconic Louvre museum in Paris is turning to Accenture to help with the development and execution of its digital strategy.
The museum’s tapping of Accenture builds on a long standing relationship between the two. The pair have been collaborating for over 15 years now, and in most cases, Accenture’s work for the French museum was part of its corporate citizenship initiative, meaning that it was provided pro-bono and that the Louvre was not charged for the support it received.
With more than 10 million visitors per year, the Louvre is the world’s most visited museum. Accenture’s headcount of 482,000 people in 100+ countries makes it one of the globe’s largest professional services firms.
Amid a rapidly digitising backdrop, the Louvre is revamping its digital strategy. Similar to developments in other industries, museum visitors are upping their digital expectations. Prior to visiting the museum, they expect a customer-friendly digital experience, and when they actually make it to the museum’s premises, they expect value-adding digitised offerings, combined with a seamless transition between the physical and digital world.
Accenture Interactive, which is the creative and digital arm of Accenture, is helping the 18th-century art museum “leverage the latest technological innovations to identify and implement a range of initiatives that can make the experience for each type of visitor to the Louvre as unique as the museum itself,” explained Claude Chaffiotte, who leads Accenture Interactive in France and the Benelux.
Key goals of the initiative include enriching the visitor experience across the full life-cycle (before, during, after a visit), improve information and interaction, and develop tools that help the museum’s employees work more efficiently and effectively, to the benefit of customers (for example: less waiting time).
The Louvre’s ambition comes at a time when digital innovation is rapidly transforming the art sector. In Detroit’s Institute of Arts for instance, augmented reality is being used as an aid for visitors. By pointing a device provided by the museum at certain sculptures, paintings and artifacts, visitors can learn more about them though information snippets, additional photographs or videos. Interactive creative spaces, where humans can interact with technology to co-create or participate in art creation, are gaining popularity, as immersive exhibitions are made possible by the latest visual technologies.
Previous engagements of Accenture for the Louvre include strategy development, technology innovation, experience design, app and application building and change delivery. The firm is currently also helping the French museum with the revamp of it website.
