Bechtle AG, Neckarsulm

What makes the Bechtle group different from other IT service providers?

The answer to that question is our unique combined business model. We have more than 60 system houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and we are one of Europe's leading IT e-commerce providers. With this combination we follow a strategy that connects the system house services to the direct sale of commercial IT products. Since Bechtle was founded in 1983 we have been on a constant course of steady growth and in 2008 we achieved a turnover of 1.43 thousand million Euros. We are a manufacturer-independent company that provides one-stop shopping for all the IT infrastructure needs of our more than 56 000 customers from industry, the services and public sectors. We have more than 4400 employees throughout Europe who make sure that our customers regard Bechtle as a competent and reliable partner.

What role do the Bechtle IT system houses play?

They act as a competent partner right round the IT infrastructure and solutions. We provide our predominantly medium-sized system house clients with structured IT strategy advice, and also take care of hardware and software delivery, project planning and implementation, system integration and maintenance, employee training and even the complete IT operation. With more than 60 locations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we are directly on site for our customers. In 13 competence centers, we also concentrate specialist expertise in such complex fields as security, storage, CAD, enterprise computing and business solutions like Navision. The Bechtle specialists are available to all system houses and, depending on the customer's specific requirements, provide on-the-spot support for local project teams. Bechtle Managed Services is a strong unit who can - on customer request - assume the operational responsibility for the IT infrastructure and applications, either in whole or in part. Own training centres in 19 locations complete our service range.

What makes Bechtle stand out in the area of IT-e-commerce?

Maximum transparency when it comes to prices and availability. We offer over 41 000 IT projects for direct sale via the Internet, catalogue and telephone. Furthermore, our subsidiaries are active in twelve western european markets. As one of few providers, we are in a position to provide daily updated prices and availability for the entire product portfolio. Above all, our extremely lean business processes and high-performance logistics system guarantee profitable growth for our reselling business. With bios® we can deliver to our customers a custom-made online procurement system that substantially reduces process costs for the sourcing of IT products by using company-specific portfolios and paperless order processing.