Best Practice: Bechtle Karlsruhe celebrates virtual event premiere

Best practice: Bechtle Karlsruhe celebrates premiere virtual event.

“Our customers are tired of countless online meetings via Teams, Cisco or Zoom. That’s why we are taking them into the virtual world”, promised Richard Einstmann, Managing Director of the Bechtle IT System House in Karlsruhe at the end of 2020. He kept this promise. At the exclusive premiere of the VR Business Club in Southern Germany on 24 February, his team managed to combine the feeling of being there in person with all the advantages of digital communication.

But how exactly do you organise a virtual reality event and make it successful? And above all, how do you get the customers to commit? This was new ground to break for the Modern Workplace Team at Bechtle in Karlsruhe, and precisely why they hired Maren Courage and Oliver Autumn, the founders of the VR Business Club in Berlin, who provided support for their first, fully virtual event. The general conditions were quickly settled: The decision fell on the Arthur Virtual Reality platform by Arthur Technologies. Participation would be limited to 20 customers and access only granted via a personal invitation. Prior to the event, participants received a pair of virtual reality glasses and a personal introduction to the platform. This made it easy for participants to navigate the world and go through the different rooms and views.

The topic was “Digital 3D product presentation in a virtual space”. With the current situation, it’s gotten more difficult to present products efficiently without direct contact with the customer. But how do you present a product efficiently if you can’t hold it up to the camera? How do you demonstrate its added value without having to make compromises in its presentation? These are questions that customers are dying to hear an answer to. After less than two weeks, all places were reserved and the waiting list long.

Three experts from the VR Business Club network came to address these questions and demonstrated that sales can be done in a completely new way with virtual reality: Benjamin Brostian, Managing Director at iXtenda, was a part of the digital version of the Light Art Festival Karlsruhe and is an expert on the sustainable digitalisation of sales and planning processes in machine and plant construction and suppliers for the automotive industry. Henri Huselstein, Managing Director of Berlin-based 3D specialist Aucta is trying to empower industrial companies to use the potential of their data to create 3D instructions that can be accessed from anywhere. And Dr Rolf Illenberg, Managing Director at VRdirect, whose company offers 360-degree content via a simple app. It quickly became clear that virtual reality offers a wealth of exciting possibilities to redesign processes in companies and to accelerate them.

The event had only just ended when the first positive feedback came in—which made it clear to Bechtle Karlsruhe what benefits virtual reality events have to offer: The sense of community and interaction is a lot better than in standard video conferences. Topics can be presented in a playful and visual manner and the virtual models motivate the customers to try things out.

The next virtual events are already in the making.

In the meantime, those interested can now visit the Digital Workplace Showroom at Bechtle Karlsruhe,, and hence the VR Business Club Southern Germany, more regularly. The demo room enables users to experience technologies and use cases from leading providers within the VR Business Club hands on. Customers can try out demos, best practices and access the expansive expert network of the club—both live and virtually.

The VR Business Club is Germany’s largest dialogue and matchmaking platform that’s all about virtual Reality, augmented and mixed reality. It’s where solution makers and executives of large, and in particular medium-sized, companies meet to talk VR, AR, MR and related technologies such as IoT, AI, robotics and 5G. The VR Business Club now has a home in Southern Germany—at the IT System House in the Karlsruhe Technology Region.

Find out more at vrbusiness.club/sueddeutschland

Customer feedback:

It’s fascinating to see the opportunities that VR provides. The use of virtual reality technology is not only suited for large companies but also for smaller ones. It’s the field of further education specifically where I believe that companies could benefit greatly.”.
Katrin Schütz, State Secretary for the Ministry of Economics, Labour and Housing in Baden-Württemberg

That workshop yesterday was brilliant. Arthur provides great opportunities as a platform for collaboration and I especially liked the room with the virtual machines. I would love to do more research into VR technologies and how we can use them in our company, in sales and marketing
Claudia Meder, Global Marketing Director,
Weber Ultrasonics AG