BMW Dealerships deploy Interactive Product Advisor Displays powered by SiteKiosk

 The Challenge
BMW has a history of providing quality, luxury cars to automobile owners. In an effort to educate potential buyers about its unique automobiles, BMW has turned to an interactive product advisor displays to explain the company’s engineering technology and benefits. However, its Virtual Sales Center, a five-year-old system, needed to be retired, according to the company.  BMW selected Reality Interactive LLC to update the system. Reality Interactive has established itself in the industry as a company that deploys creative uses of automated technologies and was up to the challenge of meeting BMW’s needs of creating a state-of-the-art interactive experience for its customers. Reality Interactive worked with BMW to determine what that experience would be, including how it should look, how the product would interact with the user and how large the unit needed to be. BMW primarily wanted the interactive system to be educational, said Craig Martin, one of Reality Interactive’s principal partners.

However, the company also wanted something that could convey the thrill of driving a BMW. “BMWs are engineered extremely well, and they wanted to expose all this wonderful content and information to consumers and to explain the benefits to consumers,” Martin said.In addition to the content, Reality Interactive needed a quality software package to help finish its kiosk solution. The kiosk software was needed to help Reality Interactive remotely manage the kiosk from its offices in Middletown, Conn. In addition, the company wanted to make sure it could provide security for BMW and system users while using the interactive product advisor displays. “(PROVISIO’s) SiteKiosk, from a functionality and value perspective, was head and shoulders above anything else on the marketplace,” said Bryson Hyte, Reality Interactive’s vice president of technology. “It’s a tremendously capable program and more cost-effective than any of the others we have evaluated.”

The Solution
To obtain a comprehensive software solution, Reality Interactive teamed with PROVISIO, whose extensive list of clients include Sony, Hilton Hotels, Air France, Ford Motor Company and Nike, among hundreds of others. PROVISIO’s SiteKiosk software and remote monitoring and management solution provide a complete software package for kiosk manufacturers and users.“It’s an out-of-the-box software that opens up a lot of possibilities,”

PROVISIO CEO Heinz Horstmann said. SiteKiosk monitors and protects the operating system against manipulation by computer vandalism and hacking; secures system drives, folders and files from unauthorized access; protects the terminal against most viruses, trojans and destructive scripts; deactivates undesired function keys and critical key combinations; and deletes user data at the end of each session.Also, the management system monitors, manages and configures kiosk terminals from a remote location. The software provides near-constant communication between a SiteKiosk terminal and a SiteRemote server, even from behind firewalls. A terminal will establish a connection to the server at certain intervals and compare its data with the data stored on the server. While doing so, the terminal informs the server about its current status and receives new jobs from the server. With that software, Reality Interactive built BMW’s Indoor Communications System (ICS), a showroom kiosk featuring a 46-inch Sony LCD interactive touchscreen and HD video.

The Result
BMW’s ICS kiosk has provided tremendous value and information for its users. It’s been nothing short of phenomenal, Martin said. The kiosks are in every BMW dealership in the United States, about 365 locations. Information and content updates are sent to each dealer monthly. Bigger and better content updates, including full high-definition video, are planned for 2008. “The fun has just started,” Martin said.

Contact us today for a demonstration of how you can design and deploy your product advisor kiosk.  Our knowledgeable support staff is ready to assist you with any questions.