Bently aims to spur sales through hands-on service center

Big Energy executives from around the world will forgo the customary PowerPoint presentations and sales pitches the next time they visit Bently Nevada's headquarters in Minden.

Bently, a division of GE Energy's Measurement and Control business, unveiled an interactive customer application center, which functions as an interactive sales floor providing hands-on displays of its products that are designed to detect harmful vibrations in engines and moving parts used in power generation.

The customer application center, the first of its kind, is one of nine customer application centers scheduled to open globally in 2012. In the background of the new center is a new remote communications system that allows Bently Nevada to track its customers' equipment located thousands of miles away.

The customer application centers houses interactive and multimedia displays that showcase Bently products and provides a means of introducing current customers to new avenues of business within Bently, says Jerry Pritchard, sales force effectiveness leader. Bently primarily makes equipment for condition monitoring, or the detection of vibration and temperature changes with rotating or moving parts in large machines such as pumps, wind turbines, compressors, gas and steam engines, used in power generation.

"Bently Nevada serves a pretty specific niche with our customers in condition monitoring," Pritchard says. "As part of the bigger GE portfolio, it is sometimes hard for our customers to see the bigger picture of which Bently is a part of. That is what this is all about."

Customers can use the various displays to experiment with Bently products and figure out how they can use those products in the field. The displays range from a super-sized monitor that runs an interactive program showing how customers can replace old, outdated hardware with newer, updated Bently products to wireless monitors that send vibration signals to a home base. The displays are designed to function as training programs and demonstrations to address how different energy companies can employ Bently's products to maximize uptime and efficiency.

Bently's customers include large oil and gas companies such as Exxon, Mobile, BP, Shell and Duke Energy. Bently was acquired by General Electric in January of 2002.

Art Eunson, general manager of Bently Nevada, says the idea for the interactive customer application center came about because it can be difficult to fully explain the benefits and the technology involved with Bently's products through PowerPoint presentations. With the showroom, customers can put their hands on hardware and experiment with different products and explore the ways they can be applied to their industries.

"They get a much better appreciation for how the solution will work," Eunson says. "Having it be tangible, having them experience it and understand what we will be building, now they can see the full suite of solutions we provide.

"This is just a sampling of all the different solutions we provide customers in the oil and gas, power gen and a lot of other industrial industries," Eunson adds. "But first and foremost our goal is to protect equipment and detect problems before they happen."

Bently didn't disclose the the cost of the new facility, but executive say it required a great deal of planning and coordination among the product lines, Pritchard says. A handful of workers also were displaced to make way for the new second-floor showroom. Construction of the facility took about 18 months.

Another piece of the facility is a new remote monitoring center, which connects Bently Nevada with power generation sites across the globe. From an Exxon site in the North Sea to a Shell site in Africa to an Exxon plant in Texas, Bently is monitoring equipment at those sites to ensure it is operating correctly.

"That is another added benefit and something we have over our competitors," Pritchard says.

Bently's sales team and engineers will use the center as a tool to help sell the value of Bently's products and will focus on bringing energy executives to the Minden area more often to experience the different products, Eunson says. Many customers already come to the site to see their products during manufacturing, or to see design and engineering reviews during the engineering phases.

"It is about showing the bigger value to customers that are already here so you have them leaving understanding more about our entire range of products," Eunson says.