Recently, I had the great pleasure of witnessing the true value of face-to-face collaboration when our SI Alliance partners, Collaborative Automation Partners and Schneider Electric employees came together at the Xcelerate partner events held in France and China. These events were dedicated to system integrators who make up an integral part of Schneider Electric’s business, delivering solutions to our mutual customers around the world. These events were the first of their kind, created exclusively for our SI Alliance partners who responded very positively to the two days we spent together.
During Xcelerate, I engaged in many conversations with our partners, our eyes and ears in the field. I heard about their struggles and their wins. They gave me great insight into their day-to-day business operations, how working with Schneider Electric supports their business and the areas where they feel we need to improve. These exchanges will have a valuable, ongoing impact on our future planning of the program and on how we can work most effectively together. We recognize the importance of a strong, collaborative relationship with our partners and Xcelerate helped foster these relationships.
As the automation market continues to evolve with new technologies, and the IT/OT worlds converge, our system integrators face the challenge of keeping up with this rapidly changing landscape in order to fully understand the needs of our end user customers. They require the latest technologies to complete solutions specific to their customers’ demands. The Xcelerate events were designed to share Schneider Electric’s innovations, technology, roadmap and vision, with the aim of deepening partner knowledge, competitiveness and differentiation.
Our product and solution offers have grown with the acquisition of Invensys, and our system integrators were particularly interested in the expanded portfolio and opportunities that are now available to them as a result. We are confident that the future will offer them many more possibilities for growth.
Collaboration at the events was not limited to Schneider Electric and our partners, but also extended to collaboration between the system integrators, themselves. System integration companies that specialize in different technology areas or geographic locations came together to look at ways they could work with each other, and with Schneider Electric, to grow their businesses. This was particularly exciting for us to see. Building the partner community and promoting collaborative opportunities to enhance business growth are important elements of a program like the SI Alliance program.
Armed with all the latest business, technical and segment solutions from Schneider Electric, as well as a stronger sense of community, our SI Alliance partners are now ready to Xcelerate in 2014 and beyond.
