Schneider Electric targets Africa’s emerging data centre market

Schneider Electric, an energy equipment and solutions provider, has identified an ideal opportunity emerging from the rising demand for data centre facilities in Africa

According to the company, this demand is being driven by increasing Internet penetration and a growing digital economy, which is laying the groundwork for East and West Africa to emerge as pivotal hubs in the market. This is creating an opportunity for Schneider Electric to offer support to partners and resellers within the region through a twofold approach aimed at engaging directly with end-user data centres and driving sales opportunities through channel partners, simultaneously fostering demand.

“Schneider Electric is a channel-driven business, with about 70% of our order fulfilment done through the channel,” commented Rohan de Beer, end user sales director – Anglophone Africa at Schneider Electric. “The growth in the African data centre space is therefore an opportunity for our partners to upskill themselves and strengthen their relationships with the local data centre end users. Connectivity on the content is growing massively, the economy is becoming a bit more stable overall, so this provides the environment for our resellers and distributors to further grow these data centre opportunities for themselves.”

Previously, the company has relied entirely on external channels to develop its prospects on the market, de Beer explained. However, this can result in missed opportunities and having to share the market with competitors.

“With the two-pronged approach, we can get closer to the end user for two reasons – to influence the technology and innovation at an earlier stage in the lifecycle of a project and then to also improve our share of the wallet at the customer base,” he explained. “Obviously, we would then take these opportunities and share them with our channel and fulfil them through the channel.

“So, it's a direct cut of the pie, but it’s still fulfilled through the channel. We are not going to increase our direct business, that's not the idea. The idea is to increase our share in the wallet while fulfilling orders through the channel and this approach seems to be working great.”

Power to partners

At the same time, Schneider Electric is also undertaking specific initiatives to empower its channel partners with the skills and competencies necessary for commissioning cutting-edge solutions in the data centre market.

“There are a couple of things that we are doing,” de Beer added. “Firstly, this is where our channel programme that we revised and relaunched this year plays a big role. So, partners who want to participate in this influx of business can register on the partner portal and get free access to online training from a sales perspective and the pre-sales solutions side. This includes all our technical tools, videos and training.

“Secondly, we also drive instructor-led solutions and design training sessions through the Anglophone cluster. We have so far completed East, West and South in the first half of the year. That is purely focused on technical training solutions for our channel partner and our distributors.”

He adds that the next step will be to drive focused end user and channel executive roundtables and customer events to further help the channel and end users gain the requisite skills