Schneider Electric’s EcoXpert channel program in evolution

Nicolas Windpassinger, Internet of Things expert and Global VP of Schneider Electric’s Partner Program, EcoXpert, on the evolutions in the channel, emerging technologies and changes in the program as end user needs evolve and new initiatives empower channel partners to grow, differentiate and be more profitable.

The global EcoXpert channel program of Schneider Electric consist of several certifications and specializations with a network of partners having one or more of these certifications in areas such as building optimization, power management and energy efficiency.

Two years ago, in April 2017, we conducted a first interview with Nicolas Windpassinger on EcoXpert (disclosure: a supporting partner), which had just received a 5-Star Rating in the Partner Program Guide of leading channel publication CRN.

Time for an update and new interview as the market has evolved quite a bit in two years and Schneider Electric hasn’t been sitting still either. Moreover, in 2019 EcoXpert again received a 5-Star Rating in CRN’s Partner Program Guide – for the third year in a row.

Consistency with a multi-level local/global approach

While the focus of our first interview was on the potential of IoT (Internet of Things) for various channel partners, ranging from panel builders and electrical contractors to system integrators, this time we look at how channel partners are transforming themselves. Digital transformation also takes center stage in an IoT book which Nicolas published in 2017, entitled ‘Digitize or Die’.

Nicolas, first of all congratulations. EcoXpert continues to be recognized by leading channel publication CRN and you’ve been recognized as one of the most influential channel chiefs in your capacity as global VP of the program for the third consecutive time as well. What do you see as the main reasons for the success?

Nicolas Windpassinger: For me it’s really the sum of the work that is being done on different levels: the level of the different countries making sure that the program is successfully deployed and brings value to local partners and markets, the level of different geographical zones and the global level.

EcoXpert is the only multi-expertise partner program in the industry that goes across different technologies and domains

Essentially, on top of the commitment of the business partners and people in the EcoXpert ecosystem, I think it’s all about making sure we have and continue to have a best-in-class partner program that goes across different areas of expertise and competencies but that is deployed in a very consistent way across all these geographic zones.

Schneider Electric Exchange: how it connects with EcoXpert and EcoStruxure

At Hannover Messe 2019, Schneider Electric launched a community of cross-industry experts or, as Cyril Perducat, EVP IoT & Digital Offers, described it in a blog post “a collaborative workspace, technology resource, and marketplace all at the same time”, called Schneider Electric Exchange. How is this platform related with EcoXpert?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Schneider Electric Exchange is an ecosystem, a business platform where our EcoXperts can showcase their expertise to specifiers, to end users and to their peers, so other EcoXperts. That’s one aspect of it.

Secondly, they can develop and have access to all our SDKs and APIs, thereby enriching our offer as well as their value proposition to the market. Last but not least, they can also monetize their expertise, both from a service and a development perspective. If they develop specific capabilities around a specific product, they can monetize those plugins or APIs.

The Schneider Electric Exchange platform is a business enabler for our ecosystem, providing our partners ample opportunities to grow, differentiate and be more profitable.

You can see it as part of a three-legged approach. There is EcoStruxure, which is our IoT architecture. Then you have EcoXpert, which is our IoT go-to-market and partner program. And Exchange is our overall business platform that enables our channel and our products to be accessible, visible, and leverageable for our ecosystem: the three go together.

Digital transformation from the edge in the channel

In our first interview we mentioned three different types of channel partners with cross-pollination opportunities with the convergence of IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) – which is the essence of Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT – in mind: the historical IT channel, the historical OT channel and new types of partners. How has this convergence of IT and OT – from the partner perspective – evolved?

Nicolas Windpassinger: If you look back three or four yours ago about 10% of our partners were multi-badge; meaning that they have certifications and thus expertise and competencies in multiple areas.  

Today it’s around 15% so there is an ongoing evolution whereby partners grow their multi-expertise capabilities to be able to set themselves apart. These partners break the silos between the different technology areas of IT and OT to bring a better solution and better customer experience to the end users.

The numbers and feedback we get show that this is the direction the channel is taking, and that IT and OT are converging, even it’s slowly and gradually. The gradual character of this growth is really an overall market phenomenon: digitalization and the convergence of different technologies takes a lot of time. It also requires the necessary time and investments to grow the expertise of our partners.

Channel partners continue to acquire more competencies and expertise. They break the silos between different technologies. This takes time and for us means investing in growing the expertise of partners. Yet, the evolution in the channel is clear.

It’s important to realize that we’re talking about existing partners which have a specific expertise in a specific field and are growing their expertise in another field. A typical example would be a BMS partner (Building Management Systems) expanding their capability in areas such as access control, perhaps in wiring and so forth.

From the perspective of technologies such as the IoT technologies we talked about last time it’s also important to keep in mind that the market is still getting educated about the possibilities of more connected products and solutions as well.

That’s why the growth is incremental and partners make their expertise evolve on the perimeter of their existing core business.

This also seems in line with the IoT market overall. The CEO of Belgian IoT company AllThingsTalk mentioned incremental growth too and said it’s important for businesses to start as then they discover new use cases. Do you recognize this with Industrial IoT too?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Yes, I agree with that. Partners transform and digitize on the edge (editor’s note: not to be confused with edge computing). And often that indeed means that they try, discover and gradually move forward.

Channel partners try to differentiate themselves and encounter more competition in their core business

In my IoT book I identified four scenarios describing the approaches of companies with regards to digital transformation whereby transforming from the edge essentially means that companies maintain existing markets and channels while investing money into creating a new opportunity at the edge of their core offerings.

Yet, with transformation from the edge I mainly focused on manufacturers and I must say I didn’t expect that transformation from the edge would be happening in the channel: so, it’s an evolution, rather than a revolution as I wrote in the book and it proves to be the same in the channel.

Breaking the silos: channel partner and end user needs in flux

The convergence of IT and OT is one thing. Yet, as explained in a recent interview on harmonics and variable frequency drives, we saw that one of the main reasons why this becomes an important topic is the convergence of energy management and industrial automation. How do you think that’s playing out?

Nicolas Windpassinger: We indeed see that partners who are active in industrial automation look more at power management and energy management. Essentially, this also goes back to their efforts to transform from the edge.

They see the opportunity to expand their expertise in other fields and to differentiate themselves in this way.  In general, energy management, green energy and so forth are more and more seen as an opportunity by the partners too.

The EcoXpert Partner Program consists of various types of partners yet, in general, what would you say are their main pain points? Is it mainly that need to differentiate themselves, their offerings and the value they can bring to customers?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Finding ways to differentiate themselves is indeed one of the major pain points. Moreover, they encounter more competition in their core business and that pushes them further to try new areas of growth and, again, differentiation.

This is also why you see some of the mentioned dynamics: partners with a strong background in industrial automation trying to move into energy management, building management system partners still expanding their scope in other fields and more IT-oriented partners going into markets like access control.

The goal of Schneider Electric is to enable more connected parts and bring more value – this reflects on the channel side

The risk they have is to stay too much in their core business and, so, the opportunity is indeed to transform from the edge by expanding their expertise, keeping their core application knowledge but trying to bring more offers and solutions to the end users indeed.

You just mentioned end users. Channel partners, depending on their activities, serve different types of stakeholders, including these end users, facility owners, construction specifiers, construction clients, anyone in the scope of a building project. The strategy of channel partners is defined by the demands these have. What are their pain points?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Customer experience plays an important role for the end clients. Take a hotel, for instance. A key driver for them is to bring back the comfort to their customers and making sure that it’s bringing a better experience.

The end clients look at their business and what is needed to serve their customers. However, when they then look at the solutions needed to make it happen they see silos and islands of technologies and solutions which they want to connect with one another. These needs are really pushing the whole ecosystem such as the specifiers, the contractors and our partners to break those silos and bring in a more integrated solution.

This is, in the end, typically why we have EcoStruxure, which is an IoT architecture that breaks those silos from this architecture perspective. And the role of Schneider Electric Exchange is important here too, as a business ecosystem that also aims to break those silos, bring in more integrated solutions and more integrated partners as well.

The EcoStruxure ecosystem: an ongoing journey, accelerated by an open platform

EcoXpert partners are called the implementation arms of EcoStruxure as a post by Jaimie Giarrusso describes and the video at the bottom of this blog shows. You just mentioned why EcoStruxure is important from the architecture and client demand viewpoint. Can you tell us in a nutshell how it is evolving for people who might be less familiar with it.

Nicolas Windpassinger: EcoStruxure is Schneider Electric’s open, interoperable and IoT-enabled architecture and platform. It continues to bring in more integrated solutions to specific end markets and domains and even more value to those domains and the end users.

That’s also the goal of Schneider Electric: enabling more connected parts and bringing more value – and this reflects on the channel side as well. EcoStruxure is accelerating with even more APIs, more SDKs, more openness, a better integration etc.

EcoStruxure is a journey that started a few years ago and is ongoing, just as the EcoXpert program is a journey

It’s also a journey that started a few years ago and is ongoing, just as the EcoXpert program is a journey and just as you can consider Schneider Electric Exchange as (part of) a journey of digitizing our ecosystem and enabling it to be more inclusive and more integrated.

You mention interoperability and openness. This brings us back to that IoT company interview mentioned before: for them many systems are too monolithic and open systems are essential.

Nicolas Windpassinger: EcoStruxure is designed to be more open and Schneider Electric Exchange is where the ecosystem can have access to the SDKs or the APIs, develop and then sell the expertise and what they have developed.

So, it’s an accelerator in having more open systems and in making sense of this openness for the entire ecosystem. A typical example would be a partner that has developed a specific integration between our BMS system and, let’s say, a room reservation software in a hotel. Usually they would develop this for a customer in a country. Now they can make it available for all partners across the globe in need of such an integration.

The benefits are clear for everyone: the developer gets access to a broad ecosystem and can do more with the work they did, other partners looking for this type of integration don’t have to develop from scratch, can leverage what exists and in the end, everyone can be more efficient and profitable, regardless of physical location.

This open strategy also enables to reduce delivery time which in turn results in end user satisfaction, profitability and differentiation of our channel.

Do you also see a place for startups here?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Good question. Stay tuned.

The EcoXpert difference for channel partners

Clear. Back to EcoXpert. In the beginning you mentioned the various regional levels and how they work together. Do you also see any big differences between some regions in terms of, for instance, priorities?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Very often we think that each country and each geographical zone is unique. Yet, reality is different: there’s a common trend of more and better integrated systems and architectures. Overall, there is also a stronger multi-expertise ecosystem and go-to-market of partners.

The differences between countries are related to the maturity of the markets and the way in which they accelerate, due to the existing installed base of buildings. Some regions and countries are very dynamic with many new building projects and some are less.

I think that’s really what makes the difference between the geographical zones but again: the overall trends are the same – the speed and maturity of the market make the difference.

In recent years we saw several large companies start with or enhance channel programs as the channel is crucial to succeed. Schneider Electric has been very active in the channel for a long time and, as mentioned, is once again awarded. What gives EcoXpert an edge on perhaps some others and differentiates it?

The expansion of the EcoXpert parner program is the logical consequence of the overall trends that are happening on the offer side and on the channel side

Nicolas Windpassinger: The big difference of EcoXpert is that it’s the only multi-expertise partner program in the industry that goes across different technologies and domains, such as building management, power, light and room control etc.

It’s also the only partner program that is deployed in more than 50 countries under one global brand. I believe that this is unique. Moreover, it’s unique in the way we build our IoT-integrated architecture for the channel, as well as the digital platform and capability now enabled with Schneider Electric Exchange.

Expanding the expertise and competencies of partners with new certifications and specializations

In our previous interview you mentioned the different certification and specialization areas for EcoXperts which were subsequently covered in more interviews. You mentioned a few ones such as Light & Room Control, Critical Power, Building Management Systems before. Are there new ones?

Nicolas Windpassinger: Yes, we are expanding the types of expertise and competencies based upon our product offers and the need and interest that is being raised by both our partners and the end users.

Digitalization and the convergence of different technologies take a lot of time – transformation is an evolution rather than a revolution

More recent ones include Substation Automation and Home & Small Business. In the Nordic countries we are running a pilot in Access Control & Fire. There’s a certification coming around our offering in refrigeration and we also plan new specialization training programs for existing EcoXperts, among other for retail with several types of retail facilities. Last but not least there is also a real estate specialization coming. As said before, it’s a journey and it goes hand in hand with the fact that partners and end clients are trying to look for those more integrated solutions and for more expertise under one network of partners.

So, it’s the logical consequence of the overall trends that are happening on the offer side and on the channel side.

Thank you, Nicolas.

This interview is the first in a series where we’ll look at success factors, trends and cases for various EcoXpert domains such as building management, critical power and the new ones.

Also check out a recent interview with Nicolas Windpassinger on the MIT Sloan Executive Education innovation@work blog.