The rising demand for data centre facilities on the African continent, driven by increasing Internet penetration and a growing digital economy, has seen East and West Africa emerge as pivotal hubs in the burgeoning data centre market.

For Schneider Electric, this creates the ideal opportunity to offer substantial support to partners and resellers within these regions. The company’s approach is twofold, aimed at both 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. 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,” says Rohan de Beer, End User Sales Director – Anglophone Africa at Schneider Electric.

“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.”

Missed opportunities

Commenting on Schneider Electric’s two-pronged strategy, De Beer explains that previously the company relied entirely on external channels to develop its prospects in the market. However, this sometimes resulted 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. Obviously, we would then take these opportunities and share them with our channel and fulfil them through the channel,” he says. 

“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.”

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.

Influx of business

“There are a couple of things that we are doing. 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,” says de Beer.

“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 and knowledge.

“Schneider Electric is focused on the channel, and we will continue to use our valuable partners to drive our business throughout in both East and West Africa. We look forward to embarking on this journey with our channel partners,” concludes De Beer.