Every time I attend a Schneider Electric event lately, I'm amazed at how the company has remade itself over the last four years or so. The relatively new CEO has extensive international experience including a tour as country manager for China. The executive team is thoroughly international. It is definitely no longer a classic French company. The latest large acquisition of APC (power and UPS systems primarily for data centers) proves the point. Instead of trying to superimpose the existing Schneider corporate culture on it, the corporation allowed itself to absorb some of the APC culture. Indeed, the corporate chief marketing officer, Aaron Davis, comes from APC and most of the corporate (this means for the entire company) marketing team is from APC. Therefore, the editors were in Rhode Island--home of APC.
Chris Curtis, who heads Schneider's North American business as well as sitting on the executive team as head of the Buildings business, led off the presentations with a discussion of the company vision and direction. Once again it is trying to get a handle on its many brands trying to brand things Schneider in a "One Schneider" program. He told me in a later conversation that the changes they are trying to make have a better chance of success under the new regime. Business managers are held to strict metrics among which are their success in achieving the integrations and branding that the new Schneider vision proposes. Another thing they did was create an intercompany R&D team to foster technology transfers among the various business units. This is something I've seen lacking for many years. It should pay off handsomely for the company.
Of the announcements, one thing you should check out is Energy University. This is an online learning center, open to everyone, with testing, CEUs, certifications and the like. It went live yesterday. And this fits the theme of the Editors Day presentations--energy. Much like rival ABB, Schneider is an electric power and distribution company that also includes automation. Whereas ABB is strong in the production of electricity and distribution grid, Schneider is strong after the transformer on the pole to the devices under power. The morning keynotes were uniformly passionate pleas to spread the word about how necessary energy conservation, reduction of "greenhouse" gases and energy efficiency in all things is for the survival of the planet as we know it. Oh, and Schneider has the tools, solutions and products, not to mention internal conservation stories, to help us all achieve some of that.
There's a live video report here.
6:37:23 AM 
|
|
