Channel Profitability is a Key Element

Shrinivas Chebbi 
Vice President , India & SAARC, Schneider Electric  

As the Vice President, Schneider Electric India & SAARC, Shrinivas Chebbi looks after all the market facing activities of Schneider Electric IT Business India (previously known as APC by Schneider Electric). He has been overseeing major projects that helped transform Schneider Electric IT Business into one of the most admired employer and partner in critical power and cooling solutions across residential, business network, Data Center and manufacturing environments. 

He takes pride in Schneider Electric as a company that focuses on sustainability and growth as parameters to success. Therefore as a leader Shrinivas’ role is to develop vision, devise strategy and execute them for the company to be sustainable and profitable. His key contributions, apart from this, are in the form of managing and developing key customer relationships, channel relationships, alliance relationships etc. Apart from that, he has a clear role to play in large and key strategic deals and contracts. All these are a part of his role to be the growth engine for the organization.

Initiatives…

In line with the company’s strategy to become an Energy Ambassador, trusted advisor and solution provider to the customers, Shrinivas set up a vision with the leadership team to become a full suite data center and critical facility service provider.  

Shrinivas says, “My team and various stakeholders have developed a larger canvas of services play in our engagement with customers. As a result, today, we have a dedicated Specialist Practice team which offers full life cycle services for data center & critical facility infrastructure, from Design–Build–Project- Manager (Onsite & Remote) Analytics-Audit-Assess-Transform-Enhance performance and Improve business continuity of critical sites & facilities.”

Shrinivas adds, “In today’s business context there is a high pressure on clients to improve capital efficiency and ensure disruption-free client services. Our services are in demand across segments. Currently we have more than 50 practice consultants and specialists in this domain with several hundred deployed in field.” 

Another important initiative was the creation of the India for India products and services portfolio designed specifically for the Indian customers. “Under this initiative, we made some strategic acquisitions in the rack and cooling space. We also re-enforced our commitment to India through investments in R&D in order to drive this strategy. The India for India strategy was very important to us to bring exceptional value to our customers and channels. This has brought added velocity to our channel sales and their development, especially due to the added portfolio of products. Going forward, we plan to launch many more India for India products that our channels can look forward to,” points out Shrinivas. 

Key Focus Verticals…

The key target verticals of Schneider are Telecom, Manufacturing BFSI, IT/ITES, Services and Government

Channel Programme…

Shrinivas explains that for Schneider, a channel program is just not a sales tool or a quarter end activity. Its channel programs must essentially address two goals, one is its strategic initiatives -be it segment, product, market share etc and the second is to align them with the partners’ business strategy which are broadly growth, profitability, strengthening customer relationships and drive their development in value chain.

For Schneider, Channel Profitability is a key element but there are other more important factors which drive the company to create the best partner programs, a healthy mix of which is very critical to ensure its channel make profits today, tomorrow and many years to come. 

moumita@varindia.com