By Sachin Bhalla, VP – Secure Power Division, India and SAARC, Schneider Electric
As the world rapidly digitizes and becomes more complex, the challenges of sustainability,
climate change, and energy transition are too big for any one business to tackle alone. New
solutions are constantly appearing and being implemented to improve our ways of working.
Not too long ago, we traveled to deposit paychecks, made purchases in person, and arrived
at a physical office location to work each day. Technological advances have created new
and innovative solutions, enabling us to do most things from mobile apps and websites right at our fingertips.
Today, innovation is everything. While businesses would ideally source internally to develop modern solutions to meet the changing needs in an increasingly digital world, the phrase “it takes a village,” has never been more relevant. To achieve top-of-the-line service and keep up with the rapid change in the IT industry, collaboration is pivotal. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are increasingly looking to combine forces for innovation and co-creation, especially as the market moves to open, interoperable, digital, and simplified systems and business operations.
The IT “village” is stronger together. An overwhelming 96% of companies have already adopted, or are considering, an eco-system approach to business, allowing co-creation with vendors to develop new digital products and services for enhanced sustainability and efficiency. Through an ecosystem method, companies can leverage innovation capacity, which Schneider Electric describes as a combination of skills, capabilities, and resources, to innovate and transform. The wide range of benefits provided by a partner ecosystem include:
Increased access to diversified talent, education, and recruitment tools Stifling talent gaps are limiting innovation capacity and putting pressure on companies to revamp recruitment and retention efforts across industries. With the demand for IT talent and the hurdles businesses need to jump over to find and keep high performers remaining a huge pain point in today’s “War for Talent”, a collaborative ecosystem provides access to additional resources and diversity of thought that increase a company’s ability (and capacity) to innovate.
The ability to anticipate uncertainty and navigate market volatility with widespread
knowledge and expertise. More than half (61%) of partners believe that COVID-19 was a
key driver for their customers’ choice to adopt digital solutions and embrace new technology.
By partnering with an ecosystem of players, companies across the globe can make
themselves more resilient and prepared for the all-electric world. Further, with different
partners in the IT “village” specializing in a number of niche areas, the result is a unique,
the high-impact, dependable solution that derives the highest possible level of value to
customers, no matter what is happening in the world.
Enhanced capability to deliver new and emerging technologies. Through an ecosystem,
companies can implement new technology in ways that are too complicated or
unmanageable on their own. Working together, organizations can create, deploy, operate, and execute improved information technology solutions. There is exponential value in
building a village comprised of partners across the ecosystem that is much greater than
the sum of its parts.
Concluding thoughts
For most companies in the IT industry, operating alone simply isn’t feasible or worth the
overwhelming cost. To avoid burning out employees by attempting to do it all, companies
need to accept that collaborating with external partners can make just as significant of an
impact on their business as internal teamwork. Not only does cultivating your own IT “village” ease the burden placed on employees to overwork, it also protects your business from the unknown of the future by forming key relationships with other players to create a wider span of expertise and resources.
Last, but certainly not least, the importance of the ability to formulate, distribute and execute innovative technologies faster and more effectively than before cannot be understated. Customers won’t wait for companies to catch up. So, now is the time to begin or continue in the journey to a comprehensive partner ecosystem to provide your business with the collaborative ecosystem it needs to be successful.
The demand for smart digital infrastructure with open architectures is growing, and partners can open new opportunities to add value to infrastructure offerings by embracing digital.
