APC improves partnership support

The APC by Schneider Electric said it has improved support on offer across the East and West African channel for partners.

Director for the Central and North East Africa region at APC by Schneider Electric, Mr. Jonathan Duncan, said that under the Channel Partner Programme in East and West Africa, is aimed at assisting the channel partners to build a solutions-focused power and cooling practice with increased knowledge and expertise.

Also, Duncan said it would provide them with the tools needed to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

The improvement of the programme, he said, emerges amidst growing levels of power consumption, record cooling demands and greater requirements for energy efficiency.

“Physical infrastructure used to be an afterthought, but now it’s first on the agenda. Nobody understands the landscape and where the market is headed better than APC by Schneider Electric,” he said.

Duncan explained that with the company’s Partner Online Destination (POD), the online embodiment of the Channel Partner Programme, APC is helping its channel partners develop competencies, seize opportunities, be more profitable, and grow their businesses over the long-term.

According to him, POD comprises of six elements namely the profile, alignment, empowerment, enablement, collaboration and profit.

As said by him, the profile involves identifying the distinguishing demographics of a channel partner’s core business and competency, in the belief that “the more we know about you, the better we can support you.”

On the alignment, he said, maximising business profile and core competencies by aligning partners into one of four tiers, first by business environment, then, further, by key discipline. While the empowerment, he said, is continued education to enhance problem-solving skills with on-demand online trainings.

“The training is divided into two paths; sales and engineering,” he said.

Additionally, he said, the enablement affords partners to have online sales and marketing tools that help them to grow their businesses, including co-branded promotional items, newsletter templates, customisable spec sheets, downloadable brochures, and videos.

Just as the collaboration links complementary partners to share their strengths, stressing that partners who collaborate with other solution providers have grown deeper customer relationships and delivered more value to customers.

On profit, Duncan said it provides financial differentiation to partners, including upfront preferred pricing, an opportunity registration programme, back-end incentives, and other programmes that ensure the partner relationship is profitable.

Remmy Nweke

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