Partnerships help electrical specifiers to gain competitive advantage

In an increasingly complex digital world, the ever-evolving challenges of energy transition, sustainability and climate change are too great for one organisation to handle alone. 96% of companies are considering or have already started co-creating with vendors to develop digital products and services aimed at sustainability and efficiency, and the power sector is no exception.

According to market intelligence firm IDC, digital transformation investments are to approach $6.8 trillion from 2020 to 2023, with 65% of global GDP digitised by 2022. Collaboration across the industry between specifiers, designers and engineers is essential to make the most of this investment drive, combining forces to innovate and co-create for a greener and smarter world.

The industry is changing, and consulting engineers are at a crossroads

Currently, 80% of global CO₂ emissions are due to energy production and consumption, with decarbonisation becoming a priority for 91.5% of UK and Ireland businesses. The world is becoming more electric, and businesses are more focused on sustainability, sparking a technological disruption in the electrical industry.

Accelerating digitisation, mobile connectivity, and real-time data through smart industrial sensors (IIoT) will fundamentally alter the global business landscape. Now, electrical specifiers must design smart buildings and infrastructures that balance safety, reliability, and efficiency, delivering a sustainable and future-proof result. Electrical specifiers are pivotal in making this technological evolution a practical reality, and collaboration is vital to making this happen.

Partnerships are the building blocks of sustainability and efficiency

Faced with such rapid change in the industry, many electrical specifiers are having to adapt quickly and find new initiatives to future-proof their businesses. Professional partnerships are key to promote innovation, meet evolving customer demands, spur greater sustainability, and foster superior business efficiency.

The recent IDC Report named collaboration as one of the four core pillars to drive transformation, encouraging businesses to make it a strategic objective incorporating customers, partners, and suppliers. The report also highlighted the need to prioritise relationships with vendors that accelerate your evolution and provide the support and services required.

Working as part of these collaborative ecosystems not only promotes partner competitiveness and boosts the capability to quickly scale up to confront disruptive changes, but also allows you to tap into new expertise and respond to new market opportunities. Groups like Schneider’s Partnerships of the Future allow electrical specifiers to interact with more than 650,000 members to exchange technology, share and learn for mutual benefit and, by extension, the benefit of their customers.

A clear-cut strategy to mitigate risk and spark innovation

Nearly a quarter of business leaders (23.8%) cited failure to find a trusted partner for sustainability and efficiency as a barrier to reaching net-zero. It is important for businesses to mitigate risk when choosing their collaboration partners, but it is easy to facilitate a more sustainable, efficient, and resilient future by incorporating three core concepts into your future planning: simplified, open and digital.

Simplified, to counterbalance increasing complexity, focusing on working with partners that can help to build solutions that are easier and faster to design, build, operate, and maintain. Open, to unleash the infinite possibilities of an open, global, innovative community and create interoperable architectures. And digital, to create more resilient operations and build digital intelligence, with new services and software that improve every stage of the project lifecycle.

Investing in digital tools to enhance collaboration

Typically, planning for a new project can be difficult and time-consuming, piecing together information from multiple stakeholders and disparate systems into detailed tenders that outline everything from the building’s energy management system through to individual circuit breakers. In a highly competitive market where speed is critical, electrical specifiers cannot afford to waste any time.

Investing in digital tools like digital twin driven modelling, empowers specifiers, allowing them to streamline processes, store specifications, and instantly access all the information needed on solutions and digital architectures. Making it even easier to collaborate with partners, using simplified, open, and digital tools allows you to share best practices, have easy input into the same tender, and pitch into designs from any location, at any time.

Software-agnostic vendors offer even more opportunity for collaboration, with exciting partnerships between global leaders giving electrical specifiers an even broader range of digital offerings to choose from, unlocking greater value from their digital collaboration. Having access to a dedicated collaborative platform helps to further improve digital transformation in design practices, giving you the opportunity to select the best tools and assets for you and increase operational efficiency from digital strategy through to execution.

Collaboration is key in the new digital world. Electrical specifiers must work together with designers and engineers to have a competitive advantage, with agile, collaborative organisations being the ones to rise and outperform competitors now and into the future. To have the edge on competitors, ensure that sustainability targets are met, and drive operational efficiency, you must find the right partners to make your organisation shine.