At present, the digital transformation has become the consensus of enterprises, but facing the endless digital technology, how to make the technology play the greatest benefit in the business scene of the enterprise is the puzzle and challenge faced by many enterprises. In this regard, during the recent 2020 Schneider Electric Innovation Summit, the reporter interviewed Zhang Lei, vice president of Schneider Electric and head of digital service business in China.

Zhang Lei (first from left) at the roundtable forum of “joint innovation and digital technology empowerment”

Zhang Lei said that in the process of digital transformation, enterprises often face three major challenges. First, many enterprises are lack of top-level design in the process of digital transformation, do not know why to do digitization, and do not fully think about the real significance of Digitalization for enterprise operation. Second, many enterprises do not combine data with business scenarios, and do not establish analysis capabilities, which makes data unable to become information supporting decision-making. Third, it ignores the fact that the process of digital transformation is also the process of organizational change.

Zhang Lei believes that in order to solve the confusion of enterprises in the digital transformation, in addition to the digital technology and ability, it also needs full cycle and refined digital services.

As the head enterprise of digital service, Schneider Electric’s digital service mainly has four levels. The first is consulting service, which helps customers figure out what they need and what problems exist in the enterprise business. The second is product planning services. In this service, Schneider Electric will work with customers to plan the service content, determine which solution is the most suitable, the most effective and the most sustainable, help customers select feasible and optimal technical solutions, shorten the trial and error cycle, and reduce unnecessary investment. The third is data analysis ability service, which uses the professional knowledge of Schneider electrical industry experts, combined with customer data, through data insight, to help customers analyze problems. The fourth is on-site service. For example, provide door-to-door installation, debugging and other services to keep the equipment in a good state for long-term operation.

When it comes to on-site service, Zhang Lei believes that for service providers, to really help customers solve problems, they must go to the customer’s site and find out all the problems on the site, such as the characteristics of the products used in the field, what is the energy structure, and what is the production process. They all need to understand, master, find and solve the problems.

In the process of helping enterprises to carry out digital transformation, service providers need to have a strong understanding of both technology and business scenarios. To this end, service providers need to work hard in organizational structure, business model and personnel training.

“In Schneider Electric’s organizational system, we always advocate and strengthen the principle of integration. When considering any architecture design and technological innovation, we consider different business departments together,” Zhang said. Put different business and product lines together to make an overall framework, taking all scenarios into consideration. In addition, we also attach great importance to the cultivation of people, hoping to turn everyone into digital talents. We encourage our colleagues who do software and hardware to have digital thinking. Through our training, product explanation and even going to the customer site together, we can understand the needs of customers in the digital field and how to combine with our existing products. We can inspire and integrate with each other 。”

Zhang Lei said that in the process of enterprise digital transformation, how to achieve the balance between benefits and costs is an important issue. Digital service is not a short-term service process, but a long-term process. It is related to the whole life cycle of the equipment, ranging from five years to ten years.

“From this dimension, although there will be some investment in the first year, the benefits will gradually show up in the whole process of continuous operation. In addition, in addition to direct benefits, customers will also find many other benefits. For example, they may explore a new business model to gradually turn their stock business into incremental business. We have found this situation after cooperating with many partners. ” Zhang Lei said. (this article is selected from economic daily, reporter yuan Yong)