Stay tuned, stay prepared. The wave of change started in 2020 will continue in the years to come.
Q: The year that is about to end has been a recovery year for most companies, although it is still impacted by the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. How do you expect to finish 2021 from a business point-of-view?
Lucian Enaru: From our perspective, 2021 will end considerably better than its predecessor. The main difference in 2021 is that, following the confusion and the stupor of the first half of 2020, businesses have started to understand the new normal and adjust to it. Behaviours that started changing last year confirmed they were not fads, but in fact serious mutations, to which businesses had to respond each it its own specific way. The digitization process, accelerated last year, has started to reap its benefits this year. And as a power management company, we stand at the heart of it all. So, it was a good year, with lots of market opportunities and new priorities that resulted from our new circumstances.
Q: Schneider Electric is in the pole position for digital transformation. What major projects did you deliver in the last two years?
Lucian Enaru: These past two years have been, indeed, very busy. We have designed and implemented projects for most of our biggest clients – large international and local corporations – from various segments, from automotive to commercial buildings, from healthcare and retail to food&beverage, as well as oil&gas, data centers. We had both greenfield projects as well as upgrades. This clearly indicates the extent of the change process that happened over a very short period of time.
Q: What did you do in your company to digitally transform your sales, marketing and operations business flows?
Lucian Enaru: We have been working on digital transformation for a long time, so over the past two years we were happy to see others catching up as well. We have dedicated portals for our partners and for our specialists, we have moved all our sales and marketing operations online since the first weeks of the pandemic, and we have developed new platforms and support tools for HR, for the benefit of our entire organization.
As for the operations, we took even more advantage of our AR and VR based solutions and managed to conduct a lot of business remotely, in an effective and prompt way.
Q: Sustainability is a “hot” term these days when everybody is talking about reducing pollution and CO2 emissions. How do you think sustainability will impact your business and what tactics are you adopting to address this challenge?
Lucian Enaru: Schneider Electric currently is the world’s most sustainable corporation. This distinction is the result of our constant efforts conducted over a very long period of time, with a clear vision in mind and concrete objectives that we followed consistently for years.
The new Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI) program, that spans 2021-2025, amounts to a significant acceleration of our previous, very ambitious targets. It is built on six long-term commitments, which are set to deliver on each of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. These commitments are to act for a climate-positive world; to be efficient with resources; to live up to its principles of trust; to create equal opportunities; to harness the power of all generations; and to empower local communities.
Q: One of your solutions in the area of sustainability is EcoStruxure Platform. How can your customers benefit from this platform to improve their efficiency and sustainability?
Lucian Enaru: The EcoStruxure Platform is the perfect response to the current circumstances, that require remote access, flexibility, efficiency and scalability. Our solutions, integrated with the EcoStruxure Platform, enable our clients to be in charge of their power infrastructure in an effective and reliable manner, and manage any changes they may encounter in the way their assets are operated.
Q: Most companies are preparing for a hybrid work environment these days. How did you approach this challenge?
Lucian Enaru: We do believe in a hybrid work format, as we all feel necessary to interact, consult, communicate directly with our colleagues. However, whenever necessary and possible, we tried to limit the deployment of our experts in the field and we tried to substitute that with our AR and VR tools.
We are trying to replicate as many tools and solutions to continue building and enhancing our organizational culture and the induction process for our new colleagues, while keeping them all safe and enabling them to fulfil their responsibilities.
Q: What advice do you have for Romanian leaders in 2022?
Lucian Enaru: Stay tuned, stay prepared. The wave of change that started last year will continue in the years to come, and will require significant adjustments from all of us, as we are all called how we live, how we behave, how we work and how we understand to preserve our planet for our children.
Q: How do you expect the Romanian market to evolve in 2022?
Lucian Enaru: I expect the digital transformation process to continue at a fast pace, as we will now be able to understand which of the changes incurred by the pandemic will be permanent and which could be reverted. We will readjust our businesses and assets to respond to the new reality that is going to stay, in the aftermath (hopefully) of the pandemic. From this perspective, considering that we will probably keep a lot of the good things that happened to us and we will start managing them better (like online operations, cloud solutions, remote work, automation), I believe the market will continue to grow and will be in need of our products and services.
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