Operating model
Seven decisions, repeated for every partner
Wholesalers, panel builders, brand label and online look like four businesses. They are the same seven decisions, taken against a different set of companies each time.
The seven
Decide which route a partner belongs to, and what terms follow. Skip it and two country teams quote the same distributor differently.
Decide which partners to sign. Skip it and we cover the same town twice through two members of the same buying club.
Set the terms and the rebate. Skip it and we pay for volume that would have arrived anyway, or write something a regulator can read as price fixing[1].
Train and certify. Skip it and a partner certified two years ago still calls the factory to answer a basic question.
Plan and sell together. Skip it and our own website competes with our distributor for the same order.
Make ordering work system to system, and keep product data complete. Skip it and someone re-types the order by hand, and our product does not appear in the partner's search results.
Decide where the next euro of support goes. Skip it and the budget gets spread evenly across partners who are not growing evenly.
Run them once, not four times
Four programmes cannot be added up. Run these seven separately for each route and we get four sets of terms, four certification schemes and four scorecards.
Run them once and a partner who is both a wholesaler and a panel builder stops falling into the gap between two programmes. The region gets one scorecard instead of four.
That is the only version anyone can use to decide where the next unit of investment goes.
Sources
- Autorite de la concurrence, decision 24-D-09, 470 million euros of fines on Schneider Electric, Legrand, Rexel and Sonepar for resale price fixing. https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/en/press-release/electrical-equipment-autorite-imposes-fines-eu470-million-manufacturers-schneider (published 30 October 2024, accessed 27 July 2026)