Schneider Electric, which specialises in energy management and automation, has chosen Barcelona as the location for an international digital hub to boost both its own digital transformation and that of the industry as a whole. The centre will be a point of reference for the French company worldwide.

Experts in cybersecurity, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, cloudification, platform integration and much more, in its first year, the firm expects to have as many as 200 professionals in its workforce. The company’s digital transformation projects will seek to boost e-commerce, the company's move to the cloud, the development of ERP systems, and the management, analysis and integration of data and AI. It will also develop solutions for customers and partners that will be supported by these projects.

Benchmark for the entire ecosystem
The President of Schneider Electric Zona Ibérica, Josu Ugarte, explained, "Schneider Electric's digital hub in Barcelona is set to become a benchmark for the entire ecosystem. It will allow us to move even faster with our own digitisation, and it will also support the digital transformation of the companies we work with.

On the trajectory that has led to this decision, Ugarte said, "We are a company with a strong industrial base that has been able to converge the worlds of IT and OT, bringing connectivity to each of our products, extracting data and ensuring its continuity, and developing software that allows us to harness and get the maximum value from that data. All this is achieved using open and scalable platforms.

Leading city for innovation
The company stated that Barcelona was chosen because of the significant added value of its role as a leading city for innovation. They highlight its ecosystem of start-ups and benchmark IT companies, and its huge capacity to attract international digital talent. The ease in setting up the new centre in Spain, where Schneider Electric has over 4,000 employees, was also a factor.

The new recruits will join a digital team that already includes 3,100 professionals in 64 countries. The centre will be located in the 22@ district, where the company's headquarters in the city are located.

José Luis Cabezas, Vice-President of Human Resources at Schneider Electric Zona Ibérica, explained, "Barcelona had already naturally become one of the hubs for our digital teams. It is a city that attracts talent; so many of our digital teams were already taking up residence here as a matter of course, and recruiting local and international talent. Over the past five years, we have doubled the number of employees with the necessary skills to over 300 in Iberia, with more than 150 new recruits attracted by the company's capacity for innovation, by the internal ecosystem of talent and learning, and also - this is something that has come up repeatedly in interviews - because they know that their projects contribute to creating solutions that have a positive impact on the sustainability of the planet".

^{Photo: Schneider Electric}