EMERSON Network Power (ENP) is on the rise—literally, as it recently inaugurated a new data center on top of the company’s headquarters on the 29th floor of The Orient Square building.
And so is Anand Sanghi, Emerson’s newly promoted president for the Asian market.
“There’s a lot of pressure, especially as we end our fiscal year by September,” Sanghi told the BusinessMirror.
Sanghi, who has been working with ENP since acquiring his MBA from the India Institute of Management in 1994, would add the data center among his main responsibilities in overseeing the company’s operations that provide support worldwide. ENP Philippines, he said, is the global hub for ensuring that other Emerson businesses are given all the support they need, from finance, human resources, marketing, fund management, pricing and technicals.
He said ENP Philippines “takes care of the region,” except for Greater China and India, but including Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Pakistan, Korea and all of Southeast Asia.
“Each office in those countries focuses on shared services, primarily working directly with customers on projects and delivering fulfillment. From here, we provide all the support,” he said.
Currently under him are 144 people working on ENP’s support for the whole of Asia, 50 for the Philippine market, and around 500 for global support. Outside of the Philippines, Sanghi said there are about 800 employees working on the network power division of Emerson.
The numbers are expected to grow, with the opening of ENP’s data center where, he said, customers can test the company’s services before availing them.
The center is where Sanghi said ENP will offer a pre-release of a new solution that acts like a car suspension, dispensing power and cooling requirements equally to computers stacked inside racks.
Culled from the recent acquisition of Avocent by the St. Louis, Missouri-based Emerson, the solution will, according to Sanghi, ease the pressure for companies to squeeze margins.
“Looking at the market today, especially with the booming BPO [business-process outsourcing] industry in the Philippines, there’s a big pressure for executives to solve the problem of unused capactiy of a data center,” he said.
Most of these companies, according to Sanghi, are under pressure to save on capital expenditure, and ensure the efficiency on investments and utilization of resources. He estimates unused capacity at an average of 25 percent per rack.
Sanghi claims that ENP’s new solution, which would see a commercial release next year, would help manage, measure and provision cooling and power requirements for every rack.
“It will be a game-changer,” he said.
Asian financial crisis
SANGHI’S game began changing seven years ago when he arrived in the Philippines from Hong Kong.
That time, he said, there were only about a dozen engineers when he headed the shared services division of Emerson in the Philippines. Currently, it has 700.
“I’ve been placed in a great destination. There’re a lot of good talents here and the market’s fabulous,” he said.
It also helped that Sanghi has a Master in Business Administration degree from the Indian counterpart of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). In fact, he said one of his professors there also taught at AIM.
Sanghi said working at Emerson’s corporate and planning division is really the key to having a broader view of the business.
“We have this gathering of division heads where we plan for the next five years, so that gives you an overall feel of what’s happening and where we want to be,” he explained.
Additionally, Sanghi credits his involvement in the merger-and-acquisition projects of Emerson at a time when Asia was in turmoil.
“It was 1997 and I was also tasked to scout for candidates for acquisition,” he recalled. There were a lot of choices that time, he said, since the Asian financial crisis left the market in disarray.
He said the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness written by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein helped him at the time, citing a case in the book about a school cafeteria and how the simple arrangement of fruit, chocolate bars and hot meals impacts children’s nutrition.
“The key lesson here is how the environment shapes our decisions, the choices that we make, which could have deep-lasting effects on our future,” he said.
“It also helps that we can also shape our environment,” added Sanghi, who handled climate technologies in a company acquired by Emerson in the ’90s.
While planning is a must, he said execution is just as important. “A chief executive officer or business head should also get his hands dirty. He or she shouldn’t shy away from getting into details,” he said.
Sanghi considers himself very involved in the day-to-day operations of ENP. However, he said, “It would never be enough to do things yourself.”
Hence, he relies on managers and regional executives “for the wisdom and operating” the company. “No problem is too difficult to some” and that makes the tasks easy, he said.
Sanghi said the whole company abides by the lessons culled from Charles F. Knight, who ran Emerson for two decades. It was under Knight that Copeland, Sanghi’s former employer, was bought by Emerson in 1986.
Knight is known for being tough and having a strict system of control and management style, Sanghi said.
This environment, however, was lacking when Sanghi joined the company’s Philippine office. “Now, there’s more confrontation, and there’s atmosphere of openness and honesty. We thrive on debate because that’s good for generating ideas,” he said.
Nonetheless, the new environment was a culture shock for some employees. But instead of shrinking, ENP’s work force grew.
“We always see the reason to put our heads up,” Sanghi said.
Conversations
SANGHI is up and about at 5:30 in the morning, making it a point to join his wife and two boys for breakfast and bring the kids to school.
Before 9 a.m., he would already be working, trying to catch up with the countries that are ahead or delayed by several hours of Manila.
He and two other executives report then to Stephen Liang, ENP Asia-Pacific president.
“Anand has been a key contributor in the success of Emerson and ENP here in Asia,” a statement quoted Liang as saying. “His skills at understanding customer needs, technology and cross-cultural management should give us the strong leadership required to lead a dynamic and diversified Asian organization.”
But more than eight hours at work may not be enough for Sanghi.
“We’re not yet getting the numbers,” he acknowledged. And the numbers are really huge. According to him, the network power market in Asia alone posts a compounded annual growth rate of about 6 percent to 9 percent and an annual revenue potential of $2 billion.
The growth in data traffic, especially video, as well as the lackluster economic performance of Western territories, further add to the pressure to bite a big chunk of that market.
The pressure for Sanghi is to maintain market leadership.
He, however, seems unfazed, chucking up an anecdote here and there during the interview.
He may be on the 29th floor but for Sanghi—and Emerson—it’s still a long way up.
In Photo: Anand Sanghi, Emerson’s newly promoted president for the Asian market.
