Vertiv Solutions are Essential Services as per Government Guidelines

A.S. Prasad, General Manager – Product Management & Marketing, Vertiv informs how Vertiv is serving the critical essential service providers even during the lockdowns

Power solution players like Vertiv have a critical role to play in the current scenario to ensure business continuity. How is Vertiv enabling business continuity and ensuring its clients in India are not affected? How are you supporting your clients in the current pandemic scenario?

We provide round-the-clock preventive and breakdown maintenance to support our client’s critical infrastructure who operate under the Essential Services Maintenance Act. These include data centers, IT and ITes companies, telecom towers, banks, hospitals, media networks.

Vertiv’s solutions, as per government guidelines, are considered essential services. We provide critical digital infrastructure that allows data centers and telecommunication networks to function smoothly. We play a crucial role to ensure that hospitals, governments, and other essential services are running and stay connected. Therefore, even during the lockdowns we continued to run our manufacturing facilities while our service employees continued to assist our customers in a safe and responsible manner.

Even in the post-lockdown scenario we look set for a long haul. How has Vertiv planned for contingencies over a longer period?

A significant percentage of Vertiv’s clients are from the essential services industry- healthcare, hospitals, data centers, IT &ITes, telecom, BFSI, and continuous process plants like refining, petrochemical, and pharma companies.  Vertiv plants in Ambarnath and Pune are operating in compliance with current government guidelines. All factory staff are advised to practice social distancing and the plant is disinfected regularly to ensure a safe working environment for our employees, as per government mandated guidelines.

We are now getting used to working in the new normal. We are fortunatethat we had the tools and strategies in place to adapt quickly to the changes required to keep our employees and customers safe. As long as we are designated an essential business, we will not stop work because we serve the essential services industry and we will be following all government guidelines and local body regulations to ensure our plants are working, to serve our customers to whom we have committed our products and solutions.

How are you internally ensuring your own employee health and safety? How much is WFH and how much is on-premise and what will be the proportion of the business model going ahead?

Our employees are our most valued asset and therefore their safety, along with the safety of communities where we live and work, are of the utmost importance. We have undertaken several measures based on recent guidelines from local, national, and international health authorities, to best protect our employees. Some of these measures include, but are not limited to, adopting pharmaceutical-grade cleaning agents practicing social distancing, and ensuring that all employees have access to disinfecting wipes to keep their workstations clean throughout the day.

Additionally, we have implemented travel restrictions and work-from-home assignments wherever possible, and we follow the self-quarantine guidelines as outlined by the local health officials for any employee who feels ill or who has a close family member who feels ill.

Several governments across the globe have implemented nation-wide lockdowns to combat this pandemic. No one knows how long this pandemic will last and to what extent it will change our lives – both at home and at work.  We will continuously follow government recommendations and adapt our operations accordingly. This will inform our decisions about the best way to determine on-premise and work-from-home models.

What is the current scenario of production in the Ambarnath and Hadapsar factories and elsewhere?

We are responsibly ramping-up production in both the factories and anticipate getting back to a more normal level in about three months. We are with the nation when it comes to serving the essential service industry, so we have special permission to operate our plants only to service our essential service industry.

How are the current stakeholders in the entire Vertiv ecosystem working?

At this point in time, only the factory staff are going to the factories -that too, as per the government’s guidelines. We have also madearrangements for stay of our personnel in Pune since our factory falls in a red zone, again following government and local body guidelines.

All our sales, business development, finance, operations, project management, engineering staff are working from home right now. The percentage of employees working from home right now is significant, whereas, going forward, we will look at the new guidelines issued by the government and local bodies and try to have a good mix of work from home and actual office/plant going staff.

As for services, our service engineers in the field continue to serve our essential services customers, primarily data centers, telecom, cloud, and healthcare industries. So, a significant number of our service staff are already on our customers’ premises, following government safety guidelines in their interactions for the safety of our customers, and helpingthe essential services industry in the country to run 24/7.

What are the solutions on the roadmap in a post COVID environment?

Working from home is becoming the new normal for 5 million strong IT, ITes and BPO staff. A lot of companies have gone on record saying that 75% of their staff will be working from home. Vertiv is currently evaluating all options and looking at how we can package our solutions for a work from home scenario. Our marketing team is already in touch with customers along with front-end sales and channel partners to look at what kind of solutions we can provide to help our customers work from home.

We are also looking at other opportunities that are coming our way. For instance, remote management of UPS, precision air conditioning and other infra-assets, because in today’s post COVID world,it will all be about lesser human intervention and Vertiv does have solutions where you can have remote monitoring of our infra-assets. We are continuously looking at business opportunities for us to grow and expand into newer areas and applications.

What are going to be the key business drivers or initiatives for the next 12 months?

With the new normal of working from home, we are also looking to package our solutions accordingly. With remote management being a priority to figure out, we are working towards coming up with solutions with minimal human intervention.  As a company that is technology focused, we are constantly looking for opportunities that address customer needs while also allowing usto continue to expand and grow to take our organization to the next level.