theceomagazine.com | 63Harry Woo’s story with Panduit began in 2011, after
being headhunted to become its Vice-President of Sales
in Asia–Pacific. After a mere three years and a swift move
to Singapore, Harry was successfully sworn in as the
new Managing Director and Senior Vice-President of
Panduit Asia–Pacific.
Panduit opened its first set of doors in Japan and, since
then, has clocked more than 40 years in the Asia–Pacific
region. The company is celebrated for its high-quality
electrical and network infrastructure for telecommunications,
power and computing. And behind each high-quality
product is a set of hands working towards Panduit’s
overarching goal – helping businesses maintain connectivity
in this vivid technological age. Panduit targets six main areas
in its mission: data centres, enterprise, industrial automation
network, industrial network, OEMs, industrial construction
and IoT. Panduit is headquartered in the US state of Illinois
and now has more than 900 employees across Asia–Pacific.
In the region, its reach has extended to include China,
Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia.IGNITING THE INITIATIVE
Over the years, Harry has deeply observed Panduit’s
operations and curiously noted the management issues
stifling processes and productivity. While it’s true that
many companies drag their feet when adapting to new
environments, Harry would not allow Panduit to do the
same. He pored over the company’s processes and developed
the Move 123 initiative, a system that looks at a business
strategy in an integrated manner with three phases of action.
“Everyone was going in different directions. One team
would plan a strategy and another team would execute it,”
explains Harry with a shake of his head. “So, we all sat
down in 2014 and decided we couldn’t do this anymore.
It was wasting a lot of resources, time and energy. We
needed to have a mechanism that allowed us to think about
our strategy before we executed it. We needed to change.”
And change they did.
The first phase was the ‘seven P approach’. What is
the product strategy? What is the pricing strategy? Who
are the people? What is the place, promotion, process and
production? With these questions, Harry knows an employee
can decide what must be done. The system lends a helping
hand to transform strategies and ideas into a practical reality.
Through such a systematic method, there is no getting
lost among multiple goals and voices from different teams.
Employees now raise their hands, collaborate and get
involved, planning the execution of the company’s strategy
to eventually become co-owners of it.
But Harry didn’t stop there. He continued streamlining
Panduit Asia–Pacific with phase two: bringing the »THE
PROMISE
“From joint development of solutions
to best-in-class deployments to regional
and global channel partnerships,
customers working with Panduit can
achieve their business objectives and
realise predictable, measurable results.
Our consultative approach allows us
to identify customer requirements and
align appropriate channel partners to
provide expertise and services that span
the project lifecycle, from planning
and design to delivery, deployment,
maintenance and operation.”
Our distributors:
- APAC/global: Anixter,
Rexel and Sonepar
- China: Ingram Micro China and
Shanghai Haoxun Trade Development
- Japan: SunTelephone
and Inaba Denki Sangyo
- ROAP: FPS-ENP/PT FPS and MM
Electrical Merchandising (MMEM)
Interview | INSPIRE