Princeton Digital Group named Team of the Year – Data Centre at SBR Management Excellence Awards 2020

The company pursued accelerated business transformation to modular-whitespace hybrid management during COVID-19 crisis.

Numerous companies have faced severe pressure to serve their clients whilst protecting the health of employees amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Princeton Digital Group (PDG) is one of those that have responded to the crisis swiftly and efficiently whilst undertaking an organisational overhaul. The success of its endeavour has earned the company the Team of the Year prize in the Data Centre category of the SBR Management Excellence Awards 2020.

“We are honoured to have been awarded Team of the Year by Singapore Business Review. This award is a testament to the hard work, grit and determination exemplified by the Singapore team amidst the recent global challenges for the sake of the evolvement of the business,” shared Asher Ling, Managing Director (Singapore) at PDG.

Since PDG acquired DCSG in 2019, the company has set up a Singapore-based team of operations, engineering, and security experts responsible for transforming the company’s direction. This team also worked to turn the data centre into a hybrid management environment consisting of modular and whitespace-raised floor setups. The team conducted this task over a 12-month period as well as maintained its commitments to existing clients, despite facing constraints as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project involved a transition from a design, build, operational, security, and strategy perspective to support business evolution after the DCSG acquisition. Thus, a careful and synergistic approach was necessary to ensure balance between the operational and technical aspects and the personnel element of the organisation.

To succeed in this project, the team had to establish an additional maintenance system to cater for the whitespace model and then manage two ongoing systems in the hybrid space. The technical challenge was in applying different sets of best practices and safety measures, as well as operating models and equipment, within the same facility.

To ensure long-term operational excellence and efficiency, the team exercised strong leadership skills in a fast-paced environment whilst training talents as part of the new team structure.

PDG has successfully restructured the operations team in Singapore by retraining current employees to be comfortable with the whitespace standard operating procedures, and restructuring the teams around functional expertise so that each sub-team could focus on their specialised functions. Flexibility, collaboration, and knowledge sharing were essential in learning and applying crucial skills across various areas as well as recruiting new team members.

The group was also able to maintain excellence and achieve 100% service level standards during the transition period to ensure that the data centre was fulfilling customers’ requirements. Proactiveness, teamwork, dedication, and technical competence were the elements that drove the team towards project completion.

Furthermore, they demonstrated the ability to mitigate the uncertainty and risk resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which coincided with the last stage of the business transition. Constant adaptation was necessary in employing safe management practices, crowd management, and segregation practices to ensure employees’ safety without causing service downtime for clients.
The project’s conclusion in June demonstrated the PDG team’s commitment to a customer-first and best-in-class mindset.

“PDG has shown that they are a data centre service provider who possesses cutting-edge operations, technical proficiency, and great business acumen. Through [our] strong partnership with PDG, we are confident that they are able to assist us in [fulfilling] our customers’ requirements, be it expansion or service quality,” said Cedric Lim, managing director of Embrio Enterprises.