Our ambition was to bring together the strengths of two established telecom power portfolios, Delta and Eltek, and create a unified platform for the future. Both product families were mature and successful. Each had its own engineering heritage, design philosophy and loyal advocates. We were not starting with a blank sheet of paper and nor should we have been. The challenge was to decide what deserved to be carried forward.

That distinction matters. In complex engineering organisations, innovation is often understood as the addition of something new: more functionality, more options or another configuration designed to meet a particular requirement. My experience has taught me that the more difficult form of innovation is actually simplification. It requires an organisation to examine everything it has created, identify what genuinely delivers value and be prepared to leave the rest behind. Sometimes the harder challenge is saying that something once needed is no longer necessary because nobody wants to have that uncomfortable conversation, but without it, real simplification is impossible.

I came to the Centric programme with experience spanning test, installation, commissioning, customer support and product management. Over three decades, I have seen telecom power systems from several perspectives: as products being designed and specified, as equipment arriving on site and as critical infrastructure that must continue operating reliably for many years.

My time as an Installation Manager was particularly important. A configuration that appears logical in a catalogue or engineering document can look very different to the people installing and commissioning it. Complexity has a real cost. It consumes engineering hours, extends lead times, increases the possibility of errors and makes systems more difficult to support throughout their lifecycle.

This practical experience shaped the question I kept returning to during the Centric programme: will this make life easier for the customer and the people working with the system?

Before we could answer it, we had to understand the scale of what already existed. Together with management and colleagues across the business, we reviewed the Delta and Eltek catalogues, product options and system configurations. We examined what customers valued, where requirements overlapped and where the existing portfolios could be improved.

There was no shortage of opinions, which was hardly surprising given how much experience and commitment people had invested in the products over the years. Each person approached the programme from a different perspective, whether shaped by regional customer expectations, technical consequences or the long-term demands of managing a product throughout its lifecycle. Bringing these views together meant finding a direction that could deliver progress without losing the continuity customers expected.

The role of Product Management is not simply to collect all these requests and add them to a specification. If every preference becomes a feature and every historical configuration is preserved, the result may satisfy individual stakeholders but fail the wider market. The responsibility is to distinguish between a genuine customer requirement and complexity inherited from the past. It is a fine line to dance and ultimately the goal is to create something everyone will be satisfied with.

This meant that some concepts had to be eliminated because they did not meet the programme’s technical, commercial or strategic objectives. These were not always easy decisions or pleasant conversations. A good idea in isolation is not necessarily right for a common platform. Every option affects manufacturing, documentation, training, sales configuration, installation and long-term support. Product complexity rarely remains contained within the product itself.

At the same time, decisions cannot be made from a conference room alone. Input from Sales Support Engineers and Product Support teams was essential because these colleagues see how systems are applied in the real world. Their experience helped us test our assumptions against actual customer requirements and installation practices. What we had thought impossible, they showed us could be done.

One of the biggest surprises was discovering how much commonality already existed between the Delta and Eltek platforms. Despite years of separate development, the two portfolios had often arrived at similar answers to the same engineering problems. Beneath different product identities and design traditions, there was a considerable amount of shared thinking.

That discovery changed the character of the programme. Centric did not need to be a compromise between competing approaches. It could become a distillation of their strongest elements.

Of everything we achieved, bringing those concepts together into a single direction is what makes me most proud. It required technical evaluation – certainly – but also patience and trust across the wider engineering organisation. Unifying products means asking people to look beyond the solutions they know and consider what the business and its customers will require in the future.

The first variant, Centric 3000, was launched in July 2026. Reaching that point brought relief, pride and excitement in equal measure. The programme had been under significant time pressure and had taken longer than originally anticipated. Yet with infrastructure products, a launch date is only one measure of success. The greater responsibility is to create something customers will choose to adopt and continue to trust.

Centric is therefore more than a new telecom power product. It represents a step forward in configuration and standardisation. A more coherent range should enable sales offices to respond faster to customer requirements, reduce unnecessary engineering effort and make systems easier to specify, deploy and support.

There is still work ahead. The value of the platform will become more visible as further products and options are introduced. But the principle behind it is already clear. The next generation of telecom power systems will not be defined by how many configurations a manufacturer can offer. It will be defined by how intelligently those systems combine flexibility with simplicity.

After three decades in this industry, I believe that is one of the most important judgements a Product Manager can make. Engineering excellence is not only about what we are capable of adding. Sometimes it is about having the experience and discipline to know what we no longer need.