Monday, March 30. 2009When Doing Nothing Seems The Safest Option......John Linton ....it simply must be wrong because there has never been a time in the history of commerce where any marketplace and product offering didn't continually change under the twin pressures of competition and growing customer sophistication. I have spent most of my waking time over the weekend considering how to address the issues that are likely to confront our small company in the current uncertainties and the widely (almost consensually) predicted "much tougher times" that are "imminent". My personal views, which are not based on any real knowledge, are echoed by two articles in today's Australian: and http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25260080-7583,00.html It really doesn't matter whether you voted for the current uneducated fools posing as a federal government or not - there is little doubt that the the glowingly 'pink' Albrechtson and the "hate Howard with a virulence mostly unmatched in Australian print" Ergas certainly voted Labor - their points are that Krudd and his unknowledgeable lackeys are only making everything worse and ensuring a difficult situation becomes a disaster with their stupidity/doctrinaire blindness that is unmatched in the history of the Federation. So little to no hope to be found in "things getting back to normal" in the near future when even the commos, pinkos and fellow travelers (even with their preferred Labor PM universally adulated in the Australian opinion polls - just how stupid does that make the Australian electorate?) are writing about Krudd's destruction of the country not only for the present but for the ongoing future. Krudd's robotic defense, as promise after promise fails to materialise, is that of the true charlatan - "it would have been worse if we hadn't [fill in pointles action promised from your personal selection of over 20 by my count] - try starting with the 75,000 additional jobs that would be created by his Christmas cash giveaway which, breathtakingly, has become 20,000,000 jobs planet wide now he's grandstanding without a safety net and his ego has zero restraints. Where are all these jobs that "have been saved" and who did the arithmetic to come up with figure? Nobody of course - he just plucked the figure out of.............. Nothing to see here..... I have mentioned several times this year that while I read about the various estimates of decline in the Australian marketplaces I see nothing in Exetel's day to day results that indicate anything but strong growth and my subsequent puzzlement as to what may be happening in the marketplaces that we operate in. Nothing has changed - new orders over the weekend continued to be strong despite the last days of every month being 'slower' than those of the rest of each month. In fact, for the first three months of this year every product/service we offer has continued to grow more strongly than at any time in our company's short 'history'. Having considered the non-action of making no changes to the current plans (based on there being no need for change as everything is going so well) - I rejected it. My reason for not 'doing nothing' is based on the long history of commerce and military campaigns that it is almost always too late to make changes when it eventually becomes obvious that you should do so - nothing more - and that improving your position might cost you some money in the short term (if it eventually turns out that in fact no subsequent changes need to be made) but making improvements can hardly damage your current situation if it turns out that changes don't become necessary. So....it's a tough decision to 'give away' money on plans that already delivering very thin profit margins but we will shortly have around $A2.00 a customer in known cost reductions and an unknown, but not inconsiderable amount of further cost reductions across a number of the services we offer. While an amount of "$A2.00 per customer" doesn't sound much it actually turns out to be more impressive than it initially sounds because, depending on the 'plan element' only somewhere between 10% and 40% of total users of a service actually use the full amount of all 'plan elements' in any given month. So, for instance, we could include the 100 free VoIP National calls on all ADSL1, Non Naked ADSL2 and HSPA plans (currently they are restricted to "naked" ADSL2 plans) without having to cost in a $400,000 increase in our supplier bills.Similarly we could increase the 12 midnight to 12 noon allowance from 54 gb based on our monthly increase in actual usage of the 12 noon to 12 midnight period - and as we expect to significantly add to that bandwidth at a much lower cost than is available today (in the near future) that would not impact our costs at all. We will also make the various 'bundled' options more attractive and also try and find a financially sensible way to add HSPA as a back up/travel option to our higher end ADSL1 and ADSL2 plans. Depending on some more 'investigation' today (and probably tomorrow) we will consider doing all of those things together with a number of other 'riskier' plan changes. Our expectation is that we will therefore ensure that the current strong growth in almost all services continues to be maintained and that, if we have 'guessed correctly' that growth may strengthen. Then again.....there's the Krudd factor that is far, far beyond a small company's risk minimisation planning to deal with......maybe there won't be an Australia worth living in beyond the current year? Trackbacks
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I think an increase in peak usage for some of the ADSL plans would attract a number of new users due to many potential customers remaining stuck with telstra.
On the higher 1.5mbit and 8mbit plans a peak allowance of 30gb and an offpeak allowance of 60gb, looks great value. I also love the thinking of including some free voip calls. HSPA as a prepaid addon would represent amazing value if a generous expiry was given on the prepaid data blocks. It would really be a move that would separate exetel into an unmatched class. Lastly some more thought should be done to promote the amazing value of your mobile plans by creating a typical user profile and comparing the benefits to the major carriers. Showing the number of 5minute calls that can be made with the plan value, etc. Anyway, I like where you are going with exetels plan, and I am all to happy to continue to keep recommending exetel to everyone I know. Comment (1)
Proving free VOIP calls to the HSPA service would be the best thing Exetel has done for me since HSPA!
54gb off peak is crazy generous, but like the above poster said, 60gb looks even better Comment (1)
JL wrote....
around $A2.00 a customer in known cost reductions and an unknown, but not inconsiderable amount of further cost reductions It might be a bit weak on excitement but removing the $3 'administration charge' on loyal customers would strengthen your market position. Regards C Bumkin Comment (1)
Hi John,
we will shortly have around $A2.00 a customer in known cost reductions Keep_it! You've already said that "Exetel's order intakes in March are already at record levels and are almost 40% up on a very good January and more than 30% up on an even better February". I think this is due to you already having compellingly good value, and with financial worries forcing people past the pain threshold where they'll consider an ISP change, you are in the excellent position of not needing to cut prices to drive your business. Comment (1)
I agree. Keep it.
Alternatively, use it to finance a 10Gbps connection with Southern Cross without having to try and pull cash from other parts of your business. Comment (1)
I'd also rather see an increase to peak, in preference to offpeak. TPG's 25 peak + 25 offpeak is quite compelling to a number if users - even tho the peak is 7am-1am, the "peak peak" of 6pm-11pm still offers 25Gb which is a lot.
I would also reiterate a forum post from pre-Christmas (I think) whereby a lower-usage 1500 & 8192 plan would be appreciated. 512/128 offers 6Gb peak for $40 (and ADSL2 all start at 6Gb) but 1500 offers 12Gb for $50 (and 8192 is 12Gb for $75). Could there be a 1500 6Gb plan for say $45? Whilst VoIP works on 512 it is much better on 1500, and would be a good entry level for the lower usage customers to move them onto VoIP without any performance issues (VoIP can be a tad flaky on 512/128 when using products such as carbonite online backup - I know this from experience). I know PAYU is available but this would sit between PAYU and the 12Gb plan (and also bring this speed in line with ALL other wired plans which start at 6Gb). Cheers Comment (1)
In my mind a $2 cost reduction wouldn't make much difference in the scheme of things to many consumers when prices are already market competitive, I would rather see it as added value
If I were in the position of what to do with a $2 budget per account I would want to look at what services I could add that would encourage the use of other services that the business can offer. VoIP is a good example as you mentioned as I think you would find that you have existing customers that already use VoIP through other providers, even if you offered all accounts a free VoIP service with tiered allowances, an HSPA customer might get 30 national calls included, an ADSL1 customer 60 calls, ADSL2 customer 90 calls, ADSL2 naked customer 120 calls, something along those lines anyway. I think multiples of 30 work for this as it equates to how many calls per day for free in the customers mind, having some included calls on all plans might encourage more people to use your service beyond the included calls amount as it is more convenient, single billing etc If a customer was to get some included calls with their account then your VoIP service is instantly more attractive than any competitor service that they are currently paying for and they are more likely to continue using your service for their calling needs I also feel the spam filtering solution is a good one and it would be nice perhaps to see one free email address with this service per account so more users could see the benefits, I think an HSPA user in particular would appreciated having mail filtered to avoid downloading anything unnecessary IMAP email would also be good for the HSPA customers Rather than increasing the download allowances something as simple as increased mailbox storage might be seen as more beneficial to a lot of users, I know of many people that have mentioned their mail can start bouncing before the weekend is out if they are away from their computers, I know free services like Gmail and Hotmail with their generous allowances allow a lot of people to avoid these problems but it doesn't really mean that for the users that want to use an ISP email address and a straightforward setup that the current allowance is really workable Comment (1)
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