John Linton Most of the week was taken up with next year's planning and analysing the changes that we have been making to the various residential ADSL services as reflected in the June 1st recurrent billing run which showed some interesting things. We had our highest ever ''churn away' ADSL2 rate which was unsurprising as we had asked several hundred customers to find a provider that was better able to meet their needs than Exetel and the natural result of asking some customers to move away from their obsolete plans. Despite those losses revenue was up and we have now, with four weeks to go, exceeded the total revenue target we planned to achieve some 12 months ago.....the profit target was not such a satisfying result but this has been the toughest year I can remember.
The most positive thing about the ADSL2 'customer loss' was that, the overwhelming majority of the customers leaving Exetel, were ultra heavy down loaders who I'm sure will be happier at their new ISP and who cost Exetel a great deal of money each month while they were an Exetel customer. So both parties will be much happier with that result which is a true win/win for everyone concerned. It was a useful indication of what may well happen in the coming months as Telstra et al crank up their customer retention and 'win back' marketing programs and gives us added insight in to how the replacement of very low profit margin business with sensible profit margin business will affect operations in the coming twelve months. It would be really good if what we see from the June billing figures (and the MRTG reports over the last few days) becomes a real 'trend'.
There wasn't much time for anything other than planning activities during the week except that we interviewed several people for corporate sales roles and began the task of finding suitable additional engineers both for the main networks and for corporate support. Our growth in both our residential network and our corporate network will require more support resources as they, combined, grow past the 10 gbps level over the coming year and then more rapidly grow past the 20 gbps level.....assuming our current planning predictions are met over the coming 12 months. It is not going to be the easiest set of tasks to accomplish and will be yet another 're-definition' of Exetel that we will need to manage.
We have not yet started on the revisions to the Sri Lankan operation's plan which we will need to complete by the end of next week. That plan is far 'simpler' in that it has already been done as part of a two year plan beginning on July 1st 2009 and 'only' needs re-validating in terms of the financials with no real changes to the operations other than to ensure we continue to have the correct resources in place and that the ongoing education programs are correct for the status reached each month. Having said that - there is a lot of revised thinking required in just how we develop the SL business and whether or not we add new (non-Exetel related) activities.
So my head is reeling from constantly trying to assimilate the meanings of different sets of figures and my eyes are very tired from hours and hours of gazing at screens filled with Excel columns and rows and I really need to take a break from those activities over the weekend. However while the financial planning is vital it's meaningless without the sales and marketing programs that make any set of numbers meaningful and we have yet to complete those processes - particularly for wireless broadband and VoIP....and we have as yet given absolutely no thought to fibre and what the various scenarios that may become realities will mean to us. Then there are the revised commission and agent plans and........
Maybe I'll just watch the football.
PS: To bring a smile to your face:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/all-gloss-and-guff-no-glory-20100604-xkne.html
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