John Linton ....in the communications marketplaces than there has been all year; at least when I looked at my 'to do' list for this week it is beginning to look less demanding than it has for many months. I'm not sure whether that's a sign that I have got my personal responsibilities under better control or whether I've just run out of ideas on what to do or I just am not looking in the right places. I think it's likely to be a combination of 2 and 3.
The most important activity of the week is the beginning of outbound 'selling' from our Colombo office. One of our first three business services trainees, who joined us in February last year and quickly became a successful sales rep and then developed into an equally successful sales supervisor arrived in Colombo yesterday and will begin the process of helping the best of our inbound residential sales people become equally successful outbound residential sales people - at least that's the plan. It's a very 'bold venture' for us and a massive change from the ways we 'sold' our services for the first 6 years of our 'life' to date but then times have changed so markedly in the residential communications business that we had to change and have left it very late as we tried to find other solutions.
Much of the week will be taken up by the revising of the business and operating plans for 2011. This is a long, detailed and demanding process which is even more important than usual in these turbulent times. It will most likely result in more changes to the way we operate and the people we do business with (both buying and selling) than at any time in the past seven years. This is, to use one of those phrases beloved of business schools, a true 'pivot point' in our brief history where we have to more fully commit to the change in direction for the company as a whole that we have been preparing for for over two years. It's one thing to plan a major change and do the preliminary work necessary o bring it about - it's a very different thing to tke the steps that will commit you to a very different path.
I remember 'planning' the move of all of Exetel's 'back end' processes to an overseas location and the almost insouciance with which we carried out that major change to our operations. While it has turned out very well I shudder when I think of the risks and all the things that we should have given much more serious consideration. With hindsight we should have been far more careful. So in moving Exetel's future growth and development away from residential ADSL(an inevitabilty though it may be over time) there is the same sense of why you know it's right is this the right time?
Two of the major aspects of the operational changes we are considering is a change of IP supplier and a mini 'joint venture' with a 'partner' in delivering VoIP services to small businesses in terms of them supplying the hardware and on site installation and Exetel providing the high speed links and the VoIP switching. These would be major changes to the ways we do business as in terms of the 'jv' we have always been a fiercely independent company and in terms of the IP we have always used Optus for the majority of that infrastructure. We also have a number of other supply and sell scenarios to consider that will also be quite important but they won't be considered this week.
So a somewhat calmer week than last week and most of the other weeks of this year. I am pretty sure that is just because I am missing significant elements of the 'big picture'
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