John Linton .....with more to do than can sensibly be fitted into four weeks.This usually the case with operating a company of Exetel's size but somehow 'Christmas' adds some sort of 'finality' to a period that is more 'final' than other events.
We will have to make a decision today or tomorrow as to whether or not we take more floor space (on a rental basis) in the premises we occupy in North Sydney. We have been delaying this decision due to the uncertainties in the current residential marketplaces but there is now, apparently some other "party very interested" in the floor space. While this is probably more a case of the agent wanting to secure their commission before Christmas it really is a decision we need to make. There is no doubt that we will need more floor space in the immediate future to grow our corporate business but whether we need double what we currently have in North Sydney is the key element of the decision we need to make over the next 48 hours....or have it made for us by some other company signing an HOA before we are able to make up our minds.
Most of the week will be spent on decisions relating to revisions to the operating plan for the coming six months and trying to understand the most likely changes to current conditions and the offers by the various major companies that affect Exetel's business. For much of 2010 that has been Telstra Retail and TPG in the residential ADSL markets. However, over the past few months TPG's influences have faded away, quite considerably with fewer and fewer churn losses to that company each month. Telstra Retail's negative influences have also declined - though to a lesser extent. We will have to see whether either of those companies is able to 'increase their giveaways' via Christmas promotions but, for whatever reasons, there are days now where churns to Exetel from both those companies exceed churns to them for the first time in over eighteen months.
Our major efforts will be put in to determining what we do to increase our VoIP business and residential sales and how to increase the sales to small businesses. We have a quite strongly growing flow of sales to small business customers and (simply from our web site) and we believe this area of our business is easily our 'easiest' opportunity to grow our ADSL services in the event that Telstra/TPG/et alia continue their impossible price war into the balance of this financial year. The majority of the customers signing up for our ADSL business plans are coming from Telstra and TPG so clearly whatever those two companies are offering them (and in TPG's case perhaps the quality of service they are delivering) is less attractive than Exetel's web site is offering. Perhaps there is a God after all?
Whatever remaining time we have will be spent on re-developing the Sri Lanka plan to determine just how we can use develop and acquire 'outbound' sales resources to continue to change Exetel's 'sales approaches' to the different markets away from purely web based offers to more direct contact ways of promoting our business services. Our initial few weeks have been very encouraging and we now need to determine just how 'brave' we can be in the new calendar year. We have completed the first two phases of our Sri Lankan 'strategies', very, very successfully, but having the courage to start Phase III is still something that needs careful assessment.
Then there some other 'minor' tasks to complete like hiring a Sales Director, deciding how/whether to proceed with one or two 'joint ventures', selecting the 'source of money' to fund the planned growth and one or two other things that need time and attention....and then, of course, there is the ongoing uncertainties of:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/there-is-no-way-of-knowing-what-the-final-cost-of-nbn-will-be/story-e6frg9if-1225961710110
which lead Testra to say that it expected its ADSL and wireline business revenues which currently comprised around 50% of its annual revenues to decline to around 12% by 2020. Our planning problems pale into insignificance compared to planning for that sort of change.
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