John Linton The month has only a day to go but it has already set a new record in terms of the 'value' of new sales revenue generated - which is pleasing to everyone concerned in those processes. The next two months of any sales year to date are always the best, by quite a margin, for communications services sales just as they are for hardware technology sales. It's a combination of commercial budget cycles and the concomitant communication service contract renewal dates but it was clearly demonstrated by our March sales hitting new records. The month was very good in several other ways including 5 of our 6 new trainees making at least one sale in their first month (the 6th has only been with us for 5 working days - but as of 10am this morning she has also made her first sale). The sales teams in Sri Lanka are also coming to grips with their new, much more demanding targets and each one of those different campaigns is now making progress.
We will activate our new Auckland PoP tomorrow, assuming everything goes to plan. This is our first 'venture' in expanding our 'commercial' network beyond Australia and it will be the 'test case' for determining how quickly/whether we proceed with putting PoPs into Chicago and London before the end of this year. We obviously already have a PoP in Colombo but we are prohibited from using that infrastructure for anything but our own services by our agreement with the SL board of investment under which we were allowed to set up a company in Sri Lanka. We will attempt to get that restriction removed in the near future having more than fulfilled our initial contracted obligations. This would allow us to approach Australian and other international companies operating in Colombo to provide them with data and voice services. The new PoPs in Sydney and Melbourne are now fully operational and we will establish a schedule to add a second PoP in Brisbane once the Auckland PoP is operational.
We have also signed the lease to take up a new floor in our North Sydney building and work will commence on fitting out that floor space next week. We hope to complete the 'negotiations' to acquire the balance of the floor space on the floor we occupy in Colombo when Annette and I go to Sri Lanka next week to do the quarterly business and personnel reviews. Apart from allowing for a continuing growth in personnel in North Sydney (should the current growth estimates be met) the objective of acquiring more space in North Sydney is to allow us to double the current data centre floor space to allow us to offer 'hosting solutions' for the increasing number of our current business customers asking for such services. I am not 100% convinced that this is a direction we should take but if the 'evidence' is compelling enough then I can see why it is sensible to consider it.
The future remains uncertain with changes continuing at a seemingly daily rate across many aspects of the communications industry - and other industries of which we have some knowledge. This is most noticeable in terms of the changes in personnel within our wholesale suppliers where the changes all seem to be part of reductions in overall personnel numbers. It's also noticeable in changes of 'direction' within both our suppliers and our competitors which we can 'measure' by the number of unsolicited approaches we get from people exploring the possibility of employment with Exetel and, as I have mentioned previously, the increased number of approaches to either buy Exetel or operate some sort of joint venture. We have started our planning for FY2012 a few days earlier than usual and the current uncertainties and rates of change that are already happening is making those tasks harder than in the past.....though I don't really ever remember them as being easy.
So it was good to have had a very busy and very productive March which will end with a number of 'record' achievements.....and even though it doesn't provide any future certainty it has probably been a better month than most companies in our industry have experienced.
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