John Linton ......pity we won't get its benefits as in an hour or so we leave for the airport to go to Colombo to do the quarterly reviews there.
It's now a little over three years since Annette and I went to Colombo for the first time to start the processes necessary to set up a physical presence in Sri Lanka and we have returned every three months since that first visit. We are now relatively accustomed to the ways that business, and especially business with the government, there and are even used to the dreadfully maintained, narrow and just plain terrifying roads, the drenching rain or blazing sun and the distressing poverty. Basically all we take away with us is the smiling faces and unfailing politeness that have never been a feature of any Australian city I have ever lived in or been to in the 40+ years I have lived in Australia.
Our company in Sri Lanka continues to grow quite rapidly (in our sense of that word) and the growth has been even more rapid since I last visited in mid January of this year. We are very near the end of the original three stages of setting up the Colombo operation which is at least 'neat' in terms of our original 'planning' and fairly satisfying in terms of the overall objectives of providing the highest quality of various services from Sri Lanka. Steve will need to return to 'finally' resolve the remaining support issues and make whatever changes that will require over the next month or so but well before the end of the third year of the company build program in July, all processes should be complete.
After all this time, I still get questions about "sending Australian jobs overseas". I realise such questions do not come from very intelligent people but it still surprises me in 2011 how such stupidity can still exist - especially from people who seldom get up from watching their Korean big screen TV except to use their Chinese made PC to play their American games or get in to their Asian built car to go and buy their Mexican beer to drink with their US owned hamburgers or chicken wearing their Indonesian made clothes and shoes....you get the message.....it's called the international economy - stupid.
When the ex COO of another much larger ISP dropped in for a chat the other day he asked me why Exetel had selected Sri Lanka rather than the Philippines where the costs were the same/similar, it was in Australia's time zone and the availability of 'trained call centre staff' was infinitely greater. He was obviously basing his question on the decision his ex company had made which seemed to be based on a cursory comparison between "Mumbai and Manila". I gave my reasons, which I won't bore you by repeating and we both agreed that, apart from anything else, it was the impossibility of retaining dedicated and competent people in Australia to provide call centre technical services that was the 'trigger' that lead to looking at providing those services in other countries where a call centre job was not regarded as something to be done while the person looked for other employment. We both, like so many other people in so many countries around the world in so many industries, would not consider using Australians to provide services to other people - it is not a sensible 'cultural fit' for any business employing more than a few people.
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