John Linton
As part of the process of developing the detailed 5 year plan for Exetel we asked DeLoittes to run a session with us to test the various objectives and assumptions that underpin the basic formulation of the second five years of the Exetel 'ten year plan'. The Exetel attendees were five of the ten people who had played a significant part in building the company to where it is today and who are expected to continue to play a part in continuing to build the company in the future. (we could only spare 5 of the 10 key people for any sort of time during a working day).
I had no expectation that 'outsiders' could really add any new thinking to what is, even at its current small size, a very complex operation both in terms of products and services and the delivery of those products and services that uses very sophisticated techniques but I did expect to get value from having 'outsiders' use their different ways of looking at things to get different perspectives on what we planned to do and what we should take in to consideration.
I think the time was well spent and it was of assistance in reviewing, at least in a macro sense, the areas on which Exetel needs to concentrate on to deliver the planned results by December 31st 2013. The objectives of Exetel were not 'negotiable' in that they are what the directors and shareholders agreed when deciding to 'create' Exetel. They are:
1) To provide Australian communication users with the lowest cost products and services (at the equivalent of the highest quality) available from any other provider in Australia.
2) By 31/12//13 achieve a monthly revenue of $A25 million
3) By 31/12/13 provide $A1 million per month to Australian fauna and flora protection programs
4) By achieving 1 - 3 above make Australia a better and more enjoyable place to live for all its inhabitants.
We always knew that to be able to achieve those objectives we would have to do two things, and only two things:
A) We would have to buy each one of the components of the products and services required by Australian users at a lower cost than ANY competitor/market dominater was able to do.
B) We would need to find a way/ways of bringing those services to the attention of Australians at a lower cost than any other 'offerer' in the Australian marketplace in the period 1/1/10 - 31/12/13.
Over the past 4.5 years, everything that we have done at Exetel has been based on achieving those objectives and, to a large extent, we have made a great deal of progress in reaching each of the objectives we set ourselves. So it was relatively easy to formulate the overall tasks to be achieved over the coming five years and to break them down into two pairs of two objectives:
A) Operating Cost Reduction To Below All Other Competitors
1) Reduce all future support/administration/financial/programming/network management costs to one third of current costs by making the Sri Lankan operation a total success.
2) Reduce the cost of future HSPA based services (and the associated voice services) by making a success of the projected EU operation.
B) Sales Volume Increase At Lower Cost Of Sale Than All Other Competitors
1) Increase the current Exetel Agent Network by ten times and increase the 'customer referral program' by ten times over the next two years.
2) Increase the skills and abilities of Exetel management by 25% each in each of the next 3 years.
By achieving these 4 objectives we will meet the next five year's planned targets.
You might well say - "such macro 'planning' can be done on the back of the proverbial 'cigarette packet' and certainly doesn't need 9 intelligent people to sit in a room for three hours". No doubt you would be correct - but then ALL objectives have to be very simple for them to be achieved when their achievement requires the efforts of multiple people over protracted timeframes.
It's equally true that unless you plan backwards from a distant view point you will never achieve as much as you would if you planned from a recent past achievement level and moved forward. Within Exetel, as a start up company where every hour of every day tends to bring a new 'insuperable' obstacle to even staying in business let alone making any progress the first five years of being in business are spent trying to ensure that you will be able to plan the second five years with less 'immediate' concerns.
On the assumption that we will remain in business over the coming four months we may now, finally, have reached a point where we can plan backwards rather than forwards with a reasonable degree of certainty and knowledge. We have 'earned' that opportunity by quite significant efforts on the part of almost everyone who currently works for Exetel or who has worked for us over the past 4 plus years.
I don't think that Exetel does anything particularly 'brilliantly' or anything that couldn't be done by anyone else who gives a moment's thought to their day to day activities. We don't have to. If we achieve our objective our 'market share' will still be less than half of one percent of Australia's total communications service market - hardly an ambitious target after ten years though it may sound large when you're only doing 20% of it.
The only difficult things are:
a) Staying in business long enough to reach ongoing profitability and enough growth and track record with your suppliers to begin to buy effectively enough to grow more rapidly.
b) Developing the internal processes and skills to operate more cost/efficiently than any competitor.
Pretty simple really as we have everything in place to make these things happen.
Sometimes I wonder why I still work the hours I do.