John Linton .....if only we had more people and more time.
One of the things that makes planning more difficult than it should be when trying to finalise a new operating plan for the coming financial year (apart from uncertainties in the general financial situation) is trying to put in proper perspective what other opportunities you should be considering other than the products and services you are already delivering and the processes and plans you are already part way through implementing. In Exetel's case we have as much 'opportunity' within our current operations as we have the management time and other personnel resources to deal with and that has been the case throughout our first five and a half years of operations to date. Having said that there is always the siren call of different coloured grass and the temptations of more exotic locations than the one you are in to provide at least glimpses of distractions.
We managed to cope with the initial series of problems of setting up a 'back office' operation in Sri Lanka in the current financial year although that has a long way to go before it settles down in to meeting the requirements set for the different parts of it which are likely to take at least the remainder of calendar 2009. We have come a long way in making that series of objectives a reality so far but we face much more difficult challenges in the coming 12 months than we have met, and largely overcome, over the past 12 months so that will remain a 'project' that requires ongoing time and resources.
Similarly, while we have made a much better than expected start to building a corporate sales force we have only reached the bottom of that long and steep ladder and have barely got one foot on the first rung - so a great deal of time (and money) has to be continually invested to make that a reality and a great deal of innovative thinking has to be made into new realities this type of operation has never done before - at least in my experience.
Another significant project we have barely got started is the delivery of HSPA services in rural/regional areas of Australia. Not only do we have to massively grow our agent network (a major undertaking in itself) and find new ways that will be effective in promoting the services (something we have absolutely no knowledge of) but we have to learn to specify and get built hardware products in the PRC which is something we have zero knowledge of - and all of those things are on top of finding ways to compete with the usual suspects and their huge marketing budgets and love of "free" pricing structures.
Then there are the demands of the general operations and meeting sales targets of a ten service company that competes with much bigger competitors in every area of its endeavours for another year which seems to take a great deal more time than it used to as the company continues to grow. We also have the issues with the constant growth of the Australian networks and the changes to the base infrastructures from 1 gbps to 10 gbps over the coming 6 - 12 months as well as all of the changes those few words encompass. So clearly we need something new and exciting to fill in the empty hours in our days and weeks in FY2009....which leads to the considerations of what else we should be doing to keep Exetel moving forwards and ensuring we can continue to provide career opportunities for our personnel and interests for our wilder spirits as well as ensuring the company remains financially viable in the longer term.
Now that our friends at Deutsche Telecom are more seriously thinking of selling their T-Mobile interests in the UK to one or other of the larger operators there we have an increasing opportunity to 'partner' with some highly skilled and experienced people who will/may well find themselves at a loose end in the not too distant future. We have been talking with them for over a year about how to use some of Exetel's 'unique' abilities to offer wireless services in the UK and other parts of the EU and the current financial situation in the UK and the concomitant effects that has had on the UK wireless providers might mean that particular 'window of opportunity' is as widely open as it's ever going to get - at leeast for us. It's tempting because of the scale of business in the EU and the, current opportunities, of a very, very low 'entry cost'.
Similarly there are the same/similar wireless, and more importantly VoIP, opportunities in Indonesia where the current 'state of play' in delivering wireless services to the, surprising large, 'English speaking' business and associated marketplaces offer opportunities to Exetel that are not available in Australia (by definition) and are either very poorly served at the moment or not served at all. The same scenario exists in other countries in the region where some particular skills that Exetel has could, in conjunction with local 'partners', produce a very, and mutually beneficial, result in relatively short time frames. While it may seem strange that a tiny company like Exetel has skills that are lacking in those countries 'native' companies or the plethora of 'multinationals' that operate there it is actually quite true.
Such things can never be considered at any time other than the relatively short concentrated annual planning period when you re-check all your assumptions and look for errors in the figures you have constructed and they seldom survive that period because of time constraints and the ongoing demands of managing even a small growing business. However, Exetel is almost at the stage of being able to use its 'senior management' time for such things rather than having it all absorbed by second by second operational supervision, ofetn operative, activities and it is true that we have lost many opportunities over the past five years because we, literally, have had no time to consider them properly let alone allocating time to putting them in to operation.
Perhaps next year.....