John Linton .....we are all better off now than a year ago...
..at least according to Phil Ruthven in this article I read before the plane took off yesterday to return to Australia:
http://business.smh.com.au/business/saying-good-buy-to-the-recession-20090520-bfrr.html
"Phil Ruthven said the average family is $11,000 better off than this time last year, thanks to lower home loans and falling petrol prices. Ruthven said the severity of the downturn had been "grossly exaggerated", and that it was the "most gentle recession".
So there you have it - a solid explanation for why Exetel's business has continued to grow, at a slightly faster rate, and why we have seen no deterioration in payment defaults. I found that very comforting - for a few seconds - but then I had to wonder why the Kruddster thought it was necessary to mail out over $A20 billion in recession relief hand outs and announced a $A58 billion budget deficit? I also wondered whether those people who lost their jobs at the very large number of companies that have announced retrenchments would agree there was no recession or "adverse financial circumstances" as I hear the Whiner refer to the current situation recently.
I still don't have a clue about what is going to happen in Australia and how Exetel should therefore conduct its business for the remainder of this calendar year so I discarded the newspapers and closed my eyes as the plane took off and we flew out of Colombo yesterday at 1 pm. Because of the time difference we are, as usual, having to 'over night' in Singapore to wait for our connecting flight to Sydney later this morning - one of the annoyances of this particular route.
We had a very productive and very enjoyable 5 days in Columbo reviewing the progress of the Sri Lankan operation and attending to the 'loose ends' that are still fairly loose despite our best efforts - however they are closer to being 'tied off' now than when we arrived. There are now 24 Sri Lankan personnel in the Colombo office (plus one Australian) and we signed an extension on our lease for another two years for the current space plus another 50% more from 1st November 2009 for adjoining space once the current occupant moves out. We will fully use up the current Colombo floor space before then but we will, temprorarily, move away from the one desk/one employee basis until the new space becomes available which, because of the shift staffing, isn't a major inconvenience. From my observations over the last few days it is a very happy office with very happy people - it was really good to see that.
There is a long way to go to upgrade the knowledge levels of all of the SL personnel - which is true for any growing commercial enterprise at any point in time - and over several discussions with the new GM and with the Australian head of operations in Colombo I think we have improved our plans on how to best accomplish this - both for our Colombo personnel and for our customers and prospective customers via major revisions to our web site. Those discussions were very valuable and, again, emphasise the value of different perspectives on issues and the best ways of addressing them.
I felt the same way as Phil Ruthven does about the Australian economy - I think everyone within Exetel and every customer of Exetel is much better off now than we were a year ago. If anyone had suggested to me the results that have been achieved in setting up and operating a support business in another country 12 months ago would result in what I see today I wouldn't have believed it would have been possible. I would have been more than satisfied with 50% of what has actually been achieved. From what I saw over the last few days I think we are on track to complete the second phase of setting up the SL operation by the end of this calendar year to a point where we can consider moving to the last phase at the start of calendar 2010.
The third phase is to provide 'back end' services to companies other than Exetel Australia and to fully utilise the time differences as an operating plus to provide services to UK based companies. As I have mentioned in past 'musings' we have an interest in doing something with HSPA in the UK/EU at the appropriate time and while in Colombo this trip I spoke with the UK contacts I have been discussing the possiblity of doing business with on HSPA services in the UK. They, among many other things, are interested in 'out sourcing' their HSPA provisioning, billing and support services to one of the many, many call centre service providers in India and they have been following our progress in both setting up HSPA service provision in Australia and, with much more interest, our abilities to make all HSPA 'back end' services avaialble in Sri Lanka (they also want to buy our automated 'back end' software and the provisioning and support processes it interfaces to).
Depending on what happens over the next few months we will make a decision on whether we accept a deal for them to provide the infrastructure to us to sell HSPA services in the UK based on us providing them with our HSPA provisioning and support software and systems and also providing personnel and management in Colombo to use those systems to provide provisioning/billing/support telephone and email resolution services.
Before this visit I would have said the Colombo operations ability to providing such support to another company was at least twelve to eighteen months away but I have been so impressed with the progress made since we were here only three months ago I am quite optimistic that we could be ready to do something along the lines being proposed within a few months.
So we get on a flight back to Australia later this morning with more optimisism than when we left last Saturday. Always nice to have a very satisfying week every now and then.