John Linton
I mentioned that we are contemplating adding more floor space to allow us to grow our corporate business more rapidly having just about used up the 'spare space' we obtained when we purchased a 450 sqm floor which we moved in to in June this year. If we do keep growing our corporate business in terms of the volumes we have planned then it is inevitable that we will need more floor space in the very near future. Unless we get lucky enough and are brave enough to buy twice what we have now (or more) and then selling our recent purchase we will be faced with splitting our Sydney office into two parts which, while not any sort of logistical issue does have various less specific issues.
As a company we have now got roughly half of our personnel in Colombo and half in North Sydney with two Level 3 engineers working from their homes on the NSW Central Coast and Canberra. Steve has been working from his home in Perth half of each month for the past six years and Annette has also worked from home almost all the time. I only work from the office a few hours a day (usually on the days I have meetings with suppliers or other entities. So you would think we would be used to operating is a 'dispersed' environment with at least half the company never in the same physical proximity to the other half....and that is true. However I have some qualms about splitting the Australian company into two separate locations which I can't exactly 'put my finger on'.
In 'the old days' there were significant expenses incurred in having two separate offices (two PABXs, two sets of ISDN lines, call costs between offices, two expensive data links, two reception areas, receptionists etc) but in today's electronic office there are no PABXs or receptionists or data links and much inter-personnel communication is conducted via email or mutual access to the same data bases (either our own or our suppliers). So, given that half the company already works in another country why am I hesitant? I really don't know as there appears to be far less reason in this day and age for multiple locations to pose any sort of issue at all. In the case of Colombo the cost advantages were so massive it took no consideration beyond double checking the financial assumptions.
Technically it makes no difference whether Steve is in Perth or at the next desk in terms of any sort of communication or access - but it isn't 'quite as good' as a face to face presence - and I know it should be but I don't 'feel' it is. The same applies to our work from home personnel and particularly our Colombo based personnel. It all works very well but there is, very definitely, something missing. Whether what is missing (and I can't define it) actually produces a positive or negative effect, irrespective of how minor, I don't know but I'm inclined to think it's negative rather than positive. This makes me quite reluctant to actually start the process of looking for additional floor space to split the company again. So a bit of a dilemma because there is very little time to make a go/no go decision as it is and my equivocation is very unhelpful. The 'cop out' would be to take a lease somewhere and 'see how it goes', but that would forgo the opportunity of taking advantage of the big fall in commercial real estate prices in the Sydney CBD and the, still, very low interest rates which while not a 'deal killer' certainly provide future lower costs.
I suppose the other thing that concerns me is the 'gamble' that Exetel's current progress in building a hundred million dollar a year corporate business will run out of 'steam' for all sorts of reasons and we will not need as much of the planned space as we think we do - but that isn't a major factor - just something that creeps in to your mind when you are hesitating about making a decision. If you want to think negatively about any issue it always seems easier to find reasons not to do something than reasons to do something....even for impatient people like me. As far as I can see there is no reason to think that the unarguable rationales that lead to the conclusion that there are huge opportunities for Exetel in the corporate marketplace are incorrect in any way and growing the corporate business is simply applying the right amount of thinking and continuing to be successful in recruiting the right people.
I suppose one of the ongoing problems of running a small business is that there are always more problems to consider than any single person can ever find the time to deal with....and delaying any decision simply ensures there is less time to deal with the next issues that continue to present themselves.