John Linton .....even go so far as to pretend it never happened at all. I never thought a business year could be so particularly horrible in so many different ways.....but there were some achievements that were notable.
There is never anything useful about looking backwards in business, or probably in any other aspect of life - irrespective of what anyone might say to the contrary you are not really going to learn anything from the past (you certainly aren't doomed to repeat any mistakes you may have made). As the new calendar year is now less than 24 hours away all the bad things about 2010 are finished but the good things remain and are the basis for believing that 2011 will be a much better year than any we have previously enjoyed as a business.
Firstly despite the incredible number of problems we encountered and, largely, overcame we completed our seventh full year in business from our start up in January 2004. Over the year our business grew by a double digit percentage in terms of revenue (around 15% subject to final figures) which was remarkable in itself given the conditions we, and every other company, encountered and endured throughout the year in terms of residential ADSL. Profit was a completely different, and much sadder, story that we have already taken steps to address for 2011.
Secondly our company again became much stronger operationally with very few people leaving us and our recruiting of new people adding immensely to our capabilities in every aspect of our business. Our ability to retain our people year after year has been a key factor in any success we may have enjoyed and is something we need to continue to do if we are to continue to grow. We now have just over 100 people between Sri Lanka and Australia with 30% of those people now in some form of direct sales role.
Thirdly we completed the three year program to transfer all of our back end processes to Colombo and began the process of building outbound sales capabilities in Sri Lanka. Not only did we complete the processes but we established and met the benchmarks that were set to ensure that the SL facilities operate not only at world best practices but that they deliver services to our customers that are superior to those of every other Australian communications company - bar none - a very significant achievement. The ability to provide much better service than our competitors at a fraction of their costs is a very significant sales advantage that will begin to 'deliver' in 2011.
Fourthly we completed all of the work planned to make our Australian network even more robust by adding bandwidth and installing multiple paths in each State and Territory as well as upgrading the hardware capabilities of each piece of equipment deployed across the network. We spent more money on new hardware in 2010 than we did in the previous three years added together which is some measure of the scope of that program - which is ongoing.
Those four achievements were the keystones on which all future growth of Exetel was and is dependent and to achieve them in an incredibly tough year was a great success in itself. We also enjoyed continuing success in building our corporate business to more than double what it was at the start of the year and also finishing the year unbelievably strongly with, currently, 82 new sales in a single, usually extremely 'quiet', month. Our corporate VoIP, SMS and Fax businesses also more than doubled over 2010.
We will complete the last of the planning for 2011 some time later today with the revised pricing for all of our services, residential and business on the web site and almost all of the remuneration increase letters completed and sent to all personnel (a very important activity) as well as the last t's crossed and the last i's dotted in the overall business plan - not many organisations would be able to say that - but then not many organisations have the discipline and abilities that Exetel is lucky enough to possess.
So 2010 was not a total write off but as I look across the meeting room table at the tired faces of our key personnel it's obvious that whatever it has taken for us to achieve whatever we may have achieved over the past twelve months it has been done at significant personal costs to too many really good people. Both for them and me - COB today cannot come too soon.
I wish you a very happy new year....and thank you for reading and commenting on these thoughts - it has been a big help to Exetel.
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