John Linton ....so I cheered up and sure enough.....
The changes in the residential communications marketplaces just keep on keeping on and, at least as far as I can see, the changes are almost never beneficial to Exetel nor I suspect to any other provider - irrespective of size. In most ways it's better to be 'right' about future directions of the industry in which you operate rather than wrong but when your predictions are that things will continue to change for the worse it would be nice if you were wrong. We made a series of predictions about the residential communications marketplaces some two and a half years ago and those 'predictions' have turned out to be quite correct - I wish they hadn't.
On the positive side we did assume those predictions were going to be correct and that we needed to plan on the basis they would happen and that we needed to make changes to our business or be destroyed if the markets did change as they seemed likely to. The changes we made to Exetel were to reduce our long term costs per service and to move the emphasis of our business from providing residential services to business services. Bringing those changes in to effect over the past 30 months or so has been very, very painful and there have been times when it seemed that we could not make such a major set of changes in the decreasing amount of time available to us as the months passed with little discernible progress.
However, over the past month or so there have been a slightly increasing number of shafts of sunlight penetrating the Stygian darkness that seems to engulf the marketplaces in which we operate. The latest recurrent billing figures show the largest month on month increase in corporate/business revenue we have yet recorded while the residential revenue actually very slightly increased for the first time this year. May saw record results in business, VoIP, mobile and wire line revenues and business sales exceeded 100 for the second time this year and new business sales revenue was also a new record. So a pleasant new trend may be developing which, based on order book backlog, will almost certainly be repeated in June.
One of the reasons that we had such a good 'May' was the contribution of the Sri Lanka based out bound and inbound sales personnel who set new records in every sales category in which they are involved. As the processes we have put in place there 'mature' (and as the people concerned become more experienced) we would expect the overall revenue contribution made by Sri Lanka based sales personnel to continue to increase. It will take a great deal of effort on many people's part to achieve the goals we have set but it is looking increasingly likely that, at least the current phase of this program, will be successful. If that proves to be the case it will be quite a remarkable achievement.
We start the second phase of business planning for the, almost upon us, next financial year today and will take some comfort in the trends I have rambled on about above. However the forecasts being made by the people I respect most in financial forecasting all predict a 'down turn' if not the 'R' word applying to business areas that we are most affected by and that is not the sort of things we want to hear after the slog of the past two years. More radical changes seem to be called for but finding the courage to make such changes is a challenge.
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