Milestones For Exetel In Sri Lanka
2011
January
Exetel Sri Lanka continues to make progress and continues to hire new additional personnel. While he was in Sri Lanka for the quarterly progress review Exetel Australia’s CEO approved the hiring of an additional 54 people for the Colombo operation and has reached agreement to rent an additional 4,000 square feet of floor space on Level 35 of the West Tower of the World Trade Centre to allow for this significant expansion. This will give Exetel over 8,000 square feet capable of accommodating around 150 people over the balance of 2011 and the first half of 2012.
March
Personnel deployed in the Colombo office exceeded 70 in mid March. Exetel continues to expand its operations in Sri Lanka and continues to employ graduates at salaries well in excess of those offered by other multinational or Sri Lankan companies. Exetel also continues to invest heavily in developing and training its personnel by constantly sending senior Australian management to Colombo to conduct classroom and on the job training and also by sending selected Sri Lankan personnel to Australia for advanced training.
May
Exetel has developed and has signed off an operating plan that allows an acceleration of employing additional personnel in Sri Lanka and has also defined more concrete development and management paths for selected personnel. Exetel has now been operating in Sri Lanka for a little over 4 years and will continue to increase the development management skills of Sri Lankan employees so that, as the company continues to grow, all supervisory and management positions are given to its own in house developed personnel.
June
In line with its policy of making all promotions from ‘within’ Exetel has appointed one of its personnel recruited in Late 2009 as General Manager of Exetel Sri Lanka. Rukshani Perera was appointed as the first General Manager of Exetel Sri Lanka. Previously the position of general Manager had been successively held by two Australian assignees in the start up phases and a Sri Lankan consultant for the past two years.
August
Exetel Sri Lanka has embarked on a program of providing a new, higher, standard of technical support to the customers it services. The new standard will be based on no longer restricting support to only resolving issues that are with aspects of the service provided by Exetel or its carriers networks. Exetel support personnel will now also work with the customer to help resolve problems of their own causing with their own equipment and set ups.
October
Having recruited and completed the base training of a total of 20 personnel to sell business services in Australia the Australian company has sent two experienced business supervisors to the Colombo office to begin the next phase of training for these first 20 people. Six Sri Lankan sales staff have already been brought to Exetel’s North Sydney offices for one to one training and the next two development training phases will now be conducted in Exetel’s Colombo offices.
December
Exetel (Pvt) Ltd today (20th December 2011) signed a contract for the supply of sales and support services to a major Australian telecommunications company. Exetel signed a contract with AAPT, Australia’s third largest telecommunications service provider, to provide dedicated sales and support services for AAPT’s small/medium data services to Australian companies. The contract start date is 16/1/2012 and the contract will run until 31/12/2013 if the agreed sales targets are met.
The services to be sold and supported are AAPT’s Ethernet and fibre business data services at prices of between $US500.00 and $US2,500 per circuit. The number of circuits to be sold under this contract begin at 50 services per month in February 2012 ramping up to 400 services per month in November 2012. Exetel and AAPT have been trialing these concepts for the past six months and both parties are satisfied that the planned targets are sensibly achievable.
Exetel (PVT) Ltd has already began to extend its premises in the World Trade Centre to cater for the additional 100 personnel it plans to employ over the first nine months of 2012 and will complete the training of the initial 30 people over the first 2 weeks of January 2012. Additional personnel will continue to be hired over the remaining months of 2012 and the total new investments made by Exetel (PVT) Ltd will exceed $US3 million over 2012.
Exetel (PVT) Ltd has been operating in Colombo since July 2008 and already has almost 100 permanent professional staff at its WTC premises. The contract, and subsequent investments by AAPT will see a doubling of Sri Lankans employed by Exetel in Colombo over the coming twelve months and, if the current contract is as successful as both parties believe it will be, personnel numbers will more than double again in 2013 to a projected number of just under 500 professional employees.
Commenting on the size and importance of the contract, Exetel (PVT) Ltd’s general manager (Ms Rukshani Perera) said “this is a great leap forward for Exetel in terms of further growing our company and I am looking forward to the challenge of recruiting so many new highly professional personnel. Even though we are Sri Lanka’s highest payer for excellent people it will be a challenge to find another 100 of the calibre of people who will ensure this project is as successful as it is planned to be. We expect to continue to have to pay in excess of 200,000lkr a month to attract the right quality people to fill these roles.”
2010
January
Exetel's ADSL2 Service Declared Internet Product Of The Year (2009) by PC USER Magazine in Australia.
While the only 'awards' that count in business are the monthly management accounts (and the subsequently yearly tax return) that show the company has achieved a planned profit and a planned revenue growth, getting some sort of external recognition is always a very pleasant experience particularly when it is so unexpected.
We have one of the walls in our small reception area in North Sydney pretty much full of the various awards given to Exetel over the last six years (the first one dating back to July 2004; SMH - Best Broadband Product in low download, medium download categories and runner up in high download category) and we have small table the top of which is getting quite crowded with 'trophies'. Of course, in the scheme of things these displays don't mean a great deal but they are a vague reminder to our employees (and maybe to our visitors) that the company is recognised outside its own operations as doing some very good things and consistently doing them over time.
February
Exetel Makes It To The Deloitte's 500 Fastest Growing Tech Companies In Asia for 2009 for the third year in a row. 'Awards' such as these do not mean very much in themselves but it's unusual for 'mature' companies to be able to sustain very high levels of growth beyond their start up years. It is even more remarkable for companies to sustain their growth 'organically' (not taking over other businesses) as Exetel has done.
The ranking 'award' is based on the, audited, revenue growth over the past three years which in Exetel's case is 91% or an average of growth of around 30% each year over the past three years. In an industry where growth is more often measured in single or low double digits Exetel continues to exceed that of all of its competitors by maintaining a business objective of offering the lowest cost range of communications services to both residential and business users.
March
Please click here to see the latest local press report regarding Exetel's involvement with the SLWCS.
May
Exetel continues to grow and to cater for future growth we have signed a new lease more than doubling the floor space at our disposal. The new floor space is on the 25th floor of the same tower in the World Trade Centre that we current operate from. As Exetel does not use the "hot desking" process to cram in as many people as possible into the smallest possible area the new office space will provide almost 100 full size work stations with the other appropriate facilities to allow Exetel to meet its planned personnel growth targets.
June
Exetel has now formally completed the arrangements to collaborate with SLIT to develop a new level of artificial intelligence for use in business and government. The new research will start from the base that Exetel has developed and aims to create a new world standard in the use of AI in commercial activities.
Exetel's contribution will be to fund the salary of an associate professor plus his research assistant (and whatever hardware is required) and the university will provide whatever graduate students are required over the coming year to work on the project.
August
Exetel Sri Lanka has achieved new standards of excellence in customer support never achieved while support services were provided in Australia. These standards include answering all telephone calls within an average of 60 seconds and replying to all support emails in under 30 minutes. No Australian telecommunications company comes anywhere near these achievements.
October
From October Exetel Sri Lanka will be providing outbound telephone sales services for the first time. The Sri Lankan company has been providing a gradually increasing range of inbound sales services since December 2008 and has now built those skills to a very high level of achievement. Using the most successful of the current inbound sale personnel Exetel Sri Lanka has now commenced selling mobile telephone and ADSL data services to residential uses in Australia.
Over the coming twelve month this initial ‘venture’ will be built up to a staff of 21 people while inbound sales is also increased to the same number from the current ten people.
December
Number of personnel employed by Exetel Sri Lanka passed 50 this month with new sales people accounting for most of the growth as well as additional programmers and engineers.
2009
February
Exetel directors come to Colombo to interview a short list of applicants for the position of permanent general Manager of the Sri Lankan company.
May
Selected General Manager spends time in Australia familiarising himself with many aspects of how Exetel operates in Australia and to agree an operating plan for the Sri lankan company for the coming 18 months.
June
Exetel completes first 12 months of operating in Sri Lanka and has 24 personnel with all Level I and Level 2 and new circuit provisioning support now handled in the Colombo office. Two full time programmers and two interns are also working on Exetel Australia's data base systems and advertisements have been run to recruit accounting personnel to handle all billing and accounting queries by end of September 2009.
July
As part of Exetel's commitment to its operations in Sri Lanka Steve Waddington went to Colombo in early August to finalise the funding of 8 'perpetual scholarships for Communication technology undergraduates at the Sri Lanka Institute of Technology. During his visit he attended a ceremony at which the first two students, in the presence of their families and University personnel were presented with their scholarships and a cheque for the endowment was presented to the university.
Under this program Exetel will fund two full academic scholarships each year for four years 'in perpetuity'. As well as providing the scholarships, Exetel will also provide paid internships for the students during their vacations and will offer full time employment on each student's successful graduation - however it not an obligatory aspect of the scholarship for the student to work for Exetel - they are entirely free to take up employment with whatever organization they wish to do so.
Please click here to see a local press report of this event.
September
Exetel expands floor space in its World Trade Centre offices by approximately one third to cater for the ongoing growth of the business. The new office space was achieved by taking over the floor space adjacent to the current tenancy so there was no disruption in the operational set up of either the current personnel or the abilities to meld/merge new personnel into the current operations.
October
Exetel completes its obligations under its BOI agreement by recruiting its 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st and 32nd employee in Colombo almost a year earlier than planned. All other obligations under the BOI agreement have been met previously.
December
Exetel concludes agreement to provide $US300,000 over three years with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society to decrease the conflict between wild elephants and rural farmers by funding a project to show farmers how to move from arable crops that attract elephants (pineapple, sugar cane, bananas) to planting grass and grazing milk cows that co-exist with elephants.
Please click here to see a local press report of this event.
2008
February
Two of Exetel's directors visit Colombo to hire two more Sri Lankan engineers and to begin the process of setting up a BOI compliant company in Sri Lanka.
March
Two new engineers fly to Australia for 4 weeks intensive training on Exetel's systems and processes.
May
Exetel's directors return to Colombo to execute the BOI documentation, sign leases for the offices (and rent an apartment for housing the Australian personnel scheduled to regularly visit) and contracts for the fit outs, telecom services and equipment plus appoint accountants and lawyers.
June
Australian temporary general manager comes to Colombo to supervise the completion of the fit out and begin hiring the 30 personnel planned for under the BOI agreement.
July
New offices at the World trade Centre 'go live' with six Sri Lankan engineers .
August - December
New personnel are hired at a steady rate and are trained by the temporary general manager and other Australian personnel who regularly visit. By December there are twelve permanent personnel.
2007
February
The two SL engineers return to Sydney for 4 weeks of intensive training on new processes and to 'double jack' live calls to ensure their knowledge and ability to impart information correctly is up to the required standards.
March - December
Regular skills and process update courses are scheduled either via telephone or by regular visits from Australian engineers and managers.
2006
January
Exetel Australia advertises for two 'work from home' customer support engineers in the Colombo press and hires two engineers from the over 300 responses to the advertisement.
February
Exetel ships routers/modems/handsets to selected engineers homes and, via, locally sourced ADSL services begins the system familiarisation processes using telephone instruction and q and a from Sydney engineers.
March
The two SL engineers fly to Australia for 4 weeks intensive, hands on training on key aspects of Exetel's support processes.
April
SL based engineers return to Colombo and begin answering 'live' help desk tickets via email.
June - December
Sydney based engineers fly to Sri Lanka at regular intervals to do hands on training and teach new systems and processes