Author: Damien Lynch
Publication: Australian Financial Review (48,Tue 02 Aug 2005)
Edition: First
Keywords: AAPT (7)
AAPT aims to control about 2.5 per cent of the revenues spent by small businesses on communications services by the end of June 2006, up from about 1 per cent at present.
To help it achieve this goal, AAPT will invest a further $40 million over the next year to rebuild its back-up platforms and service capabilities. The group has already invested $10 million in this project.
"Our back-end is just shot," Mark Frederikson, general manager and chief marketing officer, said during a briefing in Sydney last week. "We are essentially doing a green field redevelopment of the back-end."
AAPT has more than 7000 small business clients with between five and 99 staff.
The group is looking to have more than 200 full-time equivalent phone sales staff in place by the end of August, up from 160 at present and about 30 earlier this year. This would be in addition to the 60 or so sales people on the road.
Spencer Keast, head of small business marketing, said it worked out that each sales person would be expected to complete about 2.5 sales per week, representing the equivalent of more than 250 calls per week to potential and existing clients. Sales would include enticing new customers to sign an initial contract with AAPT and convincing existing ones to extend theirs.
Mr Keast said the average telecoms bill for a small business customer is about $800 per month.
AAPT wants to lift the number of products that it provides to each customer by rolling out a range of new products.
Among the products that AAPT will roll-out for small business is eText, which involves sending a message from a laptop to a client's mobile, such as reminding the client to pay a bill. As part of the promotion for the product, customers are offered 500 free eTexts, which usually cost 23.5 ¢ each.
The company said a hairdresser, for example, might benefit from having such a product to remind customers of an appointment.
Headline: AAPT boosts small business revenue
Author: Damien Lynch
Edition: First
Section: Enterprise |
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