Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

Rodney Davis, president of Cable & Wireless Jamaica, says a new project called Optima has been implemented at the company to create a new culture among staff.

President of Cable and Wireless Jamaica Limited (C&WJ) Rodney Davis says competition in the mobile market is preventing the major telecommunication company from maximising its price cap on fixed-line services.

But the telecoms executive also believes he needs a more customer-focussed staff to sell the company's products.

Over the last four years, C&WJ has been through different product offerings, each time quoting more competitive rates, even on fixed-line business, the most recent being its Anyone Plan, whose suite of services was expanded thisyear, even on its post-paid Homefones.

Davis said that even as costs to deliver the products go up, C&WJ, which recorded profit of $2.05 billion in its last financial year ending March 2007, continues to offer services at reduced prices.

Significant competition

Project Optima was introduced in January to deal with the deficit from these reductions.

"We have got a price cap that allows us to raise the price of fixed-line services and we are well below the cap and the reason for this is because of the circumstances. There's a significant amount of competition," Davis said in a brief interview following the company's annual general meeting held at the Hilton Kingston hotel on Tuesday.

"I'd mention that our cost is going up, but the prices of our products that we can charge are going down. That delta needs to be dealt with, so Project Optima is looking at all the processes end to end and then deleting all the non value-added items or activities that don't add value, to get the customers the final product," he said.

Davis said the company was redesigning its processes, beginning with installations for the provisioning of the ADSL and fixed-point services for its business customer services and then with phone restoration and maintenance.

Reshaping corporate culture

He said essentially Optima was reshaping the company's corporate culture to bring fresh thinking to how things get done.

Financial Gleaner sources say the programme has resulted in disgruntlement inside the telecoms, resulting in resignations.

Davis said two of the top executives - Financial Controller Mark Thompson and Senior Vice-President Evan Garricks who recently departed the company - left for personal reasons.

"Our head of sales made a decision to repatriate to the U.K., and our CFO made a decision to pursue other career opportunities," he said.

But Davis did not deny that some staff were resistant to the programme.

"The impact on the staff of Optima is twofold: In some respects, you have staff who resist change and, therefore, it is difficult to deal with; and in another respect, you have staff who have been embracing changes, so we have a tug of war," he told the Financial Gleaner.

Davis insists, however, that Optima was one of the biggest opportunities to drive down cost and suggests he is working with a three-year timeline to bring positive changes.

"We are trying to go from a passive-aggressive organisation to being a high-performance organisation. We adopt the competitive mindset throughout the business. We are trying to put the customer at the centre of everything and we haven't been doing that. It's trying to split the decision making at the customer interface."

The company is still looking for a replacement for Thompson.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com