Datagroup Director General Alexander Kardakov held a press conference on July 6, where he spoke about the company results in the first half of the year. During this period, Datagroup optimized the structure, launched a cloud services business line and a number of new products for corporate clients, as well as ensured continued development of an international vector.
The company has been headed by its shareholder Alexander Kardakov since December of 2015 for the first half of the year. "For me it was like returning “back to the future". I have not been an operational leader for a long time, and it was interesting for me. I believe that the company has successfully operated for the last six months ", said Alexander Kardakov. According to him, the main result of six months of operations is changes that were implemented in the company.
First of all, the management has brought the Datagroup sales structure in line with market structure. "Historically, there have been three business units in the company. At the beginning of the year, our team sorted out which market segments we operate in. We now have four business units, each of which works in its sales segment with its clear specialization" - said Alexander Kardakov. Each of these units is accountable for the development of one of the segments - B2B (corporate), C2C (inter-operator), SMB (small and medium business) and B2C (retail).
After that, a deeper analysis of what services are purchased by customers from the company has been carried out. Data transmission and the use of the Internet over optical networks comprise 60% in the service revenue structure. Voice services share comprises 20%, data transfer and the Internet use via satellite comprise 7%. "After that, we developed product units that correspond to the company profile. In particular, the primary network department was restored, which is responsible for the development and planning of own optical network. As a result, each company product has a division that is responsible for its development ", - said Alexander Kardakov.
The company has deepened a systematic approach to ensuring customer service. The management took a fundamental decision to refuse from the use of the outsourced call center for customer support service and restore their own. "It is much more important to have your own qualified professionals. Customer service quality is most important for us ", - said Alexander Kardakov. To date, the company already operates a multi-level system of customer monitoring and technical support.
Datagroup has launched a new business line - cloud services. The company became a certified partner of Microsoft, a global giant in the IT and the "clouds" in late June, receiving the status of the Office 365 and Azure services provider. The company held COSN (Cloud OS Network) certification, its own cloud infrastructure, and will soon be able to offer a basic set of cloud solutions to its customers.
The operator's services portfolio also has a number of new ICT services. This includes, in particular Wi-Fi for business clients, as well as cloud and municipal surveillance. Video surveillance is also available for business and home users. An international communications service called DataSvіt was launched for customers of small and medium business segment.
Datagroup actively develops the international business area. The total capacity of company external channels this year hit 1.2 Tbit / s. In particular, the company in partnership with several operators develops a REAL network between Asia and Europe. The first customer of this project in May was one of the leading Chinese telecom operators - ChinaTelecom.
The company revenue for the first half of the year amounted to 531, 8 million UAH against
494.8 million UAH in the same period last year. The growth at that reached 7.5%, which can be considered as very impressive performance against the background of the industry results as a whole. At that, the management expects that the annual growth indicators will be also high. The grounds for such expectations are formed by the growth of connecting new points in the B2B and C2C segments (by 20%) and the increase in the number of applications for connection (by 160%), as compared with the first half of 2015.
The management also decided to change the Datagroup corporate style and logo by making them more topical. The company's product can be recognized in them. The logo consists of geometric shapes that resemble the basic telecommunications equipment with a plate, supports and a satellite. The line in the middle symbolizes the flow of information, the motion towards development from the left to the right.
The branded graphics was developed on the basis of the old logo by the designer Ivan Bogomazov. One of restyling conditions was to borrow the idea and colors of the logo. However, the designer found new proportions of the use of colour.
