RomTelecom desks turn into commercial centres

Turning the bill collection desks into commercial centres, outsourcing bill collection, testing new sales concepts “live” and focusing on corporate clients. These are the main points of RomTelecom’s new commercial strategy, following the arrival of American-born James Hubley as CEO and of his second in command Dutch Pieter Bakker.

Some of RomTelecom’s offices will therefore become something more than mere bill collection centres, as they will turn into centres displaying and selling the products and services provided by the operator’s divisions.

“Our goal is to focus on selling products and service bundles instead of bill collection. Part of RomTelecom’s offices are located in areas that are very good for business and we want to make the most of it. Actually, we found that one of the company’s weak spots was making lots of money from the spaces we have,” Pieter Bakker, RomTelecom’s commercial executive manager said during the opening of the new telecommunications centre of the company, Scala. The new centre is located on the Magheru Blvd in Bucharest.

RomTelecom’s official added the bill collection business was scheduled for outsourcing, for which reason talks were being conducted with several banks.

“Wherever a bank has a developed network, RomTelecom’s clients will have the possibility to pay their bills through that particular bank, no costs attached. As for the other areas, especially the rural ones, the commercial offices will continue to collect the bills,” Bakker said.

RomTelecom will open three or four more telecommunications centres in Bucharest soon, where several concepts are to be tested and then a choice about a specific kind of distribution shop made after careful consideration.

The new Scala telecommunications centre, primarily aimed at corporate clients, displays more than 50 phones in addition to fax machines, cards and mini telephone exchanges. The offer also includes the entire service range of RomTelecom, which includes ISP Artelecom and mobile telephony operator Cosmorom.

“Another goal of our company is differentiating these stores based on client types: residential clients, SMEs and economic operators (corporate),” Bakker added.

RomTelecom currently operates a network of 674 commercial offices, 287 of which are located in cities.

RomTelecom posted 64.6 million euros in net losses last year, up 38.9% from 2001 and 948.8 million euro revenues, down 0.7% from the previous year.