This year’s budget is lower, as is the case with many companies, so that Romtelecom will have to “do more with less.” Times have changed and every IT investment has to be backed by a business case and focus on a specific issue, so that the company will not start an IT project unless it can at least break even in two years at most, Tsokanis said.
Romtelecom’s IT department, which numbers about 300 people, will focus on making the most of the current systems and reducing the time it takes to respond to calls and install services.
Rationing resources makes sense, the executive explains, considering the two years during which significant funding had been allocated to IT projects, and the current difficult market – the decline in revenue over the last few years and the fierce competition over prices with rivals such as RCS&RDS.
The company is controlled by the Greek OTE group, with the Romanian government retaining 46% in it. It posted almost EUR500 million in revenue in the first nine months of last year, lower than in the same period of 2010. Romtelecom’s revenue has been constantly dwindling over the last few years, and the operator made dramatic efforts to adjust to the new market conditions: growth on the new lines of business (TV and Internet services) to offset the decline of its main business, landline telephony, faced with fierce competition from RCS&RDS and UPC. On top of that came the recession in 2009, further compounding the pressure on Romtelecom.
All things considered, Romtelecom’s IT investments are an achievement as Tsokanis says, as is keeping the number of the employees in the department at 300, considering the operator is now employing 3,000 fewer people than it did in 2008.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)