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Published on August 28, 2007

In the world of business, some people take on jobs that are mind-boggling in their difficulty.

Take the case of Prachuab Tantinon, a man highly qualified in finance but leading a large fixed-line telephone company, TT&T, with the hugely challenging mission of getting it out of debt while diversifying into new fields at a time when the industry is in the midst of a downturn.

He was chosen as the white knight to restore TT&T's business performance after successfully restructuring the debts of its parent company, Jasmine International, reducing then from Bt10 billion to Bt2 billion in the course of eight years.

When he was appointed its president in 2002, TT&T's debts amounted to more than Bt4 billion. In financial matters Prachuab was well qualified, having gained a bachelor's degree with honours and a master's degree, both in accounting, from Thammasat University.

But his mission didn't end with finance and restructuring the company's debt. He had to light a fire under its business performance, invest in infrastructure and develop new services as fresh sources of revenue.

After nearly four years, TT&T's debt has been reduced, and its business is expanding.

Prachaub says the most challenging aspect of the job has been that TT&T is an operator of fixed-line telephone services in Thailand's provinces, and fixed-line telephony is a business on the decline. Modern telecommunications around the world are moving rapidly towards wireless services.

Prachuab used his strong financial background to relieve the company's financial crisis. Its debt situation is currently being processed through official rules and regulations and does not represent a problem for TT&T's sustainable business.

However, simply to survive, TT&T needed huge investment in its network infrastructure and innovative ideas for product development and marketing.

"The fixed-line business became a basic service with no potential to drive the company's business growth," he recalls. "The challenge was how to develop new services on the existing infrastructure. We were in the technology business, and it was developing and changing very rapidly. A lot of things were out of our control. We needed to answer the demands of customers, and the challenge was how to develop new services that would be successful, because successful new services would mean more revenue."

The ideas came, eventually, and the business was ready to "take off", but the company's creditors had not approved an injection of money for development of new products and services. This forced Prachaub to take what amounted to a crisis and turn it into an opportunity.

Having no money, but with new business waiting for investment in new technology so it could begin, he decided to negotiate with several telecom suppliers for a long-term credit deal in order to purchase new technologies to upgrade TT&T's fixed-line network throughout the country. He achieved that successful investment, without spending TT&T's own money, and the company's network was ready to offer value-added services to existing customers on its existing infrastructure.

Prachuab decided to jump into the broadband industry, turning the company's weakness, its out-dated land-line network, into its greatest strength by upgrading it to provide a broadband service with wide coverage throughout the country.

To run the new businesses, Prachuab created a group of vigorous new companies under the TT&T umbrella, including TTT Broadband (TTT BB) as the broadband network-provider, TT&T Subscriber Service (TT&T SS) as a service-provider and TTT Telecom as a provider of telecom equipment. TTT BB and TT&T SS have become the key revenue-generators for TT&T.

Currently, the company's revenue from its core fixed-line telephone business is fading. It has fallen continuously from 90 per cent to around 40 to 50 per cent of total revenue over the past three years. TT&T is now focused on new services combining voice, data and broadcasting transmissions on an Internet protocol (IP) technology platform.

It has been continuously developing new products including a range of broadband Internet-access services (Maxnet, Maxnet WiFi, T-Net, and T-Speed), broadband content, a datacom network, an SMS service and value-added services such as Internet protocol television (IPTV).

TT&T plans to increase the proportion of its revenues from broadband services to more than 50 per cent over the next few years, up from only 20 per cent at present. After having 100,000 broadband subscribers in 2006, it expects the number to grow to 200,000 before the end of this year and to 300,000 in 2008.

The company is also planning to expand its business into other areas such as 3G mobile phones and an international Internet gateway.

Prachaub points out that technology alone was not enough to make TT&T a successful business once again: a culture of enthusiasm had to be created within the organisation.

Previously, the company's business was run under a concession from TOT, and without competitors it developed a passive culture, Prachaub says. The changes in its business environment meant the company's culture had to change from passive to active and even proactive to keep ahead of its competitors.

He re-engineered the mindset of managerial employees subordinate to him by giving them specific tasks with decision-making authority and insisting upon proactive thinking. Once their approach to the job changed, the company's work processes also began to change, and "mindset-re-engineering" was deployed at lower employee levels until it reached the entire staff.

"We are in the technology industry, where business is very dynamic and moves forward very quickly, so our people needed to be dynamic and proactive. I am not quite satisfied yet. It seems we are not yet proactive enough to play in this dynamic business, so I must keep pressing on with this mission," Prachaub says.

Management is a job he loves. He says it requires the blending of art and science in equal portions but without a permanent formula. Even when management takes up most of his time, he is always happy when he finds a solution to a problem.

His goal is to make TT&T the broadband-related service-provider uppermost in the minds of Thai consumers, and even though he admits this may be a distant goal, he never feels discouraged.

"Problems still remain, but the company's situation is better. We have resolve, and we have the chances and the opportunities to take off," he says.

Asina Pornwasin

 The Nation