Heads Roll At Expresso

Information reaching CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE indicates that Expresso Telecoms Ghana has replaced its Managing Director few months after coming into the country through a buyout of Kasapa Telecom Limited.

Prior to the rebranding of Kasapa to Expresso, the then MD, Bob Palitz resigned and Hisham Ayoub took over as MD. But months afterward, a new MD by name El Amir Ahmed El Amir Yousif has surreptitiously taken over from Hisham Ayoub, who was equally transferred quietly to another Expresso operation outside Ghana to serve in another capacity yet to be confirmed. A reliable source close to this paper said Mr. Yousif was introduced to workers at a special durbar held in his honour at Alisa Hotel at North Ridge, Accra.

He said Mr Ayoub was replaced because of poor performance, characterised by the consistent loss of subscribers from about 400,000 when Bob Palitz left, to the current 200,000 plus.

Mr Ayoub promised to shed of the rather reserved image of the company by being aggressive.

He introduced the Cliq modem for starters, which is currently one of the most competitive on the market in terms of prices, tariff and speed, but that was not enough to keep him in office.

The source also said even though many subscribers were lost under Hisham Ayoub, he also sacked a number of valuable staff from the company, including top management staff, some of whom are now working with Enterprise Insurance Company Limited.

In line with this, the new MD has been compelled to put the substantive Marketing Manager, Fred Quainoo in charge of Operations, and Devices in addition to his duties at Marketing Manager.

Meanwhile the ExpressoCliq modem has been temporarily withdrawn from the market and has been under review for months now, while tens of thousands of customers are said to be on a waiting list for their modems.

The source noted that the Cliq modem is practically the cash cow for the company with each individual sales person sometimes making sales of up to GH¢4,000 per day.

But the company’s current review of the Cliq modem is denying them of all the that potential money.

Prior to Espresso’s launch, its predecessor, Kasapa was at the forefront of the campaign for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), but Expresso under Hisham Ayoub went completely flat on MNP, possibly because they suddenly realised that they would need to give new phones to people who port to their CDMA network.

The company has been losing customers consistently every month since the introduction of MNP.

“As we speak now all the computers at the High Street branch of the Expresso have all broken down for months now and staff there are not able to get into the company’s data system to enter daily transaction so the manager there records all transactions in books and sends them to the Dansoman branch everyday for entry.

“Management is not thinking about how to fix all these challenges to bring us back on track to get customers and make some money but they are quick to write query letters to customer service staff and are rather running quizzes for customer service staff every week as if the customers service staff are the problems,” the source said.

Expresso is the only CDMA operator in Ghana and the smallest operator in terms of subscribers, holding some 204,153 subscribers as at September ending this year, which is less than one per cent of the market share.

“Since the new MD came into office, he made all departmental heads do a presentation of their strategies and he practically damned all the strategies saying they were not competitive strategies,” the source noted.

“It looks like Mr Yousif is going to bring some positive change, but some of the old guys at Expresso have entrenched themselves into their positions through all kinds of means so I am not too sure if he will succeed,” the source said.

El Amir was appointed Chief Executive of Expresso Senegal in July 2009. He is focused on building and growing the business in Senegal by implementing a highly motivated and loyal customer-centric team.

The highlight of his stewardship so far has been the successful launch of 3G services in June 2010.

El Amir, who has over 22 years experience in the telecommunication sector, started his career in 1987 with Sudan’s national carrier, Sudan Telecommunications Public Corporation, now known as Sudatel Telecom.

Along with many project management roles during his career at Sudatel, he was a Planning Manager for more than eight years.

He was also part of the original team that launched Sudatel’s first mobile network, now known as SudaniOne.

In 2007, El Amir was appointed the Chief Technology Officer of Chinguitel in Mauritania where he was responsible for the installation and launch of the CDMA network. Later in the same year he was appointed Chief Executive of Chinguitel. El Amir graduated from the Sudan Telecommunication Institute with a High Diploma in Telecommunication Engineering.