A few people asked what did our benchmarking of Telco's products show.
Here are some results.
It is a very seasonal product. Sales go up at the end of the year dramatically.
Overall integrated Telco's products has been growing among our users. The rate of growth in the past two years has been annually about 51%. The rate went up slightly this year to 55%. There is little sign of any slow, down so we expect another 50% growth rate in 2012.
2011 saw a large growth of about 15% overall in turnover. Part of this was due to the slight increase in price of the product of about 4.6%. Still, that leaves a healthy growth of 11% a year.
However, I suspect that rate of growth of outlets is much larger than the growth rate of the sales. This is compounded by a slow drop in margins. Two years ago an average profit on a sale was $1.62, today it is about $1.32. This has resulted in an overall drop in profits for this department of 18.9% a year per shop. Part of the problem here is that I think many of our clients are not reviewing their rate cards. As such they are selling products with low margins. If you have not done so, I do suggest that you take a good look at the latest product and margin listings available here
The turnover per site seems to vary greatly and I do not see any pattern, country vs city, metro vs suburb, etc.
If you want to know more about what is involved, please let me know.
