Earthlink 2013 Annual Report Download - page 7

Table of Contents
Business Strategy
Our business strategy is to be the premier communications and IT services provider for mid-
market and enterprise customers. We
believe IT services is an emerging market with significant opportunity for growth. Our
goal is to use our nationwide network and newly
developed and acquired IT services to be a one-stop ubiquitous provider of these services to larger and multi-location enterprise customers.
We
are also focused on maximizing the cash flow generated by o ur traditional voice and data products
. The key elements of our business strategy
are as follows:
2
• Offer a complete package of communications and IT services products.
We provide a nationwide suite of business voice, data and IT
services. We are focused on maintaining a broad suite of products and services and offering solutions to address the evolving business
and infrastructure needs of our customers. In 2012 and 2013, we expanded our IT solutions footprint with four additional data centers
and invested capital to extend our core fiber IP network. We also acquired CenterBeam in July 2013 to further grow our IT services
portfolio, specifically around customer end-
point management. We believe our broad suite of products allows us to compete for larger
and more complex customers.
•
Increase revenues from growth products and services.
Revenues from some of our products and services have been declining due to
economic, competitive, technological and regulatory developments and we expect some of these revenues to continue to decline. We
are attempting to manage this decline by working with our customers to replace or augment declining products with our growth
products, where financially and technically feasible to do so. Our growth products are MultiProtocol Label Switching ("MPLS"), hosted
voice and IT services such as virtualization and virtual tech care. We are also focused on growing revenues for these products by
enhancing our sales force efforts and increasing brand awareness for our IT services. We also aim to grow our wholesale services as we
capitalize on unique and new fiber routes within our footprint.
•
Provide a superior customer experience.
We are committed to providing high-
quality customer service and continuing to monitor
customer satisfaction in all facets of our business. We believe exceeding customers’
expectations for service increases loyalty and
reduces churn. We also believe that our broad communications and IT services portfolio and blend of access technologies for
connectivity enable us to provide high-
quality customer service by solving a wide range of issues faced by our customers and
prospects. We are focused on creating a customer-
focused organization that will provide a quality approach to offering and supporting
EarthLink products and services.
• Optimize our cost structure.
We are currently focused on optimizing the cost structure of our business by reducing network costs,
streamlining our internal processes and operations and maximizing the cash flows generated from traditional voice and data products.
The success of our operating efficiency and cost reduction initiatives is necessary to align costs with declining revenues for some of our
products as non-variable costs place further pressure on margins.
• Opportunistically consider potential strategic acquisitions.
We continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities as we become aware of
them. We believe that targeted corporate acquisitions, when available at the right economics, can be an effective means to improve our
product, network, and data center capabilities or to accelerate revenue growth. Our acquisition strategy may include investments or
acquisitions of new product and services capabilities, network assets or business customers to achieve greater national scale.