APUA has established an internal strategic committee with the goal of charting the future course of the organization in order for it to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive environment.
Chief Executive Officer, John Bradshaw, made the announcement Friday as the organization launched its annual Summer Internship Programme.
Bradshaw said APUA currently provides three key services to consumers in Antigua and Barbuda; telecommunications, water and electricity. He noted that APUA currently controls 25 percent share of the telecommunications market and that he has asked the Telecoms Unit to work assiduously towards attaining a 30 percent market share.
“In order to achieve this goal, we need the intellectual capital to compete and the innovation to move us from a market of 25 percent share to 30 percent share. In addition to that is the whole issue of our traditional services of water and electricity that are being challenged. For example, there is renewable energy challenging us so the Electricity Business Unit must step up its game. It must be innovative and use innovation in a way to compete as consumers can turn to providing their own electricity utilizing solar energy,” he stated.
According to Bradshaw, APUA must now position itself to be the market leader in that service as well.
Recognising the changing landscape, Bradshaw said APUA is taking bold steps to meet the growing competition to all its services while charting the future for the organization.
“In recent times, we at APUA formed a committee called Strategy, Technology and Innovation Committee comprising the senior management team as well as the senior technical persons at the level just below the management team. The whole idea is to develop products and services with innovation by utilizing Artificial Intelligence and other technologies so that APUA can compete in the marketplace,” he reported.
The CEO said the new committee has been challenged with a mandate to ‘develop the products and services so that we can beat our competitors and remain relevant in the marketplace’.
Additionally, Bradshaw said there is an ongoing process of ‘changing the culture’ of APUA to one that recognizes that the current business environment is a constantly evolving process and that APUA has to continue to build capacity in its intellectual and human resources in order to be competitive. “Buying hardware and software will not cut it; the human creativity and ability to adopt to any situation is what will make us competitive and relevant,” he declared.
He said the internship programme helps APUA transition from one generation to the next and that this is ‘very important’ for APUA’s survival.
