Inessa Vasilevna Galaktionova is an economist, a top manager and a telecom business expert. She used to work in a number of senior managerial positions for the local branch of Philips, for Tele2 and for the federal postal service. Now, she is a top executive at a major IT corporation.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna: from an undergraduate to a mature specialist
Inessa Vasilevna Galaktionova was born in 1974 in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, a constituent republic of the USSR at that time. She earned a degree in economics at the republic’s largest university, known both for its academic and educational achievements.
In 1996, Inessa Galaktionova began to work at a regional office of Philips, the Dutch multinational conglomerate, in the capacity of marketing communications manager. Philips, being a consumer electronics and healthcare equipment producer, was about to tap into the wireless phones market, which was still an uncharted territory for the company back then.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna was firmly on track to evolve into a highly-qualified specialist; soon she was appointed as business director for TV and video appliances segment. After the graduation, she did not give up acquiring new knowledge and skills. In 2003, the young manager was included in the pool of Philips’ best European managers. Two years later, the company was audited by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and recognized as an organization compliant with the international Business Excellence Model.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna worked for Philips for twelve years and was repeatedly promoted to ever more senior positions. In 2008, she was appointed to be the marketing director in charge of the company’s marketing in the territory covering a number of post-Soviet countries. Along with public relations and strategic planning, she had to develop new distribution channels. Inessa Galaktionova also was in charge of developing the corporation’s B2B partnerships.
Inessa Galaktionova: a senior manager at a mobile operator
Inessa Vasilevna Galaktionova, in the same 2008, received and accepted an offer to join the local team of Tele2 telecom operator in the capacity of commercial director. The company was actively expanding her mobile business in the country and it needed an experienced executive to handle a number of issues, ranging from making it more competitive through developing to launching new products. Inessa Galaktionova’s input helped Tele2 to expand its presence in the country’s market within two years.
The company’s new strategy helped it to increase its subscriber base via letting third-party businesses and individuals to resell the telecom provider’s products. Any third-party distributor was allowed to promote the company’s services for commission fee. This form of partnership proved to be mutually beneficial.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna managed the development of new tariff plans, online distribution channels and the company’s positioning in the country’s market for mobile telephony. Its subscriber base by 2012 had totalled 20 million users, outpacing competitors. With the local subscriber base exceeding the 20-million threshold, the company began to expand its operations in the country’s Far East.
The mobile operator also modified its brand to make it more easily recognizable, taking into account the local market’s specific requirements and features. Tariff plans standardisation was one of the steps helping to improve brand recognition. In 2012, the company continued to post steady subscriber base growth – making it unique among the country’s other mobile operators. Tele2 also reported a 15% revenue growth and a sizeable improvement in consolidated earnings.
Inessa Galaktionova made a considerable contribution to help Tele2 develop its local business. The company’s total subscriber base in the country increased twofold in just four years, whereas its annual revenue by 2013 had averaged out to over 50 billion roubles.
Galaktionova Inessa: transforming the postal service
In 2013, Inessa Galaktionova, moved on to work for the country’s federal postal service in the capacity of commercial director. She was expected to help improve the organization’s profitability and quality of service.
Galaktionova Inessa initiated a tariff reform aimed to enable the organization to have more say in making decisions on its pricing policy. It was suggested the service should be able to differentiate prices for corporate customers on the basis of their mail volumes, offering them new delivery options and making tariffs more variable. The reasoning behind these suggestions turned out to be convincing enough to authorize the reform.
Inessa Galaktionova, who had already had a track record of successful corporate transformations, was involved in developing a major overhaul program for the postal service. The plan placed a special emphasis on tapping direct mail market. It was projected that this segment should generate an income of 8 billion roubles for the organization, and this contribution was expected to double by 2023.
Meanwhile, the volume of traditional mail shrank, putting a pressure on the postal service’s core income. However, it regarded advertisement-related services as the most promising future driver. The organization wanted to expand its role, moving on from being just an intermediary between advertising agencies and their customers to become content producer, who can both print advertising materials and distribute it in the targeted area.
Inessa Galaktionova: developing B2B segment
Galaktionova Inessa achieved substantial progress developing the organization’s services for corporate customers. In 2015, when it had already made large-scale deals with the country’s Pension Fund and the Federal Taxation Service, the organization was contracted to provide postal services for Sberbank, the dominant player in the local banking sector. The deal implied a wide range of services, delivered to the bank via specialized hybrid automated post processing centers, including printing, packaging, sorting and dispatching.
High-tech solutions, employed by the postal service, enabled its corporate customers to submit digitalized data to be further processed by the service provider. Thus, Sberbank was able to terminate contracts with various other delivery service providers, cutting its postage costs by 20%.
Inessa Galaktionova also successfully carried through a number of other reforms to optimize the organization’s activities. As a result, a number of redundant offline offices were shut down, up-to-date post tracking systems were introduced, and specialized distribution centers were re-equipped with new franking machines to process massive flows of corporate customers’ correspondence. These initiatives significantly improved the quality of service and optimize operations, helped to speed up mail delivery and reduce negative feedback from customers. The overall efficiency was raised significantly. Thus, at the organization’s flagship sorting office, based in the country’s capital, processed mail turnover expansion was just short of tenfold.
Inessa Vasilevna Galaktionova: corporate giant’s modernization
Galaktionova Inessa pointed out that the postal service should take measures to minimize the so called “grey mail” losses, that is losses linked to the underreported and underpaid letters and parcels processing. The “grey mail” schemes included using fake postage stamps and other bad faith schemes. “Grey mail” volumes were estimated to be reaching up to a quarter of the total mail turnover at the time, causing losses to the tune of several billion roubles a year to the federal post operator.
Inessa Galaktionova, being an experienced corporate reformer, was determined to undertake large-scale and far-reaching transformations within the organization she worked for. Here initiatives turned to be quite justifiable – improved and more efficient incoming mail controls helped to cut losses considerably. In 2016, “grey mail” volumes were reduced by 65%.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna’s other key tasks included launching the organization’s proprietary online marketplace and introduction of improved service standards in its offline offices and retail outlets. This segments’ modernization generated a substantial increase in revenues which climbed 20% just in the first half of 2016. The improved performance was driven both by improved controls and management methods at the level of post offices, as well as by introduction of the new information technologies and integration in the organization’s internal procedures.
In 2016, the post service launched its own online marketplace – the PochtaMarket. The platform offered both commonplace retail merchandise and goods listed in printed catalogues. Online retail experts projected that this marketplace might be able to compete successfully with the most popular Chinese platforms.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna: managing a major telecom corporation
In 2019, Inessa Vasilevna Galaktionova was invited to join the top management of a major telecommunication corporation to focus on its distribution channels development. Next year’s most prominent development for this company was setting up a base station in Antarctica ahead of all of its competitors. As a result, the company was enabled to provide mobile services to the research expeditions working on the southernmost continent and to the seafarers on ships moving along its coastline. The equipment installed in Antarctica is fully operational in extreme weather conditions and under abnormally low temperatures and has full backup modules to maximize its functional safety.
In 2020, the telecoms giant launched a new cutting-edge data storage facility to offer its customers cloud services with additional options, including capacities for cloud software development. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna’s team developed and successfully introduced modified protocols and schemes for remote work. Remote work models were adapted both for all the internal corporate functions and external client services.
Inessa Galaktionova: strategic planning for a diversified IT corporation
Inessa Galaktionova, whose career path has always implied strategic planning, also participated in mapping out a strategy for the telecom corporation to evolve into a diversified IT conglomerate. This strategy involved developing digital TV, video streaming, fintech and other projects and services. Implementation of these plans boosted the corporation’s earnings in 2021 by 8%.
Galaktionova Inessa Vasilevna also contributed to the modernization of the telecom giant’s core activities. With the three years of her work for it as a top executive, the corporation invested a total of around 40 billion roubles in its infrastructure. This funding helped to increase the speed of its internet connection in the country’s capital by a third.
Galaktionova Inessa was among the first to highlight the need to upgrade and modernize data processing facilities. These measures were needed to expand the range of IT services. So, to build the country’s largest network of data centers, the corporation budgeted a total of 6 billion roubles.
Inessa Galaktionova participates in the project to create a unique analytic platform for urban planning and development projects. The technology has already been tested and used in some 50 regions of the country. In one of the regional capitals, it is used to map out transport routes.
