Inessa Galaktionova: Corporate Executive, a Biography

(Photo : Inessa Galaktionova)

Inessa Galaktionova, who now holds the position of a vice president with a leading IT corporation, started off her career from an entry-level position. With her professional interests spanning across telecommunications and IT technologies in general, she is now focused on digital ecosystems development.

Name: Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova · Galaktionova Inessa · Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna · Galaktionova Inessa

Inessa Galaktionova: Education and Early Career

Inessa Galaktionova was born in the capital of Lithuania in autumn 1974. She spent in the city her formative and school years, later entering the country's major university to study economics. Inessa Galaktionova got her first job while she still was an undergraduate, when the promising young student was offered the position of a marketing manager at a regional office of Philips, the Netherlands-based multinational consumer electronics manufacturer. The corporation was busy expanding its distribution network in the country at that time. Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova began to work for it in 1996, gaining some practical experience in management by the moment of her graduation. 

For the sake of further professional development, Galaktionova continued to improve existing and gain new skills and knowledge after the graduation from the university-she attended various international conferences and participated in professional competitive events. Galaktionova Inessa's work for Philips and additional activities for professional development helped her to expand her managerial skills and expertise, improving her future career prospects. 

Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna: Consumer Electronics Marketing

Inessa Galaktionova, soon after joining the multinational corporation, began to move up the corporate ladder and before long was promoted to the position of business director in the company's regional headquarters. In this role she was managing television and video devices marketing in the country. Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna's function included both boosting the company's local positioning and seeking out new promising niches and segments in the local market. In 2003, she was included in the category of the company's senior executives in Europe. She was one of the executives, whose efforts helped the company's local office to get a bronze-star medal in 2005, after being audited by the European Foundation for Quality Management. It was an international recognition of the efficiency of the corporate management system and business processes.

In 2008-2009, Inessa Galaktionova was nominated to chair the company's Brand Development Board and later promoted to become marketing director. In this capacity she was put in charge of the company's brand promotion both within the country and in some neighbouring regional markets.  

Inessa Galaktionova: Pursuing a Career in Telecommunications Industry

Closer to the turn of the decade, Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova received and accepted a job offer from Tele2, a mobile operator. She took up the position of the company's chief commercial officer. For Tele2 it was a period of dynamic geographic expansion across the country. In 2008, its SIM cards marketed in just 18 regions of the country, but in 2010 the company's services became available across 37 areas and territories. The mobile operator was making efforts to improve its business management system to make it more efficient and conducive to further expansion.  

Galaktionova Inessa was mostly tasked with the development of an effective marketing strategy. During the first two years of her tenure with Tele2, the company doubled the number of its retail outlets in the country's capital, setting up new points of sale in high-traffic areas, including shopping malls and railway stations.    

Inessa Galaktionova also participated in a number of other corporate initiatives. In 2011, the mobile operator launched an agency distribution model to market its services. Within this program, any business entity or an individual could begin to market the company's SIM cards for a commission fee. This innovative approach enabled Tele2 to acquire more new subscribers. 

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova: Tele2 Outperformance in Terms of Sales

Inessa Galaktionova, who had gained a considerable managerial experience by that time, also dealt with tariff plan design, online sales development and boosting the company's market positions. In 2011, the mobile operator's subscriber base totalled over 20 million users. Inessa Galaktionova also helped Tele2 to obtain six regional mobile telephony licences for the country's Far East territories, rebrand its brand book, launch new websites, and centralize the promotion of its services and accessory products. For instance, the brand's visual representation was modified taking into account local consumer preferences and perceptions. Redesigning the company's retail chain led to a 10% improvement in its efficiency metrics. The company's tariff plans were also harmonized, helping to improve brand recognition and loyalty, while the reinvented online marketing system enabled the company to triple its online sales.  

Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna helped Tele2 in a short time to outperform its rivals in terms of subscriber base in some regions. In early 2012, the company was the country's only mobile operator to post subscriber base growth, while its profits were up 7%.

Galaktionova Inessa: New Prospects for Tele2

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova repeatedly participated in open-door events held for the non-frontline personnel and management, including senior executives and decision makers, to experience direct interaction with the customers in the functions of a promoter or a sales consultant. Among other things, these events were additional drivers for the retail chain sales. Thus, an event held in 2012 generated an additional revenue of 121% vs the average daily result. 

Inessa Galaktionova's outstanding results in the role of the company's commercial director led to her promotion to the position of advisor to Tele2 president. In this capacity she participated in making strategic team-building decisions and strategic planning in general at the top level of corporate governance. 

Galaktionova worked for Tele2 for four years. During this period, she helped to improve the company's earnings, to re-organize and optimize its system of commercial affairs management, as well as to implement a number of major projects. Over the four years, the mobile operator's subscriber base doubled, while its revenue increased by nearly 100% averaging out at over 50 billion roubles.

Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna: Senior Executive at the Postal Service

In summer 2013, Inessa Galaktionova took up the post of commercial director at the country's postal service. She already had an extensive managerial experience and a number of major accomplishments under her belt by then. In the new role she was responsible for the organization's service quality and profitability of its commercial operations.  

Galaktionova Inessa was among the proponents of the idea that postal service's operational departments should be authorized to design their pricing policies. The pricing policy issues had been under discussion since the early 2000s. At that time, the postal service operator was authorized to make pricing decisions only in regard to the universal postal services as defined by the country's Federal Tariff Service. Meanwhile, if the organization were allowed more flexibility in its pricing policies, it could offer some corporate clients variable prices depending on the volumes of their mail and the technological nuances of processing it. Inessa Galaktionova believed that a greater flexibility of pricing policies would enable the postal service to be more proactive and efficient when dealing with large corporate clients, making their interaction more mutually beneficial. 

In spring 2014, all the proposed legislative and regulatory amendments were passed and enacted, giving the postal service more independence and flexibility in its pricing policies.  

Inessa Galaktionova: A Sweeping Reform of State-owned Postal Service

In late 2013, Inessa Galaktionova came up with a major reorganization strategy for the organization. One of the strategy's key components was to step up the direct mail operations and consumer goods catalogues distribution. These operations were expected to generate for the organization 8 billion roubles in profits by 2018 and twice as much over the next five years.   

In summer 2014, Inessa Galaktionova announced that one of the organization's strategic goals is to become the leading mail operator in the written paper-based communications segment and acquire a 70% share in the country's direct mail market. It was assumed that the organization would be both an intermediary between advertisers and advertising agencies, and an independent   player operating both content production capacities and means for its delivery to the targeted groups. At the time it was expected that by 2018 the total number of deliveries in the direct mail market would amount to 800 million. 

Galaktionova specified that this way the organization was planning to make up for the losses caused by the shrinking volume of traditional mail flows. The traditional mail decline was driven by the sweeping expansion and ever-growing popularity of email and other digital means of communication.

Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna: B2B Segment Development

(Photo : Galaktionova Inessa)

Galaktionova Inessa continued to push for the program implementtation. So, in summer 2015, top executives of the postal service and Sberbank signed a two-year contract for the bank's mail processing and delivery, worth nearly 1.4 billion roubles. According to the contract, the postal service provider was to print out, package, sort out, distribute and deliver the bank's mail via its automated mail processing facilities. The organization's three major processing centers total capacity enabled them to print out and process up to six million letters a day. Sberbank was expected to submit content for printing out and processing in digitalized formats. 

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova pointed out that the modern hybrid technologies enabled the postal service to offer its customers very beneficial terms. Sberbank was also expecting that this partnership would enable it to cut postage costs by up to 20%. 

Galaktionova viewed letter delivery services as one of the three main pillars of the organization's development strategy, the remaining two being parcel delivery and financial services.

Galaktionova Inessa: Corporate Client Segment Transformation

Inessa Galaktionova initiated a number of steps to develop the postal service's partnerships with major corporate customers. The organization also gradually reduced its network of post offices, shutting down unnecessary ones, introduced a system of digital franking and monitoring every type of mail, and equipped large-scale mail processing hubs with up-to-date automatic franking machines. 

Galaktionova successfully optimized the organization's hardware capex, cutting it by over 20% to 2.3 billion roubles from 3.0 billion roubles. This measure enabled the postal service to save a sum equalling the aggregate cost of a thousand units of franking machines, digital tag scanners, automatic weighing devices and specialized software. 

Galaktionova also modified the fundamental principles of servicing its major large-scale customers. Service quality was improved, delivery speed was increased, individual post offices' workloads and incoming mail controls were optimized. As a result, the central automated mail sorting hub's throughput capacity grew by a factor of eight compared to 2014.  

Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna: Clampdown on "Grey Mail"

Inessa Galaktionova regarded the problem of unaccounted and underpaid for mail as a key issue for the state-owned postal service. When senders or third-party consolidators use loopholes to avoid properly registering their mail and paying for it, it means that this "grey mail" is generating losses for the postal operator. Among the fraudulent practices the most widely spread were using fake postage stamps and illegal franking. According to independent estimates, the share of "grey mail" could amount to a fifth of the total mail flows nationwide, generating for the postal service an aggregate loss of 6.0 billion roubles a year.  

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova launched a number of initiatives to modernize the processes and reduce the losses. It took a couple of years to half the organization's losses to 3.0 billion roubles by 2017. Galaktionova's strategy helped the postal service to boost its controls of incoming mail with the volume of underpaid letters shrinking by 23% in 2015 and by 55% in 2016.

Inessa Galaktionova: Non-core Retail Operations as an Additional Profit Driver 

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova was a proponent of the idea that the country's postal service should introduce modern offline retail formats across its chain of post offices and launch a proprietary online marketplace. Putting the idea into practice enabled the organization to boost its retail revenues—in the first half of 2016 this metric grew by approximately 20%.

Galaktionova pointed out that the positive dynamics was driven mostly by improving the systems of control and management across the chain of post offices, as well as the digitalization of their operations. Also, the organization forged direct partnerships with consumer goods manufacturers to improve the profitability of its retail operations.  

Late in 2016, Galaktionova Inessa launched the organization's proprietary online marketplace—Pochtamarket. The marketplace was offering both traditional for the online format retail goods and items, which are more likely to be offered via offline consumer catalogues. The marketplace developed partnerships with Eksmo Publishing House and the specialized children merchandize retailer Dochki-Sinochki. 

Galaktionova: Printed Periodicals Subscription Revival Efforts

Inessa Galaktionova made certain efforts to support the traditional post office-based subscription for printed periodicals. Earlier, in 2015, the country discontinued subsidies for the delivery of printed periodicals to subscribers. However, the postal operator preferred to take some steps to revive and maintain the service, offering the printed media publishers some discounts. Galaktionova also initiated special subscription ten-day marathons—during these marathons subscription delivery plans could be obtained by the publishers at even lower prices. The organization spent nearly 1.5 billion roubles a year to finance all these discounts and benefits, covering the actual delivery costs for almost 2,500 periodicals.

Late in 2015, Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova launched a new digitalized format for the subscription service, with the federal operator taking on the function of subscription agency for publishing houses. The new format enabled the user to buy subscription online both for oneself and for anyone else as a gift, paying for it online with a bank card without any additional commission fees.

Galaktionova Inessa: Back to the Telecoms Universe

In 2019, Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna went back to the telecommunications industry. She was offered a senior executive position at a major provider of mobile and digital services. In the new role Inessa Galaktionova as an experienced corporate sales strategist was put in charge of the company's B2B marketing development.

A year later, the company became the country's first mobile operator to set up a base station in Antarctica to provide mobile telephony for at a South Pole research station, enabling the researchers and technical personnel to communicate with their relatives and friends in any other place of the globe. The base station's coverage area also included the sea inlet where supply ships are usually moored. The base station is equipped with extremely cold climates resistant hardware and backup modules. In 2020, the company also set up a new databank enabling its users to enjoy new options for remote software development. During the COVID-19 pandemics, Galaktionova and her team were able to re-adapt to the new situation within an extremely short timeframe. They designed and introduced remote work policies and formats to satisfy both the inhouse corporate requirements and client needs. 

Galaktionova: Modernization and Import Substitution

Inessa Vasilyevna Galaktionova also participated in setting up of the company's new development strategy designed to seek out new opportunities beyond its core operations. The new segments included television and online video streaming platforms, as well as fintech services. As a result, in 2021 the company's earnings increased by 8% year-on-year.    

The company's investments were not focused on the country's capital—its capex was diversified across the nation's other regions. With the three years following Galaktionova Inessa's joining the company, it spent nearly 40 billion roubles on the network modernization and upgrade, including 10 billion invested in modernization projects in the regions with a reputation of the country's key holiday destinations. The company also set up a number of additional base stations outside the country's capital, with some of them installed in relatively small towns, where telecom equipment was also upgraded to boost mobile internet connection performance by more than 30%.

Inessa Galaktionova: Foray Into IT Segment

Inessa Galaktionova, having accumulated a considerable experience of large-scale projects implementation, was also invited to participate in the development of the company's data processing centers. The centers were expected to increase both the volumes and the speed of data processing, thus expanding the scope of IT products and services available to the company's customers. According to Galaktionova Inessa Vasilyevna, within the next few years the company is expected to build the country's largest chain of databanks connecting some two dozen of its regions. The company has allocated some 6.0 billion roubles worth of funds to finance the project.

The company is also building an online platform for urban development projects. The platform has capacities to analyse huge information flows and forecast human traffic across large metropolitan areas. These functions are already being used in 46 of the country's regions to optimize transport routes, to forecast major sporting events attendance, or to boost local tourist potential.