In a move that hinted at a slowdown in customer analytics and advertising services, Oracle Corp. slashed employees in marketing and the US customer experience division.
Four persons with direct knowledge of the situation claim that certain employees received notification that their roles had been removed on Monday. According to one former employee who lost their job and begged not to be named to fear professional penalties, junior sales personnel, as well as a division sales director, were among those fired. One former employee claimed that although there had been rumors of impending layoffs in the division in recent weeks, management had assured them that their jobs were secure.
The customer experience division provides analytics and advertising services. It has long lagged behind the growth of the rest of the Austin, Texas-based software companies. During an event last year, Executive Vice President Douglas Kehring said the unit had “historically been probably a little more disappointing than it should have been.”
The company “decided to reorganize” the customer experience group “and move on,” a former senior manager of sales engineering, whose position was cut, wrote on LinkedIn. In a separate post, another fired manager cited the restructuring for the job reductions. Some marketing positions were also cut, according to LinkedIn posts by a former senior manager and group vice president.
Oracle is cutting jobs as it attempts to use the health care sector to boost its efforts in the cutthroat market for cloud computing. In an effort to gain clients in a sector that has been somewhat hesitant to adopt cloud database technology, Oracle announced a $28.3 billion acquisition of digital medical records company Cerner Corp. earlier this year.
Requests for comment from Oracle were not answered. It was impossible to know right away how many jobs will be eliminated as of Monday.
The shares, which are down 11% for the year, decreased less than 1% to settle at $77.44 on Monday in New York.
