Pegasystems has announced its second round of layoffs in the past eight months.
According to the Boston Business Journal, this round will impact nearly 240 employees – which represents four percent of its workforce.
Those cuts will occur across several geographies, reportedly including the US and UK.
Pega cited the reorganization of its customer success roles as the primary motivator behind its latest round of layoffs.
Sharing more in a statement, Lisa Pintchman, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Pegasystems, noted:
[Layoffs will impact] go-to-market roles in order to simplify our client engagement approach and better support our business strategy.
That go-to-market has often proved tricky for prospective customers to grasp. Many ask; is it a CRM, business process management, or low-code application platform company?
Yet, to help make its vision more palpable, Pega pushed the idea of “the autonomous enterprise” – at its recent PegaWorld iNspire event.
The latest job cuts could be to better orientate its client engagement around that messaging.
An internal email from Alan Trefler, Founder and CEO at Pegasystems, suggested that such reorientation is a priority. Within it, he wrote:
Some client-facing roles will evolve, be realigned, or be eliminated.
These efforts may help Pegasystems pick up its sales results, which have declined by four percent since the turn of the year – according to The Boston Globe.
Yet, despite that, the vendor’s stock price is up 47 percent year-to-date, and its net income has increased by nine percent since January.
January is significant as that is when Pega announced its opening round of layoffs. That round had a similar aim: to help the vendor “improve its go-to-market operating model.”
Yet, now the provider seems intent on pushing that further, doubling down on its strategy to build the autonomous enterprise.
During Pega’s latest earnings call, Trefler seemed intent on this, stating:
Right now, the world is uncertain and rapidly changing, but I believe we have the right strategy to succeed in this environment while building for the future.
Unfortunately, job cuts appear necessary for Pega to put its full weight behind that strategy.
As it makes those, Pega becomes one of the latest CX vendors to make multiple layoffs since the turn of the year.
These have often amounted to even higher job losses, with fellow CRM stalwart Salesforce letting go of 11 percent of its workforce.
Yet, that offers little comfort to employees affected by the news – some of whom have already been told, according to posts on the Layoff.
Others will, however, be waiting on tenterhooks as Pega expects to complete most of its communications to affected employees by Friday, September 8.
After it does so, Pega estimates that it will incur a charge of approximately $16MN in Q3. These relate to benefit and severance costs.
Elsewhere, the vendor is still recruiting new employees, with 49 open positions on its website.
However, these open roles don’t touch client engagement, as Pega seeks mostly engineers, developers, and system architects.
