Diversified IT products and services group Data#3 this week announced strong revenue growth of 15 percent for the recent half of its financial year. But the news wasn’t all good — profits were down, and the company’s managing director John Grant flagged challenging conditions for the company ahead.
And there was one further little fact which Data#3 didn’t disclose to investors: Job cuts. The text below is an email sent by Grant to staff at Data#3 shortly after the financial results were announced. Delimiter spoke briefly with Grant this morning, but the executive wasn’t interested in providing further details.
Data#3 team members
Most of you would be aware that negative sentiment in business and government is impacting investment decisions, particularly those that require significant capital expenditure. Simultaneously, customers are considering strategic alternatives in the way they consume technology, as we foresaw with the launch of our Technology Consumption Model. These two factors are changing business opportunities for organisations such as Data#3. Our half year ASX announcement yesterday, and that of many other listed IT companies, reflects this.
We acknowledge and accept this change and, while it may have come upon us more quickly than we anticipated, we must adjust now to ensure we are investing to meet the opportunities we see in the market. Consequently in reviewing the current structure and resourcing, we have decided there are a small number of roles across the business that are not required to meet current or anticipated future requirements.
The restructuring to remove these roles clearly affects members of our team. Over the next two to three days we’ll be talking with those affected by this decision and those who can’t be redeployed will be offered a redundancy package.
Decisions such as these are not easy, in fact are extremely difficult, and we have used our best judgement in making them. Contact with those members of our team who are affected will be made today and meetings organised as soon as possible to have the appropriate discussions. If a team member is unable to be redeployed in our business we will make sure they have every chance of re-employment through an outplacement program run by our OD&HR and People Solutions teams.
The sign of a responsible and successful company is to react quickly to change. That’s what we’re doing. We are and we will remain such a company, a leader in the IT service provider community with strong cash flow, near to no debt and offerings that we will continually develop and expand to ensure they always remain relevant to our customers.
To those of you who are ultimately affected by this decision, I am sorry we are in this position and sincerely thank you for the contribution you have made. As I said, we will be giving you every possible assistance we can to find your next role.
ThanksJohn Grant
At least they are giving people a heads up and not springing it on them as they walk in the door
they may as well spring it on them seeing as nobody will know who is getting the arse until they get it.
When I worked at telstra we got a powerpoint presentation telling us we were all being let go, they didn’t tell us, just went “click, click, click”.
Atleast they are being upfront about it!
HT called us into a company wide meeting and told the govt team that we were redundant, effective immediately. Never been so embarrassed.
Seems to be happening across the board in IT… big firms and small
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