Microsoft is remaining tight-lipped about how a global reorganisation that is reportedly expected to impact its sales and marketing teams will affect its operations in Australia and New Zealand.
The software company told employees of the changes on Monday, according to Reuters, with the organisational restructure set to impact employees working under Microsoft’s executive vice presidents, Jean-Philippe Courtois and Judson Althoff.
It is also understood that the reorganisation will affect employees reporting to the company’s chief marketing officer, Chris Capossela.
While it is understood that Courtois, Althoff and Capossela have all sent memos about the changes to staff, the company is yet to publicly elaborate on the changes.
Bloomberg has put down the proposed reorganisation of Microsoft's sales and marketing operations to an effort to give its sales staff greater technical expertise in a bid to attract more customers in growth areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
A spokesperson for Microsoft Australia said only that the company is “implementing changes to better serve our customers and partners”.
This echoes the official line the company has delivered globally thus far.
According to reports, the internal memos sent to workers did not mention the job losses that were previously rumoured to result from the proposed changes.
On 2 July, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft was “poised” to layoff thousands of employees in a move to “reorganise its salesforce”.
According to TechCrunch, a source with knowledge of the planned “downsizing” indicated that the company would lay off the “thousands” of workers across its global footprint.
If true, the move is likely to see Microsoft’s A/NZ footprint hit in the changes, along with other regions.
Meanwhile, ZDNet has reported that the memo sent to employees made mention of Microsoft’s “new commercial and consumer model”.
The move is expected to see the company organise its commercial field sales team around two customer segments – enterprise and small; medium and corporate, according to ZDNet.
In January, Microsoft made some other hefty organisational changes, combining its Small and Mid-Market Solutions & Partners (SMS&P) and Enterprise Partner Group (EPG) business units in an attempt to streamline business processes.
The changes, which will took effect from February 1, were expected to affect its sales, partner, and services teams, and see both units come together as one under its Worldwide Commercial Business, led by executive vice-president, Judson Althoff.
The company’s most recent proposed reorganisation comes just days after it appointed former Salesforce Asia Pacific marketing vice president, Wendy Johnstone, as its new general manager, marketing and operations for Asia Pacific from July 3, 2017.
A veteran with over 20 years of experience, Johnstone has held numerous senior marketing leadership positions at Salesforce, EMC and IBM.
Based in Singapore, Johnstone is responsible for spearheading all marketing activities and operations for Microsoft in the region, including Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and other emerging Asian markets such as Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
