HPE is laying off at least 500 staff in a major sales re-organisation, affecting server, storage, networking and PointNext teams. Employees in this latest WorkForce Reduction (WFR) round include sales account managers, enterprise account managers and country account managers. They received notices to quit, starting October 19.
According to sources, HPE is laying off entire external sales teams in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reduced the need for in-person sales calls. The company is reorganising to focus more on inside sales.
HPE declined to discuss specifics with Blocks & Files, but reminded us of the company’s May 21 announcement following a disastrous second quarter that it planned to make $1bn cost savings, which would include layoffs.
An HPE spokesperson said: “As we’ve previously announced, we are focusing our investments and realigning our workforce to critical core businesses and areas of growth that will accelerate our strategy. We are committed to making these necessary changes with empathy and transparency and ensuring impacted team members receive the support they need.
“These actions will enable us to become a more agile organization and advance our strategy to deliver everything as a service from edge to cloud so that we can help our customers and partners adapt to a new business environment and harness the power of their data wherever it lives.”
As-a-service
CEO Antonio Neri, in a briefing with financial analysts last week, said “across all of our businesses, we are making bold moves to drive our agility, strengthen our capabilities, simplify our processes, and enhance our execution.
“For instance, we are re-envisioning our go-to-market strategy to elevate the customer experience and accelerate our as-a-service mix, and will be making changes to these teams to provide a more seamless, holistic sales experience. Our goal is to partner with customers to help them achieve outcomes that drive their individual, unique digital transformations.”
