DocuSign Cuts Workforce By 9% As Part of Restructuring Plan (cnbc.com) 23
DocuSign will lay off 9% of its workforce as part of a major restructuring plan, the company announced Wednesday. The decision comes a week after former Google executive, Allan Thygesen, was named the new CEO, and three months after the software maker lost more than 60% of its value year to date. CNBC reports: The plan is designed to support the company's growth and profitability objectives and improve its operating margin. As of January, DocuSign had 7,461 employees, and it said the restructuring plan will largely be complete by the end of fiscal year 2023. It expects to incur charges between $30 million and $40 million, largely in the third and fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, as part of the changes.
The electronic signature software maker enjoyed a wave of greater interest among investors during the Covid pandemic as consumers and corporate workers became more reliant on digital ways to sign documents. But the interest has died down, and shares have fallen 65% so far this year.
The electronic signature software maker enjoyed a wave of greater interest among investors during the Covid pandemic as consumers and corporate workers became more reliant on digital ways to sign documents. But the interest has died down, and shares have fallen 65% so far this year.
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It's a feature not a full product (Score:2)
Re: It's a feature not a full product (Score:2)
If you think docusign is a feature of larger products you don't have a clue what they do.
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I think the point is fair, that Microsoft adding DocuSign-like features to Office365 for example would kill off Docusign. Docusign may have to work harder than people might imagine, but the end product is relatively narrow in scope and may have a hard time competing with another product that offers it as an integrated capability at some incremental cost.
I think the Dropbox analogy is spot on. Dropbox had a lot of effort, delivered solid product, but then the big companies that can integrate more seamlessl
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It's a feature not a full product Just like cloud storage drives,
Yeah but you have to start somewhere. Steve Jobs is telling them not to do anything because he (or Bill Gates) can implement it within one week if they wish and integrate it into an office suite. Obviously dropbox did not have an office suite and a customer base when they started the cloud storage idea, so what were they supposed to do, purchase Microsoft? It's like amazon telling me I should not sell a product online because anyway they will copy it next year and undercut me. That's entirely unhelpful as a
What are 7,461 employees doing? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Here are some specific guesses:
7000 people spread out in 50 countries = 140 people in each country.
In each country:
- 50 salespeople
- 50 pre-sales
- 10 local customer support
- 5 local IT
- 5 local legal
- 5 local accounting
- 5 local pay
- 5 local office management
- 5 local top management
Re:What are 7,461 employees doing? (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently they can save $100million if they identify the people who are scheduling useless meetings and fire them.
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It's a web application that allows people in different places to read, then sign documents
I see your experience with Docusign extends to someone sending you a document and seeing a website asking you to click okay.
How about running their own cloud service limiting the movement of sensitive documents? Creating, maintaining and further developing an API for 3rd party integration? Creating and maintaining plugins for major cloud providers? Or maintaining first party plugins for some 400 applications that are constantly changing and need to be maintained?
That's before you consider having to have a l
Re:What are 7,461 employees doing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I could believe the legal facet of it drives a lot more human resource than anything, but on the technical side at least some counter points.
How about running their own cloud service limiting the movement of sensitive documents?
This isn't a manpower intensive sort of deal, not to the scale discussed here.
Creating, maintaining and further developing an API for 3rd party integration?
That does not suggest a large amount of people, that's table stakes for pretty much any web application of any scale.
Or maintaining first party plugins for some 400 applications that are constantly changing and need to be maintained?
On the face of it this sounds like work, but if you dig deeper, that's actually mostly a free revenue stream than any burden. The vast vast majority are partner developed applications, who not only maintain their own integration, but also give Docusign money for the privilege of being able to market Docusign compatibility. There are a few critical ones they must maintain because they would be irrelevant without them, but most are 'partners' that do all the work and pay on top of everything. E.g. 18 companies are considered platinum partners, which mean they maintain their own integration and get Docusign about half a million a year each. So Docusign gets $9 million just for letting those companies appear in their directory with a platinum star. So no, the integrations don't drive any cost, but they do drive free money.
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Quick Case study: Company I know executives in, private technology company, hybrid secure hardware/software/communications, revenues > $1B, approx 1000 employees, opens office in Caribbean country, hires mostly local people for office jobs, brings in a few technicians and software specialists from Canada; Foreign office top
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Yep, that headcount is a bit much for an online software product pulling in that much revenue. They have more headcount per revenue than most of the hardware companies, that tend to be more labor intensive and justifying large headcount.
I'm surprised. (Score:3)
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I get the impression that Adobe has stepped up efforts around 'Adobe Sign', which has two effects:
-Direct effect of getting into DocuSign's business
-Illustrating the potential for companies with broader ecosystems to add DocuSign-type functionality to their platforms and leave DocuSign in a competitive disadvantage of having a more limited scope.
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Ah, bummer! (Score:2)
Not a great day at the DocuSign office. The staff must be decimated.
Well... almost.
Janky but Necessary (Score:2)
It's a service which is badly needed and for which there is still a substantial gap in the market. I know it is in use today, but it's not as widely used and standard as it seems like it should be.
It seems overwhelmingly obvious to me that it should be the easy to use, managed, automated version of PGP that never quiiiiite came to be. All of the tools and processes already exist, they just need to be brought together.
But here we are still clicking on our names in a script font based on the fact that we ha