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Bloomberg
Microsoft Corp. reorganized
its sales and marketing operations in a bid to woo more customers in areas like artificial intelligence and the cloud by providing sales staff with greater technical and industry-specific expertise.
The changes will mean thousands of job cuts in areas such as field sales, said a person familiar with the restructuring who asked not to be named because the workforce reductions aren’t public. The company had 121,567 employees as of March 31. The memo didn’t mention any job cuts.
The company unveiled the steps in an email to staff that was obtained by Bloomberg. Commercial sales will be split into two segments — one targeting the biggest customers and one on small and medium clients. Employees will be aligned around six industries — manufacturing, financial services, retail, health, education and government. They’ll focus on selling software in four categories: Modern workplace, business applications, apps and infrastructure and data and AI.
Microsoft is in a pitched battle with companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., for customers who want to move workplace applications and data to the cloud, as well as take advantage of advances in artificial intelligence.
The company, which has not dramatically overhauled its salesforce in years, wants
to tailor those teams better for selling cloud software rather than desktop and server
solutions.
“There is an enormous $4.5 trillion market opportunity across our Commercial and Consumer businesses,†according to the email, which
was sent by Worldwide Commercial Business chief Judson Althoff, Global Sales and Marketing group leader Jean-Philippe Courtois and Chris Capossela, the company’s chief marketing officer.