Mahesh Sharma | November 28, 2008
OPTUS'S services arm Alphawest has made 33 employees redundant including senior and middle management as the global credit crunch continues to put pressure on local balance sheets.
The cuts also affect sales and operational and support staff but the telco said customer delivery staff numbers have been maintained.
The decision was part of an organisational restructure, prompted by a review of Alphawest that was initiated earlier this year. An Optus spokeswoman said the economic meltdown was a contributing factor.
“In the current competitive environment, finding the right balance between managing costs and providing the best possible service to our customers is critical,” the spokeswoman said.
“The aim of this restructure is to create a sustainable and efficient organisation which is more closely aligned to the needs of our customers.”
The spokeswoman said Alphawest has grown revenues over the past five quarters and the cuts were not prompted by any major customer losses.
Optus-parent SingTel does not break out revenues for Alphawest, but in Optus’ ICT and managed services business (where Alphawest is a significant contributor) revenue growth has slowed in the 2008 financial year, from 16.4 per cent in quarter one to 10.6 per cent in quarter two.
The spokeswoman said quarter two was affected by a decline in Federal Government expenditure, while agencies awaited the outcome of a review of Australian public sector ICT spend.
The cuts follow Optus’ decision last month to slash 115 jobs from its networking division.
This was soon followed by the departure of consumer division managing director, Warren Hardy.
Rival Telstra has also steadily taken the knife to its troubled services-arm Kaz, a move that has seen over a hundred staff axed in recent months.
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7 Comment(s)
You'll find Sydney's other useful opinions at Telstra's propoganda website, nowwearetalking.com.au as a beloved shareholder and customer.
How about declaring your interest each time you spew absolute rubbish out of your computer, Sydney? Seen you popping up on the NBN speels, you probably need to do some fact finding too. It comes as no suprise you back the big T.
Sydney, can we get off the NBN please? This is a n article about staff reductions in the current economic client. I suspect this is not the last in the IT services sector and has little to do with Optus in general. Oh, and to correct your NBN assumptions, Telstra has detailed very little in their 15 page "proposal" except an Internet service that is already more expensive than that seen by many in our cities from other providers. How is this at "no cost to long suffering Australian taxpayers"? If you're going to argue for Telstra, at least use some facts that support your argument.
Telstra offered to build the NBN with conditions, as stated on the news by the Telstra CEO, so saying they offered to build it with no cost to the long suffering tax payer is load of rubbish - the cost will be there once it's complete, like an outragous charge to access it. You don't work for Telstra do you?
Now might be an opportune time to ask Optus where they hope to obtain the money to build the National Broadband Network. Also Australians please note that Telstra has offered to build the NBN with no cost to the long suffering Australian taxpayers.
It is interesting that Senior management greatly responsible for the current situation surviced and in the name of restructure got fancy new roles. Alphawest Senor managerent run a company on ego rather than common sense with a sound strategy.
your joking right? i mean i know there's alot of corruption going around, but that incompetent pack of idiots cant even bill their existing customers correctly. Anyhoo - back to alphwest... seeing the big players in the... ahem "IT" industry (when half, or more, of your workforce is management and sales, are you really an IT company?) is just plain funny... management that dont understand any technical solutions and just want to make a dollar from providing over-priced bad solutions.... good to see... we need more of these places to go down in flames... kaz and commander style.
I hope they can come work for telstra as they will be needing extra staff to help with the NBN Telstra will be building.
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