10% of CDKi to go - The cull has started
1478 replies (most recent on top)
This company now appears to be managed by AI systems. Teams are exchanging AI-generated documents without meaningful review or controls, behaving less like disciplined professionals and more like overexcited toddlers flinging things at each other. In practice, it feels like AI communicating with itself
Glassdoor reviews of Keyloop looking suspiciously and potentially false for the last couple of entries. 17th March and older reflecting the true picture of the state of affairs it would seem:
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27 Mar 2026
Good company
Marketing manager
Current employee, more than 5 years
Reading, England
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Good benefits and good business transparency on what is happening
Cons
No growth potential in marketing, and high expectations on workload. If you don't enforce your work/life balance you will end up doing more than you should.
25 Mar 2026
A 50 year old company trying to turn around a 100+ year old industry
Product marketing manager
Current employee, more than 1 year
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Strong vision of what the future of automotive will look like and driven to get there. Brilliant products that have the potential to make car buying far easier than it is today!
Cons
The systemic issue at Keyloop is that it sits as the number one cost to their customers business so has high visibility. Proving the value of what the company offers to customers is the biggest challenge for anyone coming into the business.
17 Mar 2026
Extremely toxic & bias workplace - AVOID!
Anonymous employee
Current employee
Winnipeg, MB
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Good health benefits and work from home opportunity
Cons
Work environment is extremely toxic. It’s that workplace that gives you Sunday anxieties before Monday clock-in. Do not come here unless you are prepared to be overworked for little pay. The pay is extremely low compared to market value. No salary increase. There is no career progression, you’ll be stuck doing alot and being unhappy and getting burntout everyday. There is a lot of corporate politics going on here where recognition is based on kissing behinds but not merit-based. Management encourages a clear divide between some employees and others which in turn breeds double standards, favoritism and bias. It’s an extremely toxic work environment. Stay away!
10 Mar 2026
Downward Spiral - Industrial Level of Incompetence by Management
Anonymous employee
Current employee, more than 10 years
Reading, England
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Work from home flexibility is good
Cons
PE backed catastrophe. Knee-je-k decisions made in a bubble without any understanding of business leading to downward spiral of the business. Too many acquisitions not integrated, broken ERP systems and low quality support from shared services. Total failure by FP and the ELT.
9 Mar 2026
Chaotic management that sets you up to fail
Anonymous employee
Current employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Work life balance and ok-ish benefit
Cons
Chaotic, incompetent management. Unrealistic goals are set from the top, deliberately setting everyone up for failure. When these impossible targets are inevitably missed, it creates a miserable, toxic atmosphere across the whole team. The direct result? No bonus and no merit increase, despite your hard working. The entire system is designed to make employees feel worthless and cheated.
9 Mar 2026
Great place to come and drift....
Anonymous employee
Current employee, more than 3 years
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Left alone and Good benefits - health, pension, remote working, phone etc...
Cons
Poor comms, zero direction, unhelpful colleagues, no training, no pay rise, poor management, unhappy customers and no progression opportunities or development conversations.
Advice to Management
Invest in your people
5 Mar 2026
Too much top down pressure
Intermediate software developer
Former employee, more than 5 years
Winnipeg, MB
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Great people, RRSP and deferred profit sharing, very flexible
Cons
Unrealistical expectations from the executive team, constantly reworking plans, 2026 pay freeze
Advice to Management
None, they know they're making it more difficult
4 Mar 2026
Toxic work environment
Systems administrator
Current employee, more than 10 years
Reading, England
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
None that I can think of really.
Cons
No merit increases or bonuses awarded even though profits are high. Toxic work environment ruining things for all.
Advice to Management
Quit
25 Feb 2026
1* for the new season
Anonymous employee
Current employee, more than 3 years
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Working from home, but now it is so popular is it even a benefit ?
Cons
salaries are so low, I mean so low. If they promote you, pay will go up by 5%, its just so sad, taking bonuses away, taking yearly salary increases away .. guys, CEO you are making us feel miserable, demotivated. I am currently below market value with constant promises it will get better..
24 Feb 2026
What a mess
Anonymous employee
Current employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Good benefits (good salary, salary revision and bonus)
Cons
It's hard to get an overview of things. Conflicting priorites, lack of resources.
The company has a serious cultural problem of blaming and finger pointing (it required HR to create an Accountability training to try get this sorted out. It didn't)
Huge workload.
Perhaps we should get Claude to write our sales strategy for us, then we could bin the CRO off altogether. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
What I don't understand are those few weirdos here who
A: Hate on the company
B: Think the company is also gods gift to dealers
C: Clearly are frustrated
D: Oppose against embracing the 3 day work week.
Who are you, and why do you do it. Embrace the hate and work the 3 days. Get a second job on the side, I know a few that do and they make BANK.
Nobody is interested in buying the basket case. Everytime due diligence is done it highlights the utter shambles that Keyloop has become since the FP purchase. The customer sentiment is terrible and customer losses are way too big. Debt is an another red flag and revenue growth is backwards when removing acquisitions. FP has a white elephant on their hands. There only play is to cost strip and then break up in a fire sale. It is an utter mess with no way out of he-l. KLT couldn’t have sc--wed it up any worse if they tried.
@9cmc more like Temu
Hopefully a large group like Bharti Enterprises will come along soon to save us all.
Don't expect things to improve until a new buyer comes along, at this point things can't get any worse, everything is at rock bottom.
While we're being run by clueless leaders who think they know what they're doing, nothing will improve. It's really that simple.
What future is there in this company for hard working, once loyal avid promoters of the business? There is no real training for associates, no team spirit, no pay incentives, merit or bonus, products are in decay and not up to scratch, no career progression and an environment not ethically sound and not aligning to most peoples values or morality.
Are people hanging it out until the inevitable redundancy (sham) phone call happens? Or are people really looking at jumping ship as soon as possible?
Part of me tells me to leave now, the other side of the coin is to sit it out and wait for a new buyer and see if things improve. Will it get any better or are we heading for a dystopian future? (if we are not already there?)
From wannabe influencer to VP. Thank god we are prioritising the right people
@9cd8
As individuals move into senior leadership roles, there can be a tendency to lose perspective. This may be driven by concern for role security and can result in poor decision making that negatively affects how teams view strategy. Rather than challenging the business to make better decisions, there is often a willingness to agree, which has clear consequences.
Trump in his 2nd term decided that he wanted only to be surrounded by people who agreed with him. During his first term he felt held back by the challenges from his own cabinet and team. You can judge the impact yourself.
Top Cat would be well advised to start taking this in hand if he wishes to succeed. When leadership surrounds itself primarily with people who agree with them, healthy challenge is reduced. For the organisation to succeed, senior leaders need to actively encourage constructive debate. While there is frequent messaging around being customer centric, this is undermined when outcomes are driven mainly by metrics that benefit individual leaders, with real world impacts on teams and customers becoming secondary and often harmful.
Maybe TC starts with making people feel secure in their jobs as no one does. This drives the above behaviour – why challenge and debate if you feel it will highlight you for removal?
Pressure is often passed down through teams to support this approach, which conflicts with the company’s stated vision of working collaboratively. A lack of consistent direction across markets and teams has led to silos, division, frustration and results in some of the feelings in the previous posts about other areas of the business.
Although many of the longer term strategic initiatives are sensible, there remains a need to address the current volume of outstanding work. Targets should aim higher than an 80% standard where quality and customer impact are concerned. For example, sales teams are sometimes required to sell products with a high level of known defects, which then leads to rework for Professional Services and Customer Experience teams. A more mature organisation would account for the true cost of this rework when assessing performance.
No doubt AI will solve it all as according to Surname Surname if you are not using AI even in your own life how do you exist?
Fun point: here appears to be a strong culture of head‑nodding within the Executive Leadership Team. Is there specific high level course one can attend as we aspire to head nodding gravatas?
It’s becoming increasingly clear how Keyloop, driven by an incompetent HR department and senior management, is heading in the wrong direction – straight towards the abyss. It makes me feel so depressed, yet also clear-headed about my future with the company.
Here’s why: About a year ago, Keyloop sacked two of the local managers. This was despite the fact that they were among the most successful in terms of growth, sales and staff satisfaction – the reason was that each of them had been assigned a new SLT manager who did not understand our markets, products or ways of working, and so it was the local managers who had to go, i.e. directly attributable to senior management and HR.
I know they were working on a very large project – an independent garage chain with nearly 2,000 individual garages, which required a DMS that needed to be customised to meet the specific requirements of this chain. The answer was a resounding NO from management.
Now, in today’s edition of the national motoring magazine, I read that one of our competitors has secured this contract and more besides. Our competitor is apparently not too proud to say yes to an ARR of £6m, albeit with an investment of around £500k in their DMS. I know it's not the first missed opportunity, but for sure one of the biggest.
I keep wondering how the management team in Reading keeps making the wrong decisions time and again. I wonder if that kind of information ever reaches our CEO, Tom, and his friends at FP. I suspect that many of the new SLT managers are so incompetent and afraid of being exposed that they repeatedly paint a misleading picture for senior management.
Yes, you guessed right: I work with one of our DMSs, but just think what an investment in the DMS could have meant in terms of extra revenue for, among other things, our layered apps like Servicehub.
It is this lack of a holistic view—the fact that everything is divided into silos—that is ki-ling the company.
At least, that’s my view of this company—stemming from this massive missed opportunity.
Have a great rest of your day and evening, wherever in the world you may be.
What you are seeing here is the implosion of a once great company. Negative energy is affecting morale and the knock on effect is huge. It's not just aligned to one continent, it is a global issue, which is going to continue for some time. There is an agenda at play.
Remember this culture is being driven by the KLT, they want you to leave on your own accord. They are behind the Keyloop austerity drive, they have the money for pay rises and for bonuses for some countries, they simply don't value your worth and that's why you haven't received a rise or bonus.
As the previous poster said get out as soon as you can.
@9cb6 I partly agree with your post, but what is happening here is a reaction to negative discrimination between nations, cultures and individuals, which is a natural consequence of a company that prioritises profit above all else. Positive employee relations and a positive corporate culture are essential for success; this applies to all organisations, and it is something that is built up over many years. Unfortunately, this is something the current management and FP ownership fail to understand, so unless you are a heartless egoist who values a toxic working environment where it’s everyone against everyone and anything goes, Keyloop will never be a good place for you to work. I’d bet that a great many people at Keyloop are looking at job vacancies and talking to their friends and family about the situation in the company – which is a perfectly normal reaction. My advice is, if you are NOT the aforementioned egoist, then get out of there quickly before the company and its poison eat you alive from the inside.
Facts about discrimination that you probably didn’t know but which are documented:
As CEO, Tom K. has not yet visited all Keyloop locations, just as several ELT members have also failed to visit many Keyloop locations – funnily enough, it is only the same places that are visited, places where one is feted and never held accountable for the decisions one makes. How can senior management expect to be respected if they deliberately avoid visiting certain sites because ‘the smell might be a bit unpleasant at first’?
Let’s all pause and take a breath.
The individual claiming that India has recently received pay rises appears to be attempting to provoke a reaction. It’s best not to engage with comments made in bad faith. you wouldnt enage with soemoen baiting you in the real world.
As with any workforce, India has highly skilled professionals as well as individuals who may be less effective—no different from anywhere else in the world.
Some of the rhetoric directed at Indian colleagues has taken on an unnecessarily negative or racially charged tone. Criticising an entire nation or population for the structural, political, or historical challenges it faces—including those shaped by colonialism, governance, and economic disparity—is neither fair nor constructive. It often reflects a desire to divide or elevate one’s own position rather than to understand the broader context.
Having travelled to India myself, I’ve found it to be a country of contrasts: beautiful and challenging, relaxing and demanding—much like any place on the planet. It faces real challenges, but it is also rich in culture, talent, and resilience.
Some of the frustration directed at international support teams stems from a few key factors:
a) the legacy of early outsourcing practices, where companies shifted work to under‑trained staff many years ago;
b) difficulties in understanding certain accents, despite many of the same individuals navigating interactions perfectly well in local Indian restaurants and other everyday situations;
c) cultural and communication differences in tone and style.
Recognising these factors helps us approach the conversation with more understanding, less frustration, and a far more respectful perspective.
Please remember that maintaining respect across teams is essential. There are colleagues/customers in other regions who may not like UK support teams, but we should avoid creating divisions.
We already face significant challenges as a business, and it’s important that we support one another rather than fragmenting into groups or reacting to misleading statements. Allowing frustration or misinformation to influence our behaviour will only harm collaboration and weaken the message we are trying to convey about the difficulties we face.
Let’s stay focused on constructive dialogue, professionalism, and working together toward solutions rather than contributing to negativity or internal conflict.
India based support is poor and it frustrates customers, both internally and externally.
You know what it's like when you ring up a support line and it's an Indian call centre, it's horrendous.
I can only presume it's a cost saving strategy, people in India get paid considerably less than their European counterparts, KLT are hoping AI can fill the knowledge gap, but its not going to work long term.
Customers prefer local support, that's why a lot of UK businesses that had India call centres have actually moved back to local UK support, because that's what customers prefer, they don't want to talk to somebody reading from a script in an Indian call centre, full stop.
@9c8c Yes we did :)
This is getting a tad racist. India is about 7% of the support workforce by the way, UK has five times the people. And for the record - teams in India didn't get a pay rise.
Customer is happy, Tom and KLT are happy. Keyloop family is happy. Investment coming to India, train and reward the key performers. Only jealous people are unhappy. Hopefully Keyloop business will grow with the right associates in place. Keyloop happy, everyone happy. Revenue grows, salaries increase, investment in India. Cut costs, customers benefit and drives growth and profit.
@9c80 Yeah, that's why customers have literally asked me to make sure India doesn't handle any of their support cases because of the trash quality. About the same level of trash as you find on any Google Street view image of India. That's tough to hear when managing a customer, that they don't appreciate 80% of the workforce. Case closures in numbers, 100% india is on top. But at what cost...
India is exceeding expectations at the moment with regard to customer support excellence and support ticket closures. The investment in India is paying off and we are rewarded as per consequence of high achievement. Positions and careers are moving to India, it is only correct financial incentives follow. Sorry UK/ Europe it is our time. Tom/ KLT see you for seləˈbrāSH(ə)n
@9c3j LOL there is a beautiful Goole Maps challenge. Find any inhabited metropolitan area of India that isn't filthy. You can't. Job done.
At least India had pay rise and bonus this financial year.
@9c3j I have been there and I can say that I personally watched them having a p-o on the road
@9c2g agree on the quality piece. But "their country is a filthy shithole".... Touch grass I'd say.
Honestly, I just find it irritating speaking to Indians in the company, they think they know everything yet know nothing. I'd rather have 1 European over 10 Indians. I don't understand where the air of arrogance comes from with them they have nothing to be arrogant about their country is a filthy shithole.
Sorry to say, but British business culture isn’t that appealing as well. I come from a EU country. That said, Keyloop is failing big on their cultural program because it’s a one fits all UK imperialistic approach. All nations and cultures are different, and if you as a person, leader and company doesn’t respect that - that’s when everything goes wrong and people starting talking bad about others and misbehave against the ELT directions.
I'm
Sounds about right, Nigel. You’ve got a dedicated corner in your room like it’s a VIP section… and you’re the one stuck sitting in it.
Listen here Abdul, Hyderabad is a shi7hole. If it wasn't for us, you would all be Pakistani.
Invest in India, all the expertise is there, we don't need anything else
Following on from the latest post here, the latest rumours from our energetic, bustling and vibrant head office in Reading suggest that a major restructuring of our engineering and product organisations is imminent.
The reason for this is reportedly that our DMSs, which are in ‘maintenance mode’, are too expensive to run relative to the profit they generate, as they also have to cover a large proportion of the costs of the failed apps we are trying to develop and sell.
So, those of you working with DMS who aren’t based in India, expect that your colleagues and yourselves might vanish overnight in the best Houdini fashion without any warning – they’ll just be gone.
Sad, but unfortunately one of the conditions when working for a money-grubbing organisation like FP, which values people, customers and history at a big fat ZERO.
Wishing all the best to those affected and their families.
Listen very carefully.
Document everything, save correspondence, record meetings and phone calls which you have with your manager/ HR. They are not your friends. They are driven by targets and ultimately are being targeted to reduce head count and expenditure. You really don't matter to them in their eyes. When it's your turn to go, you will see their true colours.
This organisation is so corrupt and it's practices are so laughable, that as an associate, I wouldn't be surprised if we see another mass culling akin to that of the P&O ferry debacle before long.
This organisation is so corrupt they will stoop at nothing to remove people and lie to hit their targets. Document their lies, they won't be able to defend them in court on paper when you have evidence. Their verbal approach of making promises and then changing the narrative later on, will be harder for them to defend. This is a corrupt business operating sham policies and processes. You have to play them at their own game.
After watching KLT’s latest video, it’s obvious that we can only hope the sale happens as soon as possible. At least two of them were clearly on something, and the new guy doesn’t even know the name of the department he’s supposed to work closely with. What could possibly go wrong?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but it's certainly embarrassing. As the good employee that I am, I am connected with many of you Keyloop colleagues (+300) on LinkedIn and therefore receive a lot of posts about Keyloop and our products in my feed. For a while now - approx. 6 months, I have been keeping statistics (I am a bit of a numbers nerd) on the interactions for these posts. Approximately 5-8% of all interactions come from customers and partners - so "outsiders" of Keyloop, with the rest coming from you colleagues and myself, of course. This is a disappointingly low number according to recognised social media publications such as 'Building a StoryBrand', 'The Art of Social Media' and 'Likeable Social Media', but also when compared to some of our colleagues at competitors.
Management will probably claim otherwise and refer to other statistics that paint a better and greener picture, which is not unusual for companies and, for that matter, countries/regimes living in a utopia. Classic marketing knowledge that you learn in your first semester at university.
If management bothered to read up on recognised employee motivation theories such as Vroom/Lawler, they might remember that it is the employees – not the managers – who create the results, and if the motivation for the results is not there, such as bonuses and pay rises, then the results will not be there either.
Sorry for my long post, but I just feel that we have a management team that lives on their own planet, characterised by the black-and-white knowledge you learn in law and economics studies, instead of the knowledge you learn in management/psychology studies and in the school of life in general.
But that's probably how it is... In any case, it gives food for thought.
There's an old saying from where I live "chat sh-t get ban-ged". Remember you are not in the playground. Choose wisely in life
Nice to see all of the reviews on Glassdoor now reflecting the true feelings of associates. I Hope the reviews prevent other victims becoming part of the disingenuous culture at Keyloop.
@99eg what about “Clueless” instead of clown?
@99k5
No suprises i think we all knew that was going to happen.
For a buisness that bangs on about everyone working the same it doesnt happen.
Too many silos and fifedoms and awards for hitting a number with little overview of how we hit it.
What we need is a focus on accountability........oh yeah we do that dont we?
@99k5 I am really sorry to say that this is nothing new. We have been doing this in the DMS world for the past 4-5 years. Every time we point out something like this, the two responsible P&E DMS Senior Directors say that the priority is of more strategic importance and that we need to build APIs, support the platform and the layered apps.
Their, excuse my somewhat crude language, id--tic and brain-dead approach means that we in all DMSs, maybe with exception from Serti, have now built up such a large technical, legal and fiscal debt that we will never get back on track again. Those 2 seniors should be kicked out the door as soon as possible – even though we know that will never happen. Instead, some of those who pointed out the challenge have been kicked out by them, probably because they didn't have the right Keyloop mentality – 80% is good enough – OMG!
It only takes one dissatisfied employee whom Keyloop has either fired or pi---d off to either exploit the loopholes or report Keyloop to the relevant authorities for the house of cards to collapse and heads to roll. I believe that in the EU, the fine is approximately 10% of the company's turnover, and in the UAE, for example, it is USD 1.5 million per violation. Then we can talk about not getting a bonus or a pay rise that year...