Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

@OP+1pAuPTtd

I'm really surprised the emphasis of some of the other posters here is on the mechanics of getting to IPO. Maybe they're current employees hoping for some equity stake in the company when it goes public. I, on the other hand, do not believe SAS will IPO. I think it will find a buyer, which is the best of all possible worlds for SAS. The buyer will have to do all the things the other posters suggest to lean SAS out and make it more competitive.

Oh, and lay off about half the current workforce. I'm betting that most current employees don't see themselves as "wasted overhead" or "non revenue generating", but therein lies the rub. Some of them are as "useless" as the groundskeepers (who Goodnight has said sold more software than the sales team), or the cafe workers (any three of which probably don't quite make as much as a "business analyst" or professional Jenkins wrangler), or even the artist in residence (who is at least capable of creating something).

Almost all of the things mentioned fall in the category of "reduce expenses", which we've been doing since at least 2015 or so, but no one has mentioned the elephant in the room. SAS needs to restore the rule of law, and by that I mean accountability for failure, and for poor management in particular.

If you want to know who gets a seat on the lifeboat, you need to know who is capable of high-quality, thoughtful, and productive work. Until that is done, it doesn't matter how much you reduce expenses because you're depending on the same people who didn't have what it takes to be active participants in the company's success in the first place.

OP: good on you for asking. Way late, but late is better than never!

1. Sel hotel. Keeping them bundled is mostly UNinteresting to a buyer who is interested in the core value of SAS.

2. Outsource cafe, RFC, facilities.

3. Sell all the artwork and lay off the artists.

4. Sell the aircraft, hangers and layoff the pilots and support staff. Fly commercial instead.

5. Formulate a going forward plan for V9 and effectively communicate it to your v9 customers. They are your cash cow and you must do a better job of retaining them. The current uncertainty for them is unacceptable.

6. Ditch Viya. It is going on as a 10 year loser and time to let it go. It is not an addictive dr-g where giving it away results in addicted paying users.

7. Sell all aircraft, hangers, and layoff support staff. Fly commericail instead.

8. Let go of all non revenue generating areas and staff. Such as cafes. RFC, Facilities, HR, HCC, etc. Having all that stuff was great when you wanted to be a "Great Place to Work" but you now have a different emphasis: you are focused on selling

9. Sell JMP a vacant building, move all their staff into it, and make them their own company. They thus can define their own destiny. It needs to be that way because of so little overlap with SAS.

Gee, where to start ... in no particular order:

1. spin off JMP (aka, sell it)
2. sell property and hidden businesses that have nothing to do with SAS (such as the hotel)
3. sell the airplanes
4. shutter failed products
5. refocus the freed-up R&D resources on the core platform, and figure out a path to making Viya & 9 one platform
6. do strategic layoffs of wasted overhead like the "artist in residence" and other such BS
7. completely outsource all the cloud infrastructure to Azure/AWS... having even a little bit of that in-house is horribly inefficient... the cloud team has never been able to compete with those companies, and it's a waste of money to try
8. outsource building maintenance and groundskeeping, etc.
9. use some savings/revenue from the above steps to buy a large, well-established company that has products which fit with SAS well... create OH savings with the merger... That's when you start to turn the company around ... R&D/Leadership are too broken to do this on their own .. they need healthy company to help turn things around

If the goal is short-term profits, then do a 20% layoff right now. In this forum, it’s hard to say a kind word about current ownership — it always draws downvotes — but all employees should be grateful to JHG. Any other CEO would be motivated by short-term profits.

If the goal is long-term profits, first cut your losses. Admit that Viya was a mistake, and cancel it. Cancel other marginally profitable products also. Lay off some staff, and shift others to improving V9.

Then, either begin developing new, innovative products to create new revenue streams, or else continue cutting costs to prepare for IPO.

SAS is preparing to IPO. Why they aren’t cancelling more unprofitable products is a mystery.

I guess it depends on the end goal right? To keep SAS in business, thriving for years? To make the most money with SAS in the short term? Improving revenue per employee by voluntary packages, outsourcing non core functions, etc. Terminate unprofitable products and focus entire company on core strengths.