CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 3 November
All the latest martech and adtech news from Rubicon Project, Criteo, SteelHouse, Microsoft, Oracle, Freshdesk, Emarsys, Voyager Labs, LiveRamp, InMobi and Moat.
Ad tech marketplace provider, Rubicon Project, is cutting 19 per cent of its workforce, or about 125 employees globally, as it continues to struggle to deliver sufficient revenue growth.
The cuts were revealed in latest quarterly financial report, which highlighted a challenging third quarter for the business. Q3 revenue grew 2 per cent year-on-year to $65.8 million, with non-GAAP net revenue up 5 per cent to $60.6 million. Net income for the quarter to 30 September was $3.5 million, up 217 per cent year-on-year.
“As expected, Q3 was a challenging quarter for both our industry and our business in particular and we still have work to do to deliver the revenue growth that we know our business is capable of generating,” said Rubicon Project CEO and founder, Frank Addante. “We remain confident that the strength of our premium technology platform, our global marketplace and strong balance sheet uniquely position us to win in the market and we expect these strengths to propel our business to stronger long term growth in 2017.”
Addante said the workforce reduction was part a realignment begun in Q2 2016 to focus the business on key growth areas, better match its cost structure with its growth rate, and improve cost efficiency. The workforce reduction is expected to bring down future employee-related costs annually by $18m, while addition expense cost control initiatives should see this total savings figure reach $30m.
Rubicon has also integrated its global revenue teams by combining buyer and seller sales functions, as well as integrated product and engineering teams.
Microsoft makes Dynamics 365 available
Microsoft has announced global General Availability of Dynamics 365, its cloud-based suite of purpose-built, intelligent business applications that combines its CRM and ERP capabilities into a single bundle.
The vendor said Dynamics 365 offers a single, scalable toolkit for businesses to address specific needs, such as sales automation, operations, field and customer service, all backed by advanced analytics and machine learning.
“Dynamics 365 has been engineered specifically to help organisations deliver compelling and personalised experiences through every phase of their customer relationships,” Microsoft Business Services VP Asia, Simon Davies, said.
“As diverse organisations like NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA speak to us about the measurable business results their already seeing with Dynamics, we’re excited to see how the solution will steer their digital transformation in the future.”
Dynamics 365 is available through Enterprise and Business Editions, with subscriptions based per app/per user, and industry specific applications are also on offer.
Microsoft sets sights on Slack with new workplace collaboration tool
In other Microsoft news, the software giant has launched a new product it’s calling Teams, aimed at helping workplace collaboration.
Teams allows groups within a company to divide into subgroups and then set up individual channels to discuss their work. Threaded conversations in Microsoft Teams let users hold multiple conversations in the same space at the same time, while an activity tab gives a bird's eye view of all the different conversations going on inside a team. It's designed to work like an inbox, so people can get a quick view of what they need to know.
The chat-based workspace is designed to integrate deeply with the rest of Microsoft's Office 365 productivity suite, including OneDrive and Skype, for file sharing, voice and video chat. The application is now available in beta on the Web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
It's a move by the tech titan to better compete with Slack and HipChat, two high-flying group chat programs designed to make people more productive at work by creating communal space for people to discuss what's going on at the office.