Thread regarding CDK Global Inc. layoffs

Personally I think moving away from some element of local support will be a massive kick in the face for the company. It's what the customer base wants

The new direction seems to be a 'you need us more than we need you' mentality towards Dealers/OEM's

So I just got some information from my manager today, which is a KLT member, around the european area. Sadly their plan is as follows:

Within 2 years:

• Cut down number of DMS to 3 overall (reduce development costs - something about DMS with the right data structure)
• Move datacenter to Denmark (something about being a part of EU and something about refund of electricity cost due to green energy)
• Move ALL development to hubs in Poland and Ukraine, and all administration to Spain
• All 1st line support to be carried out in regional hubs and all 2nd line support in the development hubs
• Reduce Sales, Marketing and Consultant staff to almost none, as the new strategi and product sells it self, and will be easy to use...

Yes this doesn't make sense, what is Drive anywhere?
We are on Rev7 and works for us.

I don’t believe Drive is going anywhere anytime soon, there have been no comms internally to advise on this. Although that would not surprise me either as the comms has been horrendous since FP takeover

There was a mention of no new developments for rev8

Drive customer and confirmed today will stop support in 2023. After investigating thousands. Bring the old Kerridge.

I’m sure the cost savings in offshoring support will be passed on to the customer base.

It’s a complete disaster and the owners just follow their usual rules of buying companies and then reduce staff to minimal levels to return a profit on the investment made. Good luck to those still there, stress,busy,complaints will be your normal day now.

yes the issue is now the level support will drop, reducing support by 80% can only go one way. The good ones left we are already looking for opportunities.
Just wonder why sales staff left when nothing to sell!

Very peculiar move to get rid of so much knowledge and experience within the company. Knowledge can't be transferred to India in 6 months, the idea is flawed but it's ultimately a cost cutting exercise regardless of the corporate spin.

The real risk for customers is if the remaining experienced employees all leave in fear of being next. Only so much that can be done reading from a script

To the post below asking if Drive is being phased out:

I'm not high up in the company so don't take what I say as gospel, but I haven't heard they are planning on phasing out Drive.

That being said, the CEO made it clear from day one they see us as just a "platform" with everything else being a bolt on.

So it could well be they either can Drive or they massively change the current model.

Yes the Hungerford office is closing, only the data centre will remain. Various departments impacted by the layoffs.

The Bristol office will remain open (I don't know for how long), that office doesn't just do hardware, there are other departments within, some of which have been impacted with the layoffs.

I think Telford is closing, but I'm not 100% sure.

From what I gather, and again don't take this as gospel, the plan is to centralise pretty much everything. The UK will essentially have a bare bones amount of staff who are experts within their division. I can only assume once they're usefulness has been expended, they'll be layed off too.

The drive statement is untrue, that's not going anywhere

There have been a large number of redundancies mainly in the UK and the org has been completely changed with responsibilities being split across multiple countries

Alot of management gone across all countries which probably needed to happen to be honest

If it is true that DRIVE is being phased out and no longer supported, that is incredible news and surely going to annoy greatly the customers who migrated to it relatively recently.

As a person interested in the Automotive industry I thought Drive was meant to be the go forward product and it replaced the legacy systems including Autoline Rev8, is this not the case?

Can anyone post here confirming the DRIVE phase out and when support ends and what Keyloop are proposing to keep alive with their customers?

The DRIVE statement is so incredible I do have doubts about it given that Francisco Partners only recently spent $1.45billion buying the CDK International business. Whilst it does not appear to make sense, why would they spend all those $ if they planned to almost shut the business? Does anyone think this is a $1.45 billion plan to force a mass of dealers to change to a new system, perhaps another 3rd party has some hidden connection to FP.

Please correct me if wrong - Hungerford is I believe the HQ with many departmental services, Telford a smaller office, not sure what it provides and Bristol is more hardware related, if these are all being closed has Keyloop stopped deploying systems?

yes we can confirm 80% of the work force has gone. Drive will be phased out as won't be supported soon.

yes support to be farmed out, Hungerford/Bristol/Telford going, only the data centres remain.

Customer SLIs out of the window given 60% of support gone.

As a former cdk employee could see this coming for a number of years was too top heavy in management but I think keyloop have made too drastic of a cull and ultimately customers will suffer which will give other dms providers a real opportunity to exploit this.really cannot see how so much experience can be cut from the business without service level suffering

Current Keyloop employee and can only speak for support in UK + Ireland, but the number of support staff has gone from 140 to 37.

Customers will have support from India for the most part. The best part is we are told to tell customers their service levels won’t change (makes sense when no staff left)

The majority of remaining staff are looking to get out as soon as they can

How to ruin a company in 120 days. Well done Tom Kilroy & FP. Pinewood have just got their best ever marketing ploy, and they didn’t have to lift a finger

This week has bad over 80% of my team gone, I am one of the last few left, I will be looking for a new opportunity once the dust settles as based in the UK my days are numbered.

This week has bad over 80% of my team gone, I am one of the last few left, I will be looking for a new opportunity once the dust settles as based in the UK my days are numbered.

The office in the middle east as well it seems. Any word on other markets outside of the UK/Ireland?

They only told us individually and it was over the last 3 days, no numbers given but it seems to be around 50% of people have been made redundant.
That is not including those that have been told they will be kept until end of year before losing their job.
Support moved to India and only a small core team left in the uk

Does anyone have any actual figures on the Keyloop redundancies and which departments are impacted and their timing. If there are any details about the executive plan (assuming there is one) that would be good to hear.

The information would be useful for a news article in trade publications such as but not limited to motortrader.com.

It is only fair for the UK and other country customers to hear about how they are going to be impacted by the cuts announced this week, they can then pass informed feedback to the decision makers in Keyloop.

Have been culled as well as of Monday (28th).

Seeing the people that have been let go is mind-boggling as there is so much knowledge and talent just gone.

Most likely what will happen is that India will be Tier 1, with UK being Tier 2 (shutting the remote offices outside of Hungerford).

They'll make SLA with India closing the easy cases, then escalate to the UK for root cause.

Once India have been trained, then another round of redundancies for the rest of UK support. Only keeping sales and people to run the data centre.

I hope that anyone that is still there after this round is done start looking for another place to work as FP only see what Keyloop can do financially.

The owners are well know for taking over companies and culling the staff levels, most jobs from support will be taken by their Indian offices, give it 6 months and watch the big dealer groups move to another DMS.

Current Keyloop employee here (I started the company when we were ADP, so have been through the CDK buyout and the Keyloop buyout)

Mass layoffs have occurred since yesterday in the UK (28th June) with absolutely no notice. Some departments have been completely shredded with seemingly no plan for the department to exist in the future.

I have been given notice today (29th June) that my role will cease to exist by the end of the year.

Me and my ex colleagues cannot understand their overall plan, some speculating they'll offshore everything, others speculating they have a different product lined up and others speculating that Francisco partners only wanted our customer base.

I loved the people I worked with, it's what made working there worth it.

All I can say is FP face annoying a lot of our customers seeing as multiple projects in the pipeline will now be in jeopardy as they have no immediate staff with the knowledge to execute said projects.

It's been a brutal couple of days. If anyone is reading this and their company is being purchased by FP, get your CV/resume updated and get a new job asap.

Wow wow wow, just heard my former colleagues have all been made redundant from keyloop, I warned them at the time when the takeover was made that this would eventually happen.

More layoffs today across all sites

So now we know why we lost our jobs, to balance the books so the sale of CDKI could be made

Agree with last comment, maybe the title should read CDK UK ..... approximately 350 staff throughout uk locations , 35 made redundant equaled 10%

Maybe the title should read CDK UK , the people who got made redundant ( not sacked ) came from the Hungerford, Telford, Glasgow and Ireland offices
Approximately 350 staff in total , remove 35 = 10% redundancy
On another point it’s coming around again in January just so you don’t all keep thinking it’s over and everyone is safe.

Not sure about the back-and-forth going on here and do not care, but 10% of CDKi would mean hundreds of employees, not the 50 or so who were sacked as part of the realignment and absorption into US oeprations.

I wonder if you posters (pro and con) know that CDKi is not just the Hungerford office, as it seems to be intimated here?

This is a bit of a late comment but in my office ( I'm one of the lucky ones to keep my job) we lost 2 colleagues from the support team And I know of 6 more from support in the other locations , cannot give any other number from the other departments has it was all kept very quiet.

Hi all , just wanted to add my own comment to this board, yes 30 to 40 people were made redundant at the end of June 2020. The reason given was a restructure of CDKI.
Does not matter what terminology is used a large number of staff lost their jobs.

If you want proof it’s in the cdk fiscal as below:
CDKI Restructuring. On May 2, 2020, we adopted a plan to restructure the CDKI segment to reduce costs and improve margins. The Company expects to incur costs related to one-time employee termination benefits up to $30.0 million. We have incurred costs of $14.2 million during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, additional charges related to these actions are expected to be incurred through early fiscal 2021

any Updated news on possible layoffs?

Still no proof, and still no layoff... just some rando spewing rumor.

Ugh go gobble someone

Ugh. you're dredging up the restructure, which is not a 10% layoff of CDKI.

It doesn't matter how many times you refresh the page to downvote, and it doesn't matter how many times you post the same claptrap; there is no 10% layoff in CDKi.

From latest earnings call. For those who are in more need of 'proof'.

In an effort to improve margins and generate appropriate returns, we approved a restructuring plan in late April for our International business. We expect this to successfully reduce costs and improve margins within our CDKI segment beginning in fiscal year 2021. The restructuring expenses related to this program are expected to be approximately $30 million. These expenses will be included as an adjustment to our non-GAAP financial measures and have been considered in our fiscal 2020 guidance.

Uk law does not require a public announcement, They just need to inform Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) . I am also one of the 10% loosing my job, So it’s not lies, it is a true fact.

If you look at glass door reviews from the UK you will see some alluding to layoffs in that area. Remember: HR will not make some post announcing downsizing. The way we found out about it last time was through those impacted. If you don't have a connection in the UK you likely will never find out. They always mask it with "reorganization" or "optimization"

If you have, as you claim, access to internal cdk networks. Listen to the recording of cdki virtual get together 20th May. It may possibly change your mind.