Consona layoff

A Spectator reader informs me that Consona had an unannounced layoff on November 3. Sales, development, and corporate functions were affected. The number of employees affected is unknown. My source is a former Consona employee that maintains contact with folks who still work there.

Consona, which changed its name from M2M Holdings last year, is the parent company for Made2Manage, a well-regarded ERP system for small and midsize manufacturing firms. Consona has also acquired several other ERP and CRM systems for the SMB market, notably Intuitive, Onyx, Encompix, DTR, Cimnet, and Axis. Intuitive itself had previously acquired Supplyworks and Relevant. Many of these are solutions focused on niche industry requirements, an approach that I am particularly fond of.

Consona has not responded to my request for confirmation of the layoff.

If you have further information, please email me or post a comment below.

Update, Nov 24. A Consona represented responded this morning with confirmation of the workforce reduction, but claims they were movements of jobs from the U.S. to Consona's offshore development facility in India.

She writes:

We did recently move some positions to our office in Bangalore, India. We are leveraging our offshore development capacity during the economic downturn to maintain our ability to deliver solutions to our customers while keeping costs down. We also restructured our IT organization to provide 24 hour support to our customers and offices around the world by opening an IT support organization in Bangalore. Considering these positions were simply transitioned to another location, the "reductions" you note ... are insignificant.

Overall, Consona has a track record of being a stable company for our customers. Our strong financial performance is based on the fact that we continually adjust our business based on our results, near term projections, and state of the market and economy. This is not something all software companies are doing, as you know.

Just a few notes on our office in Bangalore...

• Mixed onshore/offshore model that doubles development capacity and achieves a faster time to market (24-hour operation)
• Similar structure in many other SW providers.
• We have our own development center operating successfully since the 90s as part of Cimnet Systems.
• Staff are Consona employees, have been successfully releasing both major and minor product releases