Oracle cuts jobs at Cerner Digital Record Unit

The software giant is working to integrate last year s $28.3 billion acquisition, which has cut jobs at its Cerner digital health-records unit, particularly in marketing.

The workers were informed last week that their positions had been eliminated, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the matter. While the full scale of cuts could not be determined, Cerner's marketing and creative services divisions were hard hit, and some technical positions were also affected, said former employees who lost their jobs.

Jason Withington worked at Cerner for nearly 16 years, most recently in data center operations, before his job was wiped out last week. He said several of his division's workers had been let go over a decade of service. Withington is a recently elected commissioner for Clay County in Missouri, the county in the Kansas City metropolitan area where Cerner is headquartered.

Oracle didn't respond to requests for comment. Cerner, which became part of the company last June, has fueled cloud growth and contributed more than 1.5 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter. Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, said that there was an increase in future growth for the electronic records business.

The software giant is focused on cutting costs at Cerner. At an investor event in October, Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said there were many ways that the profitability could be improved at the acquired unit. Catz said that the situation in Cerner was just not how we run a place, and that they would clean Cerner up. According to a regulatory filing, Oracle announced last year that it would conduct a restructuring program due to our acquisitions and certain other operational activities. The company spent $585 million on the program through February 28, mainly related to employee severance costs, and estimated it would spend some of the remaining $342 million for restructuring through the end of the fiscal year in May.

Oracle employed about 143,000 people in May 2022, before the Cerner deal was closed, the company said. According to the data compiled by Bloomberg, Cerner had about 25,000 employees when the acquisition was announced in December 2021.

Catz said the operating margin of Cerner has increased over 5 percentage points since the acquisition. Last year, Oracle said it would close some offices in the Kansas City area and consolidate its workforce into a single location. The recent Cerner job reductions were reported earlier in the day by the Kansas City Business Journal.

Oracle is known for its cost cuts and high profits. In an earnings call earlier this month, Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff said he learned the Oracle Playbook from Ellison as activist investors pushed Benioff to boost earnings. A few months ago, Salesforce announced it would cut 8,000 workers.

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