Barco looks to face changing market demands and growth opportunities with a restructuring plan-- one addressing organsiational structure and effectiveness, as well as reinvestment in "certain growth initiatives."
“Since launching our ‘focus to perform’ program in 2016, Barco has made measurable and steady progress primarily by rationalizing the business portfolio and part of its manufacturing footprint, and by implementing value engineering initiatives," CEO Jan De Witte says. "With this plan we take the next step in our "focus to perform" program and embrace Barco’s future as a successful hardware, software and services company."
The restructuring program takes place on 2019 and might affect around 240 positions across the organisation, with 55 based in Belgium. The effort does not impact production workers, and Barco hopes it will reduce indirect expense-levels by around €20 million by 2020, net of reinvestments in strategic growth initiatives. As a result, Barco expects to record a restructuring charge in fiscal Q4 2018.
In 2019, Barco will bring group software development departments into one global structure, rebalance marketing, service delivery and project management capabilities and re-align and strengthen marketing and product management capabilities to ensure end-to-end responsibility for hardware, software and service delivery. In addition, the organisation will be streamlined, decision making simplified and external spending rationalised.