Toronto-based Jugnoo Inc. has finished a round of layoffs that reduced its staff size from almost 100 to between 80 and 85 employees, according to the firm.
Jugnoo, which offers a Web-based customer relations management platform designed to work with social media, has laid off employees in direct sales and marketing divisions. The changes come with the intent of shifting focus to research and development of its technology platform, according to Danny Brown, vice-president of partner strategy for Jugnoo. Fourteen employees have been laid off, including five contract workers.
“We found there was less of a need for the direct sales team,” he says. “It may be in the future we’ll reactivate them.”
Jugnoo offers businesses one place to mange their social media customer leads.
According to the company departures list on LinkedIn, jobs eliminated from Jugnoo over the last few months include social media manager, chief content officer, event manager, and vice-president of creative.
Rather than relying on a direct sales team and marketing, Jugnoo will work with channel partners and organic marketing to drive revenue, Brown says. “People write about us, we were featured in The Huffington Post and The Next Web.”
Jugnoo will be announcing two major channel partners in October, he adds. One will be in the IT industry and the other partner will be in the financial industry. Jugnoo also plans to exit its beta stage in the first week of October. Since April, Jugnoo has capped the number of its users at 5,000 for the beta phase. But the firm has 25,000 users registered as wanting to use the product when it launches, Brown says. The company hasn’t revealed its pricing structure yet.
Brian Jackson is the Editor at ITBusiness.ca. E-mail him at [email protected], follow him on Twitter, connect on Google+, read his blog, and check out the IT Business Facebook Page. 
