Columbus, Ohio-based Olive AI, a healthcare automation company using artificial intelligence to wring efficiencies out of healthcare workflows, has announced a major restructuring.
The restructuring will impact 35% of the company's workforce, an estimated 450 employees.
According to a statement by Olive CEO, Sean Lane,
"I’m writing to you today to share that we are transforming our business strategy, which requires that we reduce the size of our employee base by approximately 450 people. I realize this is hard news to hear, especially for those who will be leaving our team. I hope the information provided here will illuminate why we arrived at this difficult decision, how we will support our colleagues who are leaving, and how our business will operate and thrive moving forward.
What changed
We’ve grown rapidly over the last several years in service of creating a new healthcare experience for humankind. Olive’s values of 'choose vision over status quo' and 'act with urgency' drove us to make significant investments across the most pressing parts of healthcare, scale our teams and move quickly to bring solutions to the market.
The realities of today’s economy are forcing us to rethink this approach. While we are experiencing many of the same headwinds as other organizations — including shifts in the industry landscape, evolving customer expectations, and challenging market conditions — we also must reconcile missteps we made. Our fast-paced growth and lack of focus strained our product and engineering resources and prevented us from executing quickly on key initiatives. I take responsibility for this.
What this means for our strategy
To become a stronger, more sustainable company, we must transform our strategy to achieve profitability sooner than we originally planned. This means we must deliver on commitments, expand our customer base, drive steady revenue growth and continue creating value for the market and our customers.
To do this, we will focus on doing one thing, doing it incredibly well, and measuring what matters. Going forward, that one thing is the critical connection between providers and payers, starting with Autonomous Revenue Cycle for providers and Utilization Management Transformation for payers. Not only do these solution journeys comprise the vast majority of our current business footprint — more than 80% of our existing revenue and pipeline — but they are the foundation upon which Olive can continue to drive transformational value for the entire healthcare ecosystem.
Prioritizing end-to-end processes that enable payer-provider connectivity as our go-forward strategy provides us a unique advantage in the market, and gives us confidence as we look ahead. And our expectations are still high for what we can achieve — we remain deeply passionate about solving healthcare’s biggest problems. Today’s announcement means we will get more precise with how we do that.
What this means for the team
A more focused strategy requires a more focused organizational structure. With our new strategy in hand, we set out to build an organization that has the right roles in the right places to allow us to deliver on our goals and ensure we remain on the pathway to profitability. We started by identifying the critical positions needed to support our new strategy, and optimizing reporting lines to drive clear ownership and efficiency across the company. This exercise led to the consolidation of some teams across our sales, customer, product, and engineering divisions, and the elimination of teams and roles at all levels that weren’t directly tied to our go-forward plans.
For those departing, I’d like to express my sincere gratitude for everything you’ve done for Olive. We wish you the best and are committed to providing you with resources to help you move forward. For those Olivians who remain, we understand you’ll need time to process this news. Please reach out to your leader with questions.
This is going to be an incredibly difficult day. But Olive’s mission is critical, and we are confident this strategy is the right one. I’m inspired by what we’ve achieved together thus far and know that with this transformation, we will ensure Olive’s impact for many years to come."
Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?