Cirata PLC on Tuesday said its first quarter bookings fell, but assured that it is on its way to improve its pipeline performance.
Cirata is a South Yorkshire-based software solutions provider, known until October as WANdisco, specialising in data transfer and integration into cloud platforms.
Cirata said bookings in the first quarter of the year were $700,000, down 67% from $2.1 million the year before.
Its DevOps/Application Lifecycle management software accounted for 51% of bookings, while Data Integration software accounted for 49%, Cirata said.
The company explained that some of the orders that were targeted for the fourth quarter of 2023 closed in early 2024 and, similarly, some of the deals targeted for the first quarter of 2024 have also slipped with the expectation that these will now conclude in the second quarter.
‘Issues contributing to slippage include the complex nature of enterprise sales for data integration, protracted procurement processes and the ramping of the new sales team,’ Cirata explained.
However, the company assured that foundations are now in place to deliver ‘steadily improving pipeline predictability and performance.’
Chief Executive Officer Stephen Kelly said: ‘I want to provide a balanced scorecard and honest perspective on the progress of Cirata. We were disappointed by the actual [first quarter] bookings and again experienced deal slippage relating to the complex nature of enterprise sales, protracted procurement processes and the ongoing ramping of our new sales team. However, I am pleased with the increasing level of sales activity in the quarter, following the complete reboot of the GTM organization.’
This comes after Cirata, or WANdisco at the time, almost collapsed in 2023 amid the discovery of illegitimate purchase orders. As part of its effort to move on, the company changed its name to Cirata in early October.
In January, Cirata had reported that its turnaround plan was ‘well underway’ as it expects growth in its second half bookings, following a ‘traumatic’ year. Although it admitted that the scandal was a ‘traumatic time for shareholders and employees’ and had a ‘significant impact’ on prospective customers and partners, it assured its sales pipeline was in the ‘early stages of a rebuild’.
Shares in Cirata fell 1.5% to 48.75 pence each in London on Tuesday morning.
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