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After a bad first quarter, CRM and e-commerce software vendors have so far shown little improvement in the second quarter, judging by a of preliminary earnings announcements.

Several companies in the space - including E.piphany Inc., Pivotal Software Corp., Art Technology Group Corp, BroadVision Inc, and Xchange - warned that they will do worse in the second quarter than they did in the first and will cut more jobs to pare operating expenses.

Despite adding sales force automation application to its suite, E.piphany said that it expects to report Q2 revenues of $31 million, down from Q1 revenue of $38.1 million. E.piphany expects a loss of about $20 million in Q2, and plans additional "cost-containment" efforts, including layoffs.

CRM software developer Pivotal, which survived the first quarter 0f 2001 relatively unscathed, announced that it would lose between 28 cents and 32 cents per share or about $7.2 million pro forma in the quarter that just ended. write-downs. The company expects to report revenues between $21 million and $22 million for the quarter.

Art Technology Group said it expects to cut 20 percent of its work force as part of a corporate reorganization designed to streamline its sales and services organizations. This follows a 12 percent reduction in staff-or 150 employees-in mid-April.

Officials at ATG, of Cambridge, Mass., said they expect to report that revenues for the second quarter dipped to between $34 million and $35 million from $42.8 million in the first quarter of 2001. The company's losses figure to be between 17 cents and 19 cents per share (about $12.3 million), not including the latest restructuring charge. Last quarter's pro-forma loss was 19 cents per share.

BroadVision predicted losses of 17 cents to 20 cents per share, or around $50 million, on revenues of $52 million to $58 million. In its continuing drive to profitability, BroadVision announced that it has reduced its work force by 32 percent, or 695 employees, since March 31. BroadVision had previously announced a 15 percent staff reduction in early April.

Xchange Inc. announced a 40 percent reduction in employee headcount after it lost between 20 cents and 23 cents per share (about $7 million) on just $10.5 million in revenues in the second quarter.

Informatica Corp., one of the few publicly-traded business intelligence software vendors to so far not announce job cuts, announced that it expects to post a pro-forma loss of $1 million on $47 million of revenues in the second quarter. That doesn't include another $7 million in non-recurring expenses, such as for the amortization of goodwill, other intangible assets and stock-based compensation.

Informatica, of Palo Alto, Calif., had revenues of $54 million in the first quarter, turning a $5 million pro-forma profit.

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