The big provider of prescription data and pharma consulting services is having a rough time and so several hundred employees will be shown the door. IMS employs about 7,500 people, by the way. To pay for the move, IMS expects to take a pre-tax charge of $86 million and $90 million.

Among its restructuring efforts, IMS plans to strengthen account management and business development, streamline consulting areas and redeploy unspecified resources to improve its business process outsourcing. Certain production operations will also be consolidated. By doing so, IMS hopes to save between $55 million and $60 million in annual savings, beginning in 2009.

“With these actions, we are positioning ourselves to reflect market realities and are adjusting our cost structure - aiming for greater simplicity, fewer management layers, faster decision making, and a sharper focus on addressing clients’ new priorities,” ceo David Carlucci says in a statement.

What Carlucci didn’t say is anything about the IMS Mess that erupted earlier this year. The firm changed software used to track and calculate scrips, but there were all sorts of glitches that caused confusion, disruption and anger among several of its key pharma clients, including Novartis, Wyeth and Lilly. Through it all, IMS issued an unusually large number of so-called product info bulletins to its customers, further unsettling the drugmakers.

The internal problems, of course, exacerbated larger industry issues, such as spending on certain IMS services. This was telegraphed three months ago, when IMS execs promised to take some action to cope with declining profits and chronic problems with its various businesses.