It's not clear from the article what the 500 people are doing - they could be doing manual data entry or map validation tasks which are made redundant by the ne

It's not clear from the article what the 500 people are doing - they could be doing manual data entry or map validation tasks which are made redundant by the new "automated mapmaking platform" built by others (developers/engineers etc). The saving from those roles could well be going to be reinvested in R&D and product lines.