Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka renews product focus with cultural mindshift
Infosys
has started placing a team of specialists across service lines who can
solve what it believes are some of the challenging business problems
enterprises face.
BENGALURU:
Last week, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, along with the company's senior
managers, interacted with about 100 analysts at a five-star hotel over a
three-day event in Orlando, making Ray Wang of Constellation Research
remark that the newly-appointed boss was "inviting, not defensive",
"forward thinking", "not retrospective" and "authentic not forced".
His colleague Alan Lepofsky observed that this meeting had "more suits and ties" than any other conference he had been to this year. Lepofsky is right, for an event by Infosys does manage to have the largest confluence of analysts for it is the world's most scrutinised company, with more than 57 analysts worldwide tracking a company that posted revenue of more than $8.2 billion last fiscal.
So what exactly has Sikka been up to in the 100 days since taking over as the first non-founder chief executive at the company? To start with, he's attempting to bring about a cultural shift in mindset. "If we do the work of a drone, expect to be replaced," Sikka told the gathering.
This cultural shift is largely being pushed by bringing in Design Thinking, a user-centric, problem-solving approach to help engineers make simple, well-written code. Already, the company has trained 5,238 employees and aims to have more than 30,000 engineers undergo the process at its Mysore facility.
The company has started placing a team of specialists across service lines who can solve what it believes are some of the challenging business problems enterprises face. The team of Value Ninjas is intended to help the company get more business from existing clients.
Sikka's new team of seven former SAP executives, including five senior vice presidents, will help drive this initiative, which requires a "product-centric" background, said a senior company executive.
"Data analytics is the key for this will help customers as they seek faster innovation," according to the executive. This is validated by the company's decision to beef up hiring in its data analytics team, with 300 of the 2,100 professionals the company will hire in the US in the next 12 months.
Finally, the company will soon train some of its employees under the proposed Next Gen Innovators programme to help them become "creative" and "enable them to co-innovate with clients", according to the executive. "The new Infosys is here," said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research. "Infosys has been focused on product IP before, but there can be no doubt that the product focus has been renewed and re-enforced with his appointment."
But are any of the 912 customers buying into Infosys's transformational exercise? Most importantly, has Infosys managed to win new accounts since Sikka's arrival? To be sure, the company posted better-than-expected second quarter results as revenue grew 3.2% over the April-June period to $2,201 million. The event was also attended by eight of Infosys' large clients, including Sean McCormack, chief technology officer at Harley Davidson, the US-based motorcycle maker.
On the company's recently spun-off products, platforms and solutions business, which accounts for less than 5% of total revenues, Infosys management shared some early insights.
Sanjay Purohit, boss of EdgeVerve, outlined six focus areas to scale up the division. The six scope areas are digital marketing, commerce, customer service, distribution (with TradeEdge), ecosystem management and procurement. "Purohit was pretty clear this is a real product offering, with the source code only available to his team," one of the analysts told ET.
Sikka is also focusing on a partnership model, with Infosys forging alliances with companies and universities. The company has partnered with Stanford University, to jointly create course curriculum in data science and analytics and help both parties work on real-world problem areas. The company has further extended its partnership with companies including Microsoft, Huawei and Hitachi and strengthened its engagement with Oracle and formed a new partnership with business analytics software maker Tableau.
Internally too, the change of leadership at the top has brought in a renewed confidence and buzz among the employees. "In my sense, it (attrition) should come down to 13-15% in the next two to three quarters," UB Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, told ET in an interview last month. The 1,65,000-strong Infosys reported an attrition rate of 20.1% for the second quarter ended September.
Investors have been buoyant: Since Sikka took over as chief executive on August 1, the stock has outperformed the broader National Stock Exchange IT index, up 24.3% versus 12.2%.
Still, some remain cautious about the measures translating into success. "Certainly the five pillars are promising (but) we'll have to check on customer success in the next quarters," said Mueller of Constellation, adding it may take at least 300 days to see the benefits of the change for Infosys' customers
His colleague Alan Lepofsky observed that this meeting had "more suits and ties" than any other conference he had been to this year. Lepofsky is right, for an event by Infosys does manage to have the largest confluence of analysts for it is the world's most scrutinised company, with more than 57 analysts worldwide tracking a company that posted revenue of more than $8.2 billion last fiscal.
So what exactly has Sikka been up to in the 100 days since taking over as the first non-founder chief executive at the company? To start with, he's attempting to bring about a cultural shift in mindset. "If we do the work of a drone, expect to be replaced," Sikka told the gathering.
This cultural shift is largely being pushed by bringing in Design Thinking, a user-centric, problem-solving approach to help engineers make simple, well-written code. Already, the company has trained 5,238 employees and aims to have more than 30,000 engineers undergo the process at its Mysore facility.
The company has started placing a team of specialists across service lines who can solve what it believes are some of the challenging business problems enterprises face. The team of Value Ninjas is intended to help the company get more business from existing clients.
Sikka's new team of seven former SAP executives, including five senior vice presidents, will help drive this initiative, which requires a "product-centric" background, said a senior company executive.
"Data analytics is the key for this will help customers as they seek faster innovation," according to the executive. This is validated by the company's decision to beef up hiring in its data analytics team, with 300 of the 2,100 professionals the company will hire in the US in the next 12 months.
Finally, the company will soon train some of its employees under the proposed Next Gen Innovators programme to help them become "creative" and "enable them to co-innovate with clients", according to the executive. "The new Infosys is here," said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research. "Infosys has been focused on product IP before, but there can be no doubt that the product focus has been renewed and re-enforced with his appointment."
But are any of the 912 customers buying into Infosys's transformational exercise? Most importantly, has Infosys managed to win new accounts since Sikka's arrival? To be sure, the company posted better-than-expected second quarter results as revenue grew 3.2% over the April-June period to $2,201 million. The event was also attended by eight of Infosys' large clients, including Sean McCormack, chief technology officer at Harley Davidson, the US-based motorcycle maker.
On the company's recently spun-off products, platforms and solutions business, which accounts for less than 5% of total revenues, Infosys management shared some early insights.
Sanjay Purohit, boss of EdgeVerve, outlined six focus areas to scale up the division. The six scope areas are digital marketing, commerce, customer service, distribution (with TradeEdge), ecosystem management and procurement. "Purohit was pretty clear this is a real product offering, with the source code only available to his team," one of the analysts told ET.
Sikka is also focusing on a partnership model, with Infosys forging alliances with companies and universities. The company has partnered with Stanford University, to jointly create course curriculum in data science and analytics and help both parties work on real-world problem areas. The company has further extended its partnership with companies including Microsoft, Huawei and Hitachi and strengthened its engagement with Oracle and formed a new partnership with business analytics software maker Tableau.
Internally too, the change of leadership at the top has brought in a renewed confidence and buzz among the employees. "In my sense, it (attrition) should come down to 13-15% in the next two to three quarters," UB Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, told ET in an interview last month. The 1,65,000-strong Infosys reported an attrition rate of 20.1% for the second quarter ended September.
Investors have been buoyant: Since Sikka took over as chief executive on August 1, the stock has outperformed the broader National Stock Exchange IT index, up 24.3% versus 12.2%.
Still, some remain cautious about the measures translating into success. "Certainly the five pillars are promising (but) we'll have to check on customer success in the next quarters," said Mueller of Constellation, adding it may take at least 300 days to see the benefits of the change for Infosys' customers
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