Infosys Competitive Advantage

Overview

The Infosys Journey…

2005

Infosys
crosses USD
1.6B (05-06
projection
$2.1B) in
revenue and
has over
49000
employees,
with 454
clients

Page 5
Vision:-“To be a globally respected corporation that provides best-of-
breed business solutions, leveraging technology, delivered by best-in-
class people."

Mission:- "To achieve our objectives in an environment of fairness,

honesty, and courtesy towards our clients, employees, vendors and
society at large.

Values
Infosys’ value system is best articulated by the acronym
C-Life –Customer Delight, Leadership by Example, Integrity & Transparency, Fairness and
Pursuit of Excellence.
The major objective of the company is to become India’s most respected company.
Infosys deliberately defocused on revenue and profits. Their goal was to do everything by the
book

Competitive Advantage of Infosys

1. Cost Leadership Strategy Of Infosys

Log in on time

It recently announced an initiative as per which if an employee reaches office before 8 am

throughout a month, he will get a cash award of about Rs 500.

The move is aimed at increased utilisation of its transport services and to beat the traffic,
which will result in higher productivity for the company. The company operates several buses
to transport its employees. "This is to make sure that the buses are full. The capacity usage of
the buses is very low at the moment," said Bala.

Discretionary spend slowdown

Discretionary expenses have been drastically reduced across the company. The Infosys senior
management and board members have already offered to cut down their discretionary spends.

This includes brand building expenses and sales & marketing. "We are looking at cutting
down some of the discretionary expenses. The travel cost has already come down
significantly. However, we are not cutting any necessary expenses on things like training and
R&D," said Gopalakrishnan.
Deliver or. . .

Infosys has placed around 5 per cent of its global workforce under the scanner. It has told its
senior managers to give the lowest performance rating (4 on a scale of 1-4) to the
'underperforming' 5 per cent as a part of the company's consolidated relative ranking. Though
rock-bottom rankings have been handed out earlier, this is the first time that Infosys has made
it mandatory.

The move is expected to affect over 5,000 employees.

The company has decided to implement a six-month mentoring programme for such
employees after which it will decide their future based on the improvements they have made.
As a part of this programme, each affected employee will be asked to work under the
supervision of a mentor who is a senior executive.

During this period, the employee will not be given any important assignment, even though he
will be allowed to work on the project where he is working at present. If the concerned
employee is on bench, he will give all his time for the mentoring programme. During this
time, the employee will get full salary as well as the regular allowances.

"While 50 per cent of such employees come back to the system, others get the message and
quit voluntarily in most cases," Infosys Vice-president and Group HR Head Nandita Gurjar
said.

Travel economy

Infosys has asked its staff to travel on an economy-class ticket if the flying time is less than
four hours.

Variable pay cut

It is looking at slashing the variable pay component of its employees' salaries.

Time for a sabbatical

Employees have been issued letters stating they could opt for a one-year sabbatical to engage
themselves in philanthropic activities. They would continue to draw 50 per cent of their
salary during the period.

However, only those employees who have been on the company rolls for at least two
consecutive years before are eligible for the offer. A panel comprising senior members of the
Infosys leadership team will decide each case.

Smaller pay hike

Employees may get pay hikes below 10 per cent this year, the company's chief financial
officer S D Shibu Lal has said. Which means they are lot luckier than many others who have
had to face pay cuts, longer working hours, additional responsibilities and even job loss.
 2. Superior Innovation :-
A. Green Innovation

Infosys is focused on Green IT to improve the quality of life, protect the environment and
transform business. From an enterprise cloud to smart grids within our campuses, we have
piloted several green applications locally:

InGreen Energy Management

Our application evaluates energy consumption patterns to identify opportunities for energy
optimization. Automated data gathering and intuitive data visualization enable tracking and
reporting of energy related data at consolidated and granular levels.

Smart workplaces

Intelligent cubicle design techniques and sensors provide volumetric lighting by detecting
movement of employees and assessing body temperature to calibrate the intensity of light.

Carbon footprint calculator

Our patent-pending, desktop personal carbon calculator measures an individual's carbon

footprint and reports the carbon credits required to offset it. A sustainability portal guides
employees on how to reduce their ecological impact.

Responsible computing

Terminator, our desktop application prompts employees to switch off their Personal
Computers (PCs) towards the end of the day. PCs shut down automatically after a pre-defined
idle period.

Car pooling

Our online tool facilitates group travel among employees. The tool is being shared with
companies in the vicinity across our Development Centers in India.

Infosys is set to become carbon-neutral by 2012. Our global customers partner with us to
transform into low-carbon businesses. We reduce their carbon footprint by innovating across
their product lifecycle. We have developed green IT solutions for companies across
industries:

 Automotive: We redesigned the sub-frame assembly and reused components to

enhance the fuel efficiency of semi-trailers at an automotive major.
  Manufacturing: We helped a global aluminum manufacturer save US$ 1 million per
furnace annually by automating and integrating melt furnace operations using
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) technology to reduce energy consumption.
 Telecom: We improved scheduling and utilization of the field workforce at a leading
telecom company in the Asia-Pacific region. It minimized operational costs and
reduced truck rolls to customer premises by 50%, significantly reducing their carbon
footprint.
 Insurance: Our workflow-based document management system transformed
underwriting into an automated business process for an insurance company. It realized
annual savings of US$ 300,000 in office supplies and record storage, while drastically
reducing consumption of paper.
 Resources: Our integrated ERP solution automated the business processes of a South-
East Asian forest resource and wood products company. It enhanced the reforesting
program, optimized transportation across processing facilities and distribution
networks, and reduced carbon emissions.

B. Finacle : Infosys product on global retail core banking solution, it’s global leader
in this segment .

3. Customer Responsive Model

The Field Optimization Solution, Developed by Infosys and BT, Helps Serve Customers
Better

BT, a world leader in communications, provides innovative telecommunication, broadband

and internet products and services. Information Age highlights how BT enhanced its
customer service by implementing the Field Optimization Suite (FOS), jointly developed by
BT and Infosys, to serve customers quickly and more efficiently.

BT's mobile workforce of over 28,000 service engineers visits customers at home to address
service complaints. The company realized that prompt service was dependent on factors such
as demand, availability of engineers and equipment, traffic delays, etc.

Infosys streamlined BT's bespoke systems and incorporated relevant information into the
existing business processes, ensuring enhanced customer responsiveness.

Suite Uses Service-Oriented Architecture to Predict Demand

FOS enables managers to allocate resources and plan service engineers' appointments based
on location. The solution uses Service-Oriented Architecture to predict demand by applying
decision support algorithms to data from BT's customer relationship management system.
Infosys incorporated its patented J2EE Enterprise Application framework, RADIEN, for
faster turnaround times.

The Infosys-BT solution has resulted in improved customer service and workforce
productivity. According to Gilbert Owusu, technical group leader at BT's Intelligent Systems
Research Centre, "More accurate allocation of resources has made it more likely for issues to
be resolved on the first visit, which, along with improved punctuality, has boosted customer
satisfaction."

4. Superior Quality Assurance

Four Rs' of Software Quality Assurance

IT organizations must adopt a focused approach and a comprehensive methodology for end-
to-end testing. In a SearchSoftwareQuality.com blog, Infosys' expert identifies 'four Rs' in
software quality assurance:

Risk: Risk-based testing helps quantify and mitigate risks in the lifecycle of applications, and
prioritize tests more effectively.

Return on Investment: Automation improves ROI of testing significantly. In addition,

environment optimization and reducing dependencies maximize the Return on Investment
early in the application lifecycle.

Regulations: The focus of regulatory compliance is on safeguarding the privacy of

customers. Independent verification and validation services are required in a landscape where
different entities within the enterprise may be responsible for regulation and compliance.

Rich customer experience: Tools for 'eye-capturing', early code, and prototyping enable
early testing of usability, flexibility and accessibility of software.

Our expert also mentions the shift from User Interface to end-to-end testing with distributed,
multi-tier architectures in Service-Oriented Architecture and unique approaches to ERP
testing.

5. Location Advantage (Advantage India)

 Cost of an engineer is about 20 –40 per cent of the comparable cost in
European Union (EU) .
 Selling, general and administrative costs approximately 80 per cent of
comparable cost in EU .
 Average offshore billing rate at US$ 20 to 35 per hour; about 50 to 70 per
cent lower than EU
 6,75,000 technical graduates per annum, of which 4,00,000 are engineers.
 Over 50,000 MBAs graduating per annum .