Infosys
has created a special team under direct supervision of chief executive
Vishal Sikka to manage the top 15 customer accounts at India's second
largest software exporter. It is also in the process of completely
revamping its core banking software Finacle, with heavy investments
underway in the US.
During an investor conference in New York, Sikka said Infosys has hired a new chief technology officer ( CTO) for its products business. The company is confident of meeting its 2015-16 revenue guidance of 10-12%, on the back of a strong pipeline and several new deals over the past twothree months, and expects the second half of the year to be stronger for Infosys than the first, he said.
"We've seen an improvement in the pipeline. So we are confident about (meeting) 10-12% (revenue guidance) this year," said Sikka. The CEO conceded that Infosys had fallen far behind some of its top-tier Indian outsourcing rivals in its ability to generate more business from its largest customers.
Bengaluru-based Infosys, which counts Bank of America and Apple among its top clients, has lost significant market share over the past five years to faster-growing rivals such as TCS and US-based Cognizant and lost its prized bellwether status after it missed its own guidance several times under previous CEO and cofounder SD Shibulal.
"We've created a special team directly under my supervision for the top 15 clients - the top three clients from each of the five verticals so we're able to better mine, connect the dots, create a lot of agility around new opportunities as well as arrest decline in existing opportunities and so on," said Sikka, who became Infosys's first non-founder CEO last year.
Sikka further said, "Compared to our competitors, we've been significantly behind on the top accounts. We've been working to fix that." The company has also revamped the way it creates proposals for clients to enable better communication in some of its largest accounts, he said. "We've also centralized our RFP (request for proposal) and proposal creating team. This is led by a brilliant design thinker. He manages all the large proposals that we create to make sure we articulate these from the customers' point of view, that we're creating modern techniques of narratives and storytelling, a much more compelling articulation of what we're offering. The state of proposal writing left a lot to be desired when I looked at it," said Sikka.
Infosys has also started winning new deals, using the capabilities it acquired from Israel-based Panaya, which it bought earlier this year for $200 million. "In our manufacturing vertical we've already sold six deals on Panaya, which is not significant from a financial perspective but very significant from a strategic perspective because the Infosys sales force is able to sell Panaya," said Sikka.
He also reiterated his "aspirational" goal of making Infosys a $20 billion company by 2020, and said all targets were achievable. Infosys plans to generate $16.5 billion revenue from traditional outsourcing, $1.5 billion from acquisitions and $2 billion from newer areas of technology by 2020.
Sikka said that the company will also expand its existing facilities to accommodate the 70,000 people it plans to hire over the next five years. "We look at the last quarter as somewhat of an aberration, both from the perspective of the changes that happened in the industry as well as some of the operational weaknesses that became apparent to us. So I don't see anything unusual from that perspective this quarter," said Sikka.
Last week, at an investor conference Sikka had said that the company was revamping the structure of its top customer accounts, with 100 client partners to be assigned as co-leads with account managers to 200 of the company's top customers. "What we've done is we've combined these over the last couple of months into one team and there are 100 senior partners in this combined team. We took these senior partners and gave each of them two accounts -- one from our top 100 and one from another 100 accounts that we want to be bigger in, where we're under-penetrated or where we have higher ambitions," said Sikka on Friday.
"Each of these senior consulting people will co-lead two accounts together with sales lead...and they are incentivised on their ability to bring the entire Infosys with them. So they become articulators of the whole story.... In the last three months, we've won several significant deals as a result of these initiatives," he said. Sikka said Finacle was undergoing a major revamp under Michael Reh and expected significant growth from the core banking product over the next few quarters, with heavy investments underway in the US to increase Finacle's footprint.
"We recently got Finacle into the US with (client) Discover Financial," said Sikka. "We're investing heavily in the US. We have revamped the entire organisation. We've had 10% quarter on quarter growth from Finacle over the past few quarters... (and) we will see significant growth in the coming quarters."
During an investor conference in New York, Sikka said Infosys has hired a new chief technology officer ( CTO) for its products business. The company is confident of meeting its 2015-16 revenue guidance of 10-12%, on the back of a strong pipeline and several new deals over the past twothree months, and expects the second half of the year to be stronger for Infosys than the first, he said.
"We've seen an improvement in the pipeline. So we are confident about (meeting) 10-12% (revenue guidance) this year," said Sikka. The CEO conceded that Infosys had fallen far behind some of its top-tier Indian outsourcing rivals in its ability to generate more business from its largest customers.
Bengaluru-based Infosys, which counts Bank of America and Apple among its top clients, has lost significant market share over the past five years to faster-growing rivals such as TCS and US-based Cognizant and lost its prized bellwether status after it missed its own guidance several times under previous CEO and cofounder SD Shibulal.
"We've created a special team directly under my supervision for the top 15 clients - the top three clients from each of the five verticals so we're able to better mine, connect the dots, create a lot of agility around new opportunities as well as arrest decline in existing opportunities and so on," said Sikka, who became Infosys's first non-founder CEO last year.
Sikka further said, "Compared to our competitors, we've been significantly behind on the top accounts. We've been working to fix that." The company has also revamped the way it creates proposals for clients to enable better communication in some of its largest accounts, he said. "We've also centralized our RFP (request for proposal) and proposal creating team. This is led by a brilliant design thinker. He manages all the large proposals that we create to make sure we articulate these from the customers' point of view, that we're creating modern techniques of narratives and storytelling, a much more compelling articulation of what we're offering. The state of proposal writing left a lot to be desired when I looked at it," said Sikka.
Infosys has also started winning new deals, using the capabilities it acquired from Israel-based Panaya, which it bought earlier this year for $200 million. "In our manufacturing vertical we've already sold six deals on Panaya, which is not significant from a financial perspective but very significant from a strategic perspective because the Infosys sales force is able to sell Panaya," said Sikka.
He also reiterated his "aspirational" goal of making Infosys a $20 billion company by 2020, and said all targets were achievable. Infosys plans to generate $16.5 billion revenue from traditional outsourcing, $1.5 billion from acquisitions and $2 billion from newer areas of technology by 2020.
Sikka said that the company will also expand its existing facilities to accommodate the 70,000 people it plans to hire over the next five years. "We look at the last quarter as somewhat of an aberration, both from the perspective of the changes that happened in the industry as well as some of the operational weaknesses that became apparent to us. So I don't see anything unusual from that perspective this quarter," said Sikka.
Last week, at an investor conference Sikka had said that the company was revamping the structure of its top customer accounts, with 100 client partners to be assigned as co-leads with account managers to 200 of the company's top customers. "What we've done is we've combined these over the last couple of months into one team and there are 100 senior partners in this combined team. We took these senior partners and gave each of them two accounts -- one from our top 100 and one from another 100 accounts that we want to be bigger in, where we're under-penetrated or where we have higher ambitions," said Sikka on Friday.
"Each of these senior consulting people will co-lead two accounts together with sales lead...and they are incentivised on their ability to bring the entire Infosys with them. So they become articulators of the whole story.... In the last three months, we've won several significant deals as a result of these initiatives," he said. Sikka said Finacle was undergoing a major revamp under Michael Reh and expected significant growth from the core banking product over the next few quarters, with heavy investments underway in the US to increase Finacle's footprint.
"We recently got Finacle into the US with (client) Discover Financial," said Sikka. "We're investing heavily in the US. We have revamped the entire organisation. We've had 10% quarter on quarter growth from Finacle over the past few quarters... (and) we will see significant growth in the coming quarters."
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