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For Infosys, the chase continues but with greater aggression

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Smita Vasudevan
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Infosys’ performance in FY15 was reflective of the overall grim mood of the Indian IT services industry that was plagued by currency fluctuations and pricing pressures.

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Infosys was yet again one of the top 5 companies in the DQ Top20 rankings for  FY2015.

During the course of the year, the IT behemoth aimed to get industry leading growth rates back but failed to do much, especially due to a disappointing fourth quarter. Performance fell below expectations as the company posted a modest 6% hike in revenues in FY15 as compared to the previous fiscal. It attributed the fall to increasing pricing pressures and grim services growth in the last quarter.

The decline was visible across geographies as both Americas and India market got hit in Q4. Across verticals, banking, financial services, and insurance still held the lion’s share in revenues contributing 33.6% in FY15. This was followed by manufacturing that accounted for about 24%. Amid geographies, the US and Canada held about 63% of the total revenues.

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On the whole, it was a milestone year for the company as it went through some transformational changes. It bid farewell to three of its founders, Narayana Murthy, S Gopalakrishnan, and SD Shibulal. The company got its first nonfounder CEO, as Vishal Sikka took over the reins in August. Since his arrival, Infosys has been witnessing some key structural changes aimed to instill fresh life into the IT company that has been struggling on many fronts over the last few years. In line with the renew and new strategy, the company has been making moves in many directions which industry experts suggest will deliver fruits in the future.

The IT services provider has upped its focus on automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud-based IT services and has been actively investing on these fronts. The company made a slew of acquisitions over the last few months. Its big ticket acquisition of Panaya, an automation company, has been a significant step in line with its new strategy. Industry analysts suggest that Panaya will help enhance Infosys’ strength in automation and artificial intelligence and will also expand its presence in Israel. The IT services major also recently announced the acquisition of Kallidus, a San Francisco-based digital and mobile commerce solutions company for a sum of about `760 crore. Additionally, it has acquired a minority stake in air quality monitoring start-up, Airviz. During the year, Infosys managed to strike some big deals. In total, it added 221 new clients in FY15. The most prominent one was the multi-million dollar IT services deal it signed with ABN AMRO. As a part of the deal, Infosys will provide services across application development and maintenance, testing, and product implementation.

Another significant win was the 11-year deal with Western Union Financial Services where the IT services company will take complete ownership to modernize, maintain, and support its worldwide settlement systems. The year also saw the company driving a slew of employee-related initiatives. It established a design thinking training course for new joiners at the Infosys Global Education Center in Mysore.

More than 22,000 trainees are expected to undergo this training in FY16. It has also established a SWAT team to simplify processes, empower its employees, and eliminate bureaucracy. The company believes that these employee engagement initiatives have helped in bringing down attrition significantly with employee exits coming down from 1,768 in January, 2015 to 1,352 in March, 2015.

Infosys also won the 2014 Asia Pacific HRM Congress award for diversity and HR. The company has given a revenue guidance between 10-12% for FY16 in constant currency terms. Going ahead, Infosys is optimistic that the investments into new areas and renewed focus on traditional IT services will pay off and it will be able to achieve industry leading growth rate by FY17. To attain that the IT services company will be pursuing fresh opportunities around automation and will continue to invest in big data analytics, and emerging mobile and digital technologies. The aspirational target of ‘$20 bn by 2020’ looks like a distant dream as of now.

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