Infosys Tech Consulting - Strategic Factors That Promotes Great Success of the Company - Essay Example

INFOSYS Introduction The organization, Infosys Tech Consulting specializes in defining, designing as well as delivering business solutions, which are IT enabled globally. The solutions provided by the organization are focused on the provision of differentiated and operational solutions to the clients, which the organization realizes effectively by leveraging the business expertise in the domain of operations with highly differentiated service products. Increasing client values as against solely profit maxim defines the model of operations adopted by the company ever since its formation. As such, the company is focused on empowering its clients to become more competitive and profitable. However, it is worth noting that the company has risen to command great success in the global market within the IT and consulting industry. This paper therefore is focused on evaluating on the strategic factors that have to the great success that the company enjoys. Special attention will be focused on the company’s business model, products/service branding, business relations, business segmentation as well as business internal organization (Mantrala, Sridhar and Xiaodan 2012, P. 169-174). The practices of maintaining adopted effective technological advancement in the current generation does not warrant success in business operations. On the contrary, the capacity for a trading company to keep in pace with the evolving and new developments in technology and IT services would be considered prerequisite to success in trade within the 21st century. The Infosys Tech Consulting has adopted this policy where it has adopted business perspective of operations as against the perspective of technical solution. The company prides in capacity to deliver results and the success is built on key priorities, which are technology, customer value, commitment, industrial alliance as well as technical expertise among others. Technology is viewed as an enabler as against the driver in the operations of the company. The company gives priority to understanding the clients’ needs and thus prioritizes in adding value to the client’s businesses. The company adopts robust methodologies as are most suitable in suiting client cultures as well as requirements. Besides, the company runs under a commitment to developing and maintaining long-term relations with the clients. Moreover, the company enjoys long term experience in the industry hence has outstanding technical expertise to design and formulate effective solutions suitable to the needs of their clients. Discussion Business model The company has been developed over years on a basic model that esteems four main pillars, which are partnership, assurance, speed as well as value (Infosys Technologies Limited, 2009, p. 2-11). This therefore explains the adoption of client defined strategy through which it is able to deliver quantifiable attributes as well as economic business values in a cost effective manner and on time. Value: the company has invested in distinct frameworks that are meant to transform and lead clients to realization of value. Examples to these frameworks that are adopted by the company are IMPACT™ as well as VRM™. These programs are effective in that the organization is able to deliver on strategic business value. Infosys Company works under the following values customer delight, leadership by example, integrity and transparency, fairness as well as excellence in all business transactions. Speed: Through experience in repeated service provision, the company has mastered the line of service delivery and hence improved the speed in execution of services delivered. Assurance: The Company operates under a pre-instituted framework where clients’ value is esteemed and thus works towards being the lowest risk option for customer needs. The SAP programs adopted by the company are particular in assuring the clients of reduced risks through perfect design as well as track recording capacity. Partnership: Infosys ascribes to the belief that collaborative efforts between stakeholders and players in the industry would result to great success. This is revealed by the efforts adopted towards effecting good partnerships between the company and the clients in the market. The culture and values embraced by the company especially regarding the relationships between the customers and the organization are excellent in ensuring effective collaborating for good trade relations. Products/service branding Besides investing highly in research and development, the Infosys Company invests in well-known products, which are well proven across the board in order to command effectiveness in attracting customers and meeting their expectations. The company has over time intensified in offering software services alongside technology consulting. Besides, the growth of the company drove it to offer such and other services across the globe and IT services forms its bulk of operation. Among other companies who are clients of Infosys are Apple, GE, American express as well as Boeing. Proper branding as well as highly specialized services are the main reasons that have contributed to the growth of the company in the past. Besides, it specializes in product market where it works through such categories of products as banking suite, cloud and data handling, digital marketing as well as outsourcing and procurement services (“Infosys.com” 2014, para 1) Business relations The company is an international company with its services and products being outsourced all over the globe. The company treasures good business relations as shown by its endeavor to maintain effective business partnerships and trading deals with its clients. It is also very sensitive in clients are handled and this explains why the company esteems clients value over profits. Business segmentation Infosys has invested greatly in diversified fields including business consultation services, information technology, outsourcing services as well as software engineering. Besides, the company has operations within many other countries apart from India where its headquarters are situated and focuses its target to many trading businesses all over the world. Business internal organization Despite having been started by a number of investors, the company has increasingly developed strength in its operations through properly structured system of management, a pool of employee, well-defined and instituted structures of internal operation as well as good specialization in areas of operation within the different departments of the company. Besides, its participation in shares trade has made the company develop a pool of shareholders among which are individual investors, governments as well as the initial shares held by the company directors. Besides, the company has a well-instituted pool of research units (labs) distributed across the globe through which the company advances research and development in areas of operations. Opportunities & threats / sustainability of strategies Just like any other trading venture, the Infosys Company identifies opportunities as well as threats that have effects on its trading activities. Among the main business opportunities that the company has had and is, increasingly exploiting is the prospects provided by business-to-business trade relations. B2B marketing and trading has substantial benefits that the Infosys company would exploit to its benefit (“b2binfosys.com”, nd, para 1-4). Among other strengths, that the company would exploit is increased revenue through repeat business dealings by increased clients (Palmatier, Gopalakrishna and Houston, 2006, p. 477). Previously the inception of consulting business the company created higher opportunities for clients to work with the Infosys Company. As the company’s menu of services expanded, its client relationships became more complex. It started working with the business side of client organizations as well as the IT side in order to manage these complex organizations. The company saw the opportunities to enter a client relationship earlier in the lifecycle to define problems, identify solutions and then implement a solution as a natural evolution of their service offering (Tretyak and Popov 2009, p. 408). In 1999, the company decided to initiate an in-house consulting business unit. However, the company’s success in consulting was constrained due to its limited brand equity, investment allocation and recruiting abilities. The company has also had to embrace distinct strategies to implement technological advancement in its operations. On the opportunities, Infosys could perform engagement at a rate much less than its competitors like IBM and Accenture. The company planned to extend its Global Delivery Model (GDM) and create a company structure for a unique culture, which would differentiate it from other business consulting companies, enable the recruitment of top tier talent and deliver measurable value to clients (Swain, 2010, p. 2-10). Globally distributed teams of the company deliver services for maximum value and in the most efficient manner. Through them, the company cuts project costs and reduce time wasted in the market operations. Through adopting effective process requirements, the company shortens the lifecycle of solution design and implementation. Among other opportunities, that the company may exploit is cost reduction where through strategic management; the company has the capacity of lowering operational costs and hence rise on the profit margin. Besides, lowering cost to clients would result to higher income margins, which would improve on the capacity of the company to pay the employees well as an incentive to higher productivity. Improved customer service has an equal capacity to boost customer service, as customers are interested in quality of services delivered. Moreover, as an opportunity, the company would invest in delivering measurable benefits. This would require that the company first analyze the current operations with the clients to establish a baseline of business process performance, and then assess the process metrics that reflect the efficiency and effectiveness of each key business process involved. After this, the company would invest in improved business structure that would enable higher technology to enable it realize improvements in process metrics. Other general opportunities that are at the company’s disposal are building of a unique culture in trade relations with clients, recruiting right people for services as well as having better reward systems for the employees (Saeed, 2011, p. 815-820; Latusek, 2010, p. 209-211). Conclusion The sustainability of such strategies would be dependent on the capacity for the company to manage relations between the mother company and other subsidiaries such as the Infosys Consulting Inc (Vault.com Inc. 2014, para 1-5). However, it is to be acknowledged that the Infosys Company has been distinctively successful in its operations in the field of consulting and information technology (“microsoft.com” 2014, ara 1-5). Nevertheless, opportunities are pointed out and the company would rise to greater heights through exploiting the opportunities as presented. On the other hand, the company should be aware of the ever-increasing threat of competition and as such embrace better and improved tools of competition in order to remain at the top. Bibliography “b2binfosys.com”, nd, b2binfosys. Available at < http://b2binfosys.com/>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. “Infosys.com” 2014, Infosys. Available at < http://www.infosys.com/pages/index.aspx>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. Infosys Technologies Limited, 2009, Transformation for Growth and Change:Infosys’ IMPACTTM Framework and Value Realization Method (VRMTM) Available at < http://www.infosys.com/SAP/news-events/Documents/sapphire-orlando-09/framework-VRM-web.pdf>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. Latusek, W.P. 2010, "B2B relationship marketing analytical support with GBC modeling", The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 25(3): 209-219. Mantrala, M., Sridhar, S. & Xiaodan (Dani) Dong 2012, "Developing India-centric B2B sales theory: an inductive approach using sales job ads", The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 27(3): 169-175. “microsoft.com” 2014. Infosys. Available at < http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=710000000622>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. Palmatier, R.W., Gopalakrishna, S. & Houston, M.B. 2006, "Returns on Business-to-Business Relationship Marketing Investments: Strategies for Leveraging Profits", Marketing Science, 25(5); 477-493,548-549. Saeed, M.S. 2011, "Key issues in b2b marketing and a need to develop appropriate theories and models", Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research In Business, 3(3): 815-825. Swain P., 2010, Realizing Value through B2B Initiatives. Available at < http://www.infosys.com/BPM-EAI/offerings/Documents/B2B-initiatives.pdf>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. Tretyak, O.A. & Popov, N.I. 2009, "Explaining scientific networking with b2b network theories: the cases from the EU and Russia", The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 24(5): 408-420. Vault.com Inc. 2014, Infosys Consulting Inc. Available at < http://www.vault.com/company-profiles/tech-consulting/infosys-consulting-inc.aspx>[Accessed 14 February 2014]. Read More