Clients, Cloud and Localization Shape Infosys’ Strategy in 2023
On Feb. 21, 2023, Infosys hosted industry analysts and advisors for a packed-agenda afternoon in the company’s offices at One World Trade Center in New York City. U.S. Analyst and Advisor Meet 2023 included client stories and technology partner presentations to reinforce Infosys’ role in the IT services and cloud market. Infosys executives consistently returned to a few main themes, including delivering business outcomes, maintaining trusted relationships, and focusing on speed, agility and simplification.
Sustaining relationships to deliver tangible business outcomes: Infosys in NYC
Across an afternoon at One World Trade Center, Infosys (NYSE: INFY) leaders hosted a steady stream of clients and technology partners discussing how they have worked with Infosys to apply technology to business problems and generate both cost saving and growth opportunities. Notably, every panel included at least one client, coming from a wide range of industries and describing a variety of problems addressed — and solved — by Infosys. In the latter half of the afternoon, Infosys shifted the event’s focus to SAP (NYSE: SAP), including a presentation by Thorsten Leiduck, SVP and Co-lead Global SAP Ecosystem, Business Technology Platform. In TBR’s view, Infosys’ decision to persistently turn over the stage to clients and partners reflects the company’s confidence in its message and capabilities and a maturing of Infosys’ strategy.
In opening remarks about Infosys’ localization strategy, Srikantan Moorthy, EVP, Infosys, described the company’s six U.S. hubs focused on innovation, technology and education, with a few explicitly tied to universities and all focused on a core set of offerings, such as AI, machine learning and user experience design in Rhode Island and telecommunications in Texas. Complementing Infosys’ six Innovation and Technology Hubs, Moorthy described the company’s 21 Proximity Centers — in locations ranging from Quincy, Mass., to Bellevue, Wash. — as a foundational investment in Infosys’ effort to embed localization into the company’s overall strategy. Moorthy noted that the diversity among the partner universities, including Purdue University, North Carolina State University and the Rhode Island School of Design, resulted in multiple disciplines and specializations for Infosys’ professionals.
Overall, Moorthy’s description of Infosys’ commitment to developing talent, through university programs, apprenticeships and professional development, revealed a commitment to the U.S. market and to Infosys’ people. In TBR’s view, IT services vendors like Infosys, whose India-based talent pool is necessary for its business model, must smartly balance low-cost delivery with on-site, highly trained, localized professionals who can go beyond clients’ technology and into their core business challenges.
Cloud and partnering evolutions bring forth Infosys’ ecosystem role
For the remainder of the afternoon, Infosys’ presentations with clients and technology partners included sessions on Infosys Cobalt (Infosys’ cloud professional services platform); SAP transformations; examples of how customers and partners are tackling supply chain transformation; and clients from the insurance, banking and distilleries businesses. Highlights included the following:
- While the value proposition for migrating to cloud has proved to be increasingly compelling in recent years, Infosys EVP and Infosys Cobalt leader Anant Adya noted that clients have begun questioning their cloud spending, looking for tangible business outcomes, not just an improved internal technology experience. According to TBR Senior Analyst Evan Woollacott, “With cloud adoption getting to an inflection point beyond infrastructure, at least here in the U.S., and more into ERP workload migration and management, extracting insights through automation and AI will put even more pressure on vendors. Cloud has now graduated from being a price play to a value driver.” During the event, Adya noted that the recent hype around analytics and AI has muddied clients’ perception of the value they can get from these technologies. Infosys, according to Adya, helps clients define what business outcomes could be and then delivers through technology implementation, frequently further helping clients by uncovering business model shifts that create network effects. In short, Infosys facilitates transformation and innovation, with a commitment to delivering business outcomes.
- According to Ramesh Chougule, Infosys’ VP of SAP Practice Sales and Go to Market for North America, SAP brings domain capabilities, end-to-end delivery, and the ability to take over and transform a client’s SAP environment. One slide in particular captured the breadth of Infosys’ SAP practice, describing 12 transformation offerings and go-to-market themes. These included SAP S/4HANA supply chain Finance and OTC transformations, SAP Business Technology Platform including data and analytics, and spend optimization with SAP Ariba, FG and Concur. A subsequent presentation by Leiduck cemented Infosys’ role in SAP’s approach to industry clouds, detailing Infosys’ solutions built on SAP Business Technology Platform across five different industries.
- During a separate panel, leaders from Infosys, SAP and Microsoft detailed how Microsoft’s device and cloud businesses have complex supply chains and have experienced huge disruptions, along with the rest of the market. These supply chains are currently managed with Azure services and SAP ecosystem including ECC, IBP, MDG and other applications. Microsoft has been working with Infosys in pursuing the transformation goals and continues to invest to guard itself from future disruption. Expanding the discussion, an SAP leader shared that SAP has launched a suite of products to help customers achieve sustainability. Specifically, SAP’s Product Footprint Management and Control Tower help measure, control and report the carbon emissions. Infosys collaborated with SAP and developed a solution on SAP IBP and S/4HANA to help customers make real-time decisions around supply planning, procurement and manufacturing considering the actual and projected CO2 emissions from their products.
Staying committed to clients and partnering for strategic transformation initiatives
Throughout the event, TBR repeatedly saw evidence of Infosys’ changed relationships with its clients and technology partners. Clients’ comments — on stage and after the presentations — solidified the impression that Infosys has whole-heartedly embraced a long-term view of its clients’ IT services and technology needs, working with clients on what they can do together, not just plugging in the next technology fix.
In TBR’s most recent quarterly report on Infosys (published on Feb, 2, 2023), we noted that:
“Infosys Cobalt will remain the backbone of the company’s financial expansion efforts, with new sales opportunities stemming from developing and delivering industry cloud offerings. Additionally, Infosys has rebuilt trust within the stakeholder ecosystem, largely because the company’s executives have stuck to Infosys’ core value proposition, enabling the company to win business at a time when enterprises are evaluating their third-party services providers’ rosters and pursuing vendor consolidation.
“Robust performance in the past two years and an even healthier pipeline position Infosys well to meet its revenue guidance, which has once again been revised upward, for FY23. Consistent, quality execution will also help the company maintain momentum moving into FY24 despite facing a volatile macroeconomic environment.”
Positive sentiment from Infosys’ clients and that commitment to relationships, not transactions, contributed to TBR’s outlook on Infosys’ expected performance for the next few years.
TBR’s extensive, ongoing coverage of Infosys
TBR will continue covering Infosys within the IT services, cloud and digital transformation spaces, including quarterly reports with assessments of Infosys’ financial model, go-to-market, and alliances and acquisitions strategies. For comparison with Infosys’ peers and other IT services vendors, TBR includes Infosys in our quarterly IT Services Vendor Benchmark, our semiannual Global Delivery Benchmark and Cloud Ecosystem Market Landscape, and our annual Decarbonization Market Landscape and Innovation and Transformation Centers Market Landscape.
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