Want to get back operational and discipline excellence: Sikka

Infosys chief executive officer Vishal Sikka, during a recent investor conference, acknowledged that other than resuming the growth curve for the company, his focus is also to get discipline and operational excellence back.

“Typically, in a company of our size, these things—better account mining, process excellence, etc—are assumed, but we need to work on them. The ‘new and renew’ strategy that Infosys has come up with for clients is also applicable for us,” he said. One area Infosys wants to reassess is its consulting practice. Sikka said that so far the consulting practice, which includes the Lodestone acquisition, were working in silos, but in the last few weeks that has been changed.

“Infosys had a significant consulting presence. We have 100 senior partners and 1,200 employees. Today, it is a siloed organisation. They were not selling Infosys. In a first step, we have taken 100 partners and made them co-leads along with sales head of 200 most important accounts for Infosys. These consulting leaders will, together with the sales leadership, go and have strategic engagements with the clients and we have incentivised these people to grow the Infosys business... we have given them a clear and substantive incentive,” he added.

Sikka also shared how some of the initiatives he had taken are shaping up. As part of its ‘renew’ strategy for its existing clients, the company has started a large-scale effort to bring in innovation. Sikka said one of the crucial elements of his strategy is improving the company’s competitiveness and being more innovative. “This means improving our wining ability in new deals and improving productivity on deals. Beyond the operational changes we are bringing automation to the way we sell existing services” he said.