Background: the growth of the company
Infosys is one of the fastest growing and most successful IT services companies in the world. Founded by seven professionals in 1981, it relocated to Bangalore the following year. It is a global player in the knowledge economy with headquarters in India.
The original founders, all of whom had a technical, engineering or scientific background, established the company when India was a controlled economy. They were unable to obtain permission to import a computer and began by selling their services to local organisations, often foreign owned, who possessed the necessary hardware. They then entered an arrangement with a US owned software house and moved through a phase of gradual growth. Their reputation, as is the case with a number of Indian software houses, was established at Y2K. This was the time when the systems and packages throughout the world needed an overhaul and India had the ability to deliver reliably and quickly.
Infosys was listed on the US NASDAQ exchange for high-tech stocks in 1999 and is now a $1 billion turnover company. Its growth was assisted by a cautious, conservative attitude at the time of the dot.com bubble. It has traditionally been focused on IT services but is moving towards higher value added services by providing business solutions. Infosys has always been strong on application development and maintenance, particularly of legacy software systems. It is rated at the highest level five of the CMM (Capability Maturity Model from SEI of Carnegie Mellon University, USA) for the software industry.
In the words of the Head of Education and Research at Infosys, Dr M.P. Ravindra:
“Our aim is to become a provider of business solutions leveraging technology to compete with any consultancy in the world.” This ambition is built on the vast pool of talent available in India, but demands a commitment to maintain, enhance and update skills at all levels.”
Investment in knowledge and learning
Infosys’ corporate message is “powered by intellect, driven by values” and the company makes a considerable investment in knowledge and learning. The human resource concerns mirror those of any large knowledge intensive company. They have moved from 15 to 6 tiers of staff and they have introduced an Employee Stock Option Plan (the first in India). There is a competency system in place and every individual must have a competency development plan, based on these competencies, which takes account of individual performance, organisational priorities and, where appropriate, client feedback.
Training interventions are organised in four key areas:
- Technology and Project Management
- Leadership and managerial including soft skills training
- Domain training (knowledge of specific industry)
- Quality processes
The education department also provides intervention through just-in-time training courses, mainly delivered off the job and mainly project specific.
There is an ambitious knowledge management programme in place with rewards and recognition for those staff who submit knowledge assets, which are highly rated by their peers. One of the many knowledge products is Kspeak, which was developed some time ago. This tool provides a facility whereby any Infoscion (their preferred term for their employees) to telephone in with an enquiry, probably on a technical subject. The answer or solution will be generated through voice recognition and intelligent systems and mailed back to the person concerned.
Despite this technical sophistication there is probably more reliance on the classroom than in a US or European firm. Dr Ravindra expresses his perspective in the following terms: “Learning should be supported not automated.” It is also a cultural issue and a change management program is in preparation and they plan to roll it out soon.
The scope of the challenge
Infosys currently employs over 52,000 staff throughout the world. Three-quarters of them work in India with the headquarters at Bangalore, in India’s Silicon Valley, organised as an impressive and attractive campus. To reach the campus you have to travel on grossly overcrowded and under maintained roads – India’s poor infrastructure is recognised a major constraint for its growth.
The major impression that Infosys leaves on the outsider is the scale of its ambitions and problems. Infoys receives nearly a million and half annual applications for employment and in the last year recruited 21,000 new candidates. In India students who proceed through the University career system are only allowed to accept one job offer. They cannot choose at the last moment or try to play one employer against the other.
The offer to acceptance ratio is therefore critical and Infosys claim that theirs is running at 85%. Across the company all new-entrant foundation students receive 14 weeks training. To cope with an entry cohort of this size a new induction course starts each month. Delivery is 50% classroom and 50% hands-on activity with the support of a mentor. The training facility at Mysore can train 4,500 trainees at any one time and this figure can be increased to 6,000 if electronic enablers are used.