Infosys will launch at least five new business platforms in the coming months, many of them targeting the CFO?s office, as the economic crisis makes global companies search deeper for operational efficiencies to shore up profitability.

Infosys is readying business platforms around asset management, order management, billing and licensing and enterprise project management that would make organisations ?smarter? and impact their bottomline. In this category, the firm has already launched a human resources platform called TalentEdge that simplifies HR processes and a sourcing platform, Source-to-Pay, that enables enterprises to manage their direct and indirect spend.

The firm will also launch a digital distribution platform that impacts a customer?s topline. Infosys? topline impacting platforms, already in the market, include offerings for social media (SocialEdge), e-commerce (CommerceEdge), digital marketing and application marketplace (Flypp ).

Infosys currently has over 20 customers for this nascent service and reported a total contract value of $200 million across the eight platforms it has already launched.

Business platforms, an IP-led packaged and configurable service offering that address specific functional or vertical needs, are a new paradigm and may change the way the world knows outsourcing. After pioneering the global delivery model two decades ago, Infosys, according to some analysts, appears to have again taken a lead in the next wave of delivering technology services. The platforms are delivered through cloud computing and the pricing is tied to either usage or business outcomes.

For Infosys, which values the quality of the margins it can generate over quantum, platforms appear to be a good way of breaking away from the commoditised portions of the IT services business while making the firm?s revenues more non-linear.

All the platforms are in an investment stage and none of them are profitable yet. ?You need to get scale in platforms. If platforms become 10-12% of the firm?s revenues, then it could be incrementally positive for the margins,? CFO and board member V Balakrishnan said.

Infosys invests close to 1% of its revenues on R&D. However, investments in platforms are not necessarily large, he noted. ?We use more of offshore resources to create the IP. Sometimes, we co-create with customers. The investment part is not large to make an impact on the margins now. But if you are able to scale up a platform, it could be a multiplier on the revenue,? the CFO added.

?The last two decades have been about maximising the advantages of the global delivery model. Now, we are at an inflection point,? said Samson David, VP of Business Platforms at Infosys. ?There is a global economic crisis, causing a lot of unpredictability and stress on budgets. But customers have many opportunities and the old traditional engagement models with their partners and vendors are changing. Business platforms will be powered by a lot of IP, leading to business outcomes. The conversation will shift from a services outcomes perspective to business outcomes,? he added.

A recent note from HfS Research stated that while Infosys may have taken a lead in business platforms at the moment, stiff competition is brewing. ?Infosys is not alone in the announcement of highy automated, technology enabled, next generation outsourcing models that are built on pure or hybrid cloud architectures. Accenture, Cognizant, Capegemini, Dell, HCL, HP, IBM, TCS and Wipro are all strategising on how, where and when they play in this new market,? the firm noted.