A year ago (August 1, 2014), Infosys chairman emeritus NR Narayana Murthy ushered in the company’s first non-promoter CEO Vishal Sikka (surname means money). A year later, Infosys has seen its share price zoom as earnings grew and new stability has come to mark the beleaguered company. When Vishal Sikka formally took over as Infosys CEO in August 2014, there was considerable instability with senior management exits, high employee attrition and an uneasy investor community tugging at its heels. In short, there was a crisis of confidence as the IT major was transitioning from a founder-driven organisation. Since then, much has changed. Here is what Vishal Sikka did right:
1. Among Vishal Sikka’s many standout points was his ability to inspire confidence with all stakeholders – employees, customers and investors – and steering the company in the right direction.
2. In the first year, Vishal Sikka’s job was to alter the existing business model and make the company future-ready. Sikka had set the ball rolling by driving home the point that technologies like automation, robotics and artificial intelligence will be key drivers of change, not to forget to what he referred as ‘design thinking’.
3. The new strategy, the so-called ‘renew and new’, had the company focussing on re-engineering the existing business while also devoting resources for new kinds of future businesses, which would mean products, platforms and solutions. In effect turn Infosys into a customer-centric organisation. In addition to overhauling the sales engine of Infosys, Sikka has brought changes to its delivery structure.
4. As far as managing the aspirations as a publicly listed company is concerned, after a not-so-encouraging FY15 with a growth rate of 5.6%, the company turned the corner with very positive revenue numbers for the first quarter of FY16 indicating the new management is investing in the right areas.
5. The new business model crafted by Vishal Sikka has greater dependance on automation with lesser reliance on people – which in effect means retrenching staff and a reduction in the hiring profile. For a company like Infosys, which prided itself on being very much people-centric, this was a shock, but in the end it looks to have paid off – Vishal Sikka has shown that Infosys can adopt the new employee system, ‘next technologies’ and business model and do it faster than the rest of the industry. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, on completing a year in office in August and the company showing a turn in fortunes for the better, had said, “I believe that this is the result of the initiatives that we have taken. The deep client focus, organisational realignment in delivery, sales and consulting. This quarter also saw deep operational focus as well as widespread adoption of innovation and technologies that has started to bear results now.”
