Infosys’s Information System Strategy

Infosys’s IS strategy
By: Monzer Osama AL Shaikh Warak
Under supervision of: Dr.Mamta Bhandar
20/09/2014

The Content …
1. The Goal
2. Design Thinking Definition
3. Design Thinking & Innovation @ Apple
4. Infosys Situation
5. Recommendations
6. Conclusion
7. References

By: Monzer Osama AL shaikh warak | Me@MonzerOsama.Com
The Goal
The main goal of this presentation is to
delivering recommendations on
Infosys’s IS strategy,
Considering the Design Thinking
as a Strategy for Innovation within Infosys.

Design Thinking Definition:
 Innovation powered through understanding and the direct observation of what
people need and desire, like or dislike
 It is a form of solution-based thinking that starts
what is meant to be achieved instead of starting
with a certain problem
 Then, by focusing on the present and the future,
the parameters of the problem and the resolutions
are explored, simultaneously
When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for
innovation dramatically improves.

Design Thinking = Strategic Thinking
The Efficiency Movement:
Outsourcing, Total Quality
Management(TQM), Six Sigma,
Lean Manufacturing, Maximizing
Return on Assets, Corporate
Redesign, Market Segmentation,
Licensing, Line Extensions &
Diversification, etc.
Design is the one business
discipline whose primary
concern is innovation.
When design thinking becomes a
core competency, companies
become more nimble in the face
of rapidly changing markets and
new competition.

Design Thinking & Innovation @ Apple
Apple’s success was not just the result of clever strategic moves or an innate sense of market
timing.
It came from a deep commitment to understanding how people used
computing devices and a desire to develop “insanely great products.”
The Goal
• To design a
computer that
fostered individual
work
• Customers would
have to fall in love
with computers
Simplicity in Design and Use
• Figuring out the needs of people first
• Sensibility: Taking care of every small
detail
• Simplicity is the ultimate
sophistication!
• Apple’s design sense was found to be
one-of-its-kind (iPodmini)
Beyond Fashion
• Going beyond superficial trends and
getting to the essence of customer
experience
• Inside-out design seemed ‘cool’ to
millions
• No compromise between simplicity of
use and functionality
• Problems were treated as moving targets
The iPod famously arose from the all-pervasive love of
music within the firm.

Apple: Product Development Strategy and Execution (1 of 2)
Troubled Times at Apple (1980s and early 1990s)
• Apple faced massive competition fromIBM clones
• Debate revolving whether to compete in the ‘cloning
space’
• Business market dominated by ‘Wintel’
• Many ideas failed to take off!
• Rapid proliferation of models confused customers
and increased complexities
Marketing
Requirement
Engineering
Document
User-
Experience
Document
This traditional approach was a consultative
process and it lacked cohesion – It DID NOT
work for Apple!
Excellence in
Execution
Platform Strategy
Iterative Customer
Involvement
Beautiful Products
The Right Way Forward for Apple

Apple: Product Development Strategy and Execution (2 of 2)
Excellence in Execution
• Jobs took immediate action upon his return
• Quest for ‘insanely great products’ restarted
• Core Approach: Working intimately with
manufacturers and being accustomed to
customers
• Ensuring there was never a blip in sales
Iterative Customer Involvement
• Insistent on integrating customer experience
into design and development
• Participatory Design and usability tests
• Belief in the interface to be appropriate for the
users to create something
• More user testing implies smoother execution
Platform Strategy
• Clear Platform Strategy: Design the initial product as a
platform, so that future enhancements/derivatives are
not developed fromscratch
• Derivate products can be ramped up much quicker as the
platform allows the use of existing design elements
• Increases efficiency and re-usability
• Products require less repair and maintenance
Beautiful Products
• Importance of design as a motivation for
continued innovation
• Illustrated by the iPod being intensely connected
to the ‘pristine white’ colour
• Paying close attention to new materials and
manufacturing processes
• Attempt to get ‘bolder’ and not ‘play it safe’

Infosys Situation
Infosys’s core business is providing proprietary or third-party IT business software, mostly to
western multinationals, and maintaining it on service contracts. It offers revenues and margins
that are stable but often unexciting.
In the past few years, Infosys has taken a lot of flack, blamed for
distracting the company from its core business at a time of
rising costs and disappointing profits.
The strategy suffered too from poor timing, launched just as
many Infosys customers were trying to cut costs. It seems that
Infosys adopted a business Thinking Strategy; the new concept of Vishal Sikka difference as the
following below table

Infosys Situation
Design Vs Business Thinking
Business Thinking Design Thinking
Decisions and plans are made based on
logic and historical precedent.
A proven, repeatable process that produces
reliable results Real, meaningful, and
sometimes disruptive, innovation
There is a reliable and repeatable process. Informed leaps are based on real potential
Results are predictable Questions are actionable
Questions are abstract and not
Reliable process
actionable.
Possibilities are limited to the practiced,
and results will be incremental.
Predictable results

Recommendations
As a final results of running the design thinking processes with all stakeholders , CEO should
try to :
 Perform detailed survey to seek inputs of the employees, getting their thoughts on the ways
to make the company better, while also enabling them to be trained under the concept of
design-thinking.
 Developing business & IS Strategy
 Perform BUSINESS - IT Synchronization
 Measuring the value of the current IS outcome.
 Search in adopt a First Mover strategy.
 Adopt a sustainable approach to Infosys business

Recommendations
 Adopt Critical Success Factors (CSF) Approach & systems audit grid technique
 Adopt Quick-deployment strategy .
 Perform BPR
 Review Infosys Service Level Agreements.
 Focusing on User Satisfaction
 Configuration Infosys Styles
 Adopt global co-ordinator strategy !
Restructuring Internal Activities and External
Relationships
The next slides describe some of those recommendation ….

Recommendation: Developing business & IS Strategy
Global corporations need to design appropriate strategies to develop and compete in international markets.
Infosys must produce a new business and IS Strategy, Starting with value chain model analytical tools to
highlights specific activities in Infosys where competitive strategies can be applied and where information
systems are most likely to have a strategic impact within Info sys.
Studies found that 80% of the global 2000 enterprises fail to merge IT strategy with their business strategy.
The purpose of planning should be to check that IT investments meet one of the criteria below in order to become
part of Infosys IT strategy:
 Improve the firm's cost position
 Increase profit opportunities
 Create new revenue streams
 Enhance the customers' ease of doing business (Lofgren, 2002)
Without drawing strong links between business plans and IT, an initiative would receive little or no serious
consideration from the fiscal officers and budget planners within the organization.
To develop a comprehensive vision of the enterprise, the traditional strategic planning process must be enhanced
with a concomitant digital planning process

Recommendation: BUSINESS-IT SYNCHRONIZATION
 To “synchronize” business and IT strategies enterprises need to look for new approaches.
To develop a comprehensive vision of the enterprise, the traditional strategic planning process must be
enhanced with a concomitant digital planning process, outlining potential business scenarios, their
business processes, and technical requirements.
 These strategies will have to be developed as a combined effort of
all the C-Level officers in static, yearly exercise of project planning
for delivery of IT services independent of business strategy.
 CIO must involved in the process of business strategy formulation
and business managers have provided constantly changing narrow
IT requirements.
 The key elements of business strategy while dovetailing into the IT strategy should include: statements
of vision, objectives or goals, statements binding the range of options for getting there, and the steps
to take (initiatives, projects or programs).

Use Enterprise Evolution Model for business transformation
In practice, a methodology for developing a synchronized strategy can be employed using the Enterprise
Evolution Model framework.
This methodology has 3 phases:
Foresight, Insight, and Strategize.
Foresight baselines the industry, Insight baselines
the enterprise and the Strategize phase helps to
develop the synchronous business-IT strategy
for co-designing IT strategy as is detailed in the
Business Transformation Methodology.
The role of the business transformation
methodology is to help the stakeholders walk
through the various stages of the process that
defines the information needs, the stakeholder participation, deliverables and timelines

Measuring the value of the current IS outcome.
By assessing Returns on Infosys IT Investment
ROI evaluation can be used to improve the discipline of IT investment, helping to assure that any
investment provides positive value to the firm. It calculated as: ROI = Net Benefits/Costs
Assessing IT Benefits
Examining the benefits that are derived from IT systems deployment,
including: Labor savings, Capital expense reduction, Productivity
benefits, and Business benefits
Assessing IT Costs
The case of software projects, hidden costs can be seven times budgeted costs! Peter Keen (1991)
Thus Infosys CIO must recognize and review all hidden costs associated with IT projects, Understand and
budget for compounding costs and Create a detailed cost chart for all apparent cost categories
associated with the IT projects.

Search in adopt a First Mover strategy.
Infosys Must thinking about
adopt a new technology and gain
a First Mover strategic advantage
or wait to be a Second Mover.
Each strategy has advantages
and disadvantages described in
table 
First mover Second Mover
Advantages
If successful, the firm earns above-average
returns until other competitors
are able to respond effectively.
Second movers can take advantage of
significant incremental advancements
based on the original innovation.
First movers can introduce the
technology and capture the market.
Market research to improve satisfying
customer needs
Develop customer loyalty Learn from the first mover’s successes
and shortcomings
Opportunity to set standards Gaining time for R&D to develop a
superior product
Don’t have to educate consumers
Disadvantages
High risk Low Risk
High development costs, because First
Movers bear the costs of initial
development, user training, and convincing
potential customers of the advantages of
their product.
Loss of opportunity to establish brand
loyalty
when the pace of technological evolution is
abrupt and the pace of market evolution is
abrupt, first mover strategic advantage
effects are disabled
If significant learning curve through
moving first, then giving up competitive
advantage
Risk of adopting a losing standard

Adopt Critical Success Factors Approach & Systems audit grid
technique
Critical Success Factors (CSF) is a methodologies for assisting organizations in both their IS and
business planning. CSF method is most widely used in organizations that view their planning exercises
from a top-down perspective.
Advantages of the CSF Approach:
 Alignment of IS strategy
 Communication of strategic goals
 No excessive amount of resources used
Use the Systems Audit Grid
Use this technique for making decisions regarding existing IT applications. The methodology relies on
creating two judgments of each existing system.
How useful is the system to business users?
What is the technical condition of the system?
Based on these two evaluations, each system is mapped onto
a grid as follows. 

Adopt Quick-deployment strategy
Infosys must thinking again with the fees of their services and try to minimize the cost. One possible way is
adopting a Quick-deployment strategy for Infosys’s customers instate of reengineering for cost saving &
customers satisfaction purpose.
Quick-Adoption strategy eliminates the reengineering phase and focuses on a speedy deployment of a
standard ES package! It supposed that it is not necessary to fully understand the diversity of existing
processes across an organization.
It is sufficient to understand the basic
functional requirements and then
configure the system to match
these essential requirements.
Figure illustrate the main difference
between Reengineering-Led and Quick
deployment strategy

Recommendation: Perform BPR
 Assess the current business process and perform the business process engineering at multiple levels,
that may produce either limited change in a process or its complete redesign.
The role of IT in the business reengineering exercise lies in its ability to enable the redesigned process.
IT and BPR can and does impact business by providing companies with opportunities to identify new
markets, develop more efficient ways of competing and change the overall way the business is run.
Unrelated core business activities Infosys must outsourced to gain below benefits:
 More efficient coverage by leveraging locations in different time zones
 Focusing on the core processes
 Scalability, to ramp up or scale down operations
 Access to newer technologies
 Improved cost, service and speed benchmarks
 Elimination of waste and non-value-added activities
 Increased standardization and Increased accuracy
 Reduced operating costs
 Elimination of process bottlenecks

Review Infosys Service Level Agreements.
Infosys should review their Service Level Agreements & Structure with their customers
and vendors and make sure it contain at least the following elements:
 Defined, measurable events, tracked through automation, with notification to responsible
parties
 Definition of products/services
 Definition of responsibilities for products/services
 Time commitments on service level events
 Severity classification for requests
 SLA compliance with established service levels
 SLA compliance tied to performance measurement

Focusing on User Satisfaction
Establishing a continuous system for measuring end-user satisfaction with IT performance. End users
may be internal to the organization or external customers.
User satisfaction surveys serve the following
objectives:
 Assess user expectations
 Identify new requirements
 Assess the impact of specific improvement
programs

Configuration Infosys Styles
While Infosys operating internationally it has to decide how to configure its value-adding activities and
their management.
There are three configuration styles:
 Co-ordinate activities while dispersing
 Concentrate an activity
such as research and development, in one location and serve the world
from there
 Disperse, perform an activity in every country or even, in the extreme case, dispersing the entire value
chain to every country in which it has a presence

Conclusion
Design-thinking must be a standard operating procedure for designing products and solving Infosys's
client problems. that will take several years of training to institutionalize the approach.
However, It is important to examine the role of IT within the overall business planning system of
Infosys so that IT can obtain clear guidance as to how it must use its resources to support
organizational strategies.
It is imperative for an Infosys to create partnership between the business functions and the IT groups.
Adopting a formal methodology for IS planning in organization will make the planning outcomes are
shared among more organizational departments
The IT strategy plan should be dynamics and flexible for any future enhancement, it must be
contribute towards a competitive advantage.
It must suggest a path for future IT investments and directions, that would build based on the main
organization strategy plan and linked to business and Process Improvement.
The management support and commitment is very important in approving and executing the IT plan.

References
 “The Road to Innovation - Design Thinking and Lean Development at SAP”, By: Tobias Hildenbrand, Jul 21, 2013
 “Design Thinking Simplified”, By: Kristin Johnson, Feb 09, 2012
 “Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple”, By: STEFAN THOMKE & BARBARA FEINBERG, Harvard College. MAY 2012
 "Infosys’s EdgeVerve: setting the strategy straight?", By: Avantika Chilkoti, The Financial Times Ltd, Jul 23, 2014
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/07/23/infosyss-edgeverve-setting-the-strategy-straight/
 “The changing role of IT strategy. Enterprise Planning and Architecture strategies META Delta”, By: Bjorn Tuft, META Group Research, 19
December 2000
 "Co-designing IT Strategy for Enterprise Growth and Agility", By: By Manjunatha Kukkuru, Infosys Research
 Design Thinking as a Strategy for Innovation, Creativity at Work Blog, URL:http://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for-innovation/
 Business Process Re-engineering Solutions, Data Mark, http://www.datamark.net/solutions/business-process-outsourcing-solutions/business-process-
re-engineering-solutions
 Analyzing Different Strategies to Enterprise System Adoption: Reengineering-Led vs. Quick-Deployment", By:Sue Newell and others,IDEA
GROUP PUBLISHING,
 Segment 2: Strategic Systems, Value Chain Analysis
References from Information System Strategy material( 702-1406-1 ) :
 Segment 3: IT & Reengineering, Introduction
 Segment 3: IT & Reengineering, IT and BPR
 Segment 5: IT Evaluation, Evaluating IT, Assessing Returns on IT Investment
 Segment 5: IT Evaluation, Assessing IT Benefits
 Segment 5: IT Evaluation, Assessing IT Costs
 Segment 5: IT Evaluation, Complementary Techniques, Service Level Agreements
 Segment 5: IT Evaluation, Complementary Techniques, User Satisfaction
 Segment 2: Strategic Systems, Value Chain Analysis
 Segment 6: Global IT, Understanding Global IT Issues,
 Segment 4: IT Planning, Planning Methodologies, A CSF Approach
to IS Planning
 Infosys and Apple are a registered trademark

Infosys’s Information System Strategy

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