Renewing legacy systems but discarding legacy mindsets, India’s global software major Infosys is relying on automation for digital transformation of their clients’ business, Chairman Nandan Nilekani has said.
“We are relying on extreme automation to free up our people to focus more on solving client challenges, mentoring their teams and investing in learning for digital transformation of their business,” he said at the company’s 38th Annual General Meeting here.
Addressing shareholders, the board of directors and employees, Nilekani, one of the Infosys co-founders, said the management was working to dissolve silos across its global operations to ensure its clients have instant access to ideas emanating from Infocions so as to leverage their best when they interact with them.
“The novel approach means focusing on personal growth, nurturing zero-latency in processes, ensuring just-in-time data for decision-making, driving hyper-productivity and facilitating learning to instil new patterns of behaviour,” he said.
As its global clients were operating in a complex world, disrupted by many digital technologies, he said they were looking at the company to partner with them in the new digital era.
“Our work across industries, value chains and geographies give us keen insights into the pattern of changes transforming the fundamental wiring across a diverse set of businesses. We know that with this understanding, we are uniquely positioned to assist our clients in picking the right signals and to discover what’s next,” he asserted.
Sharing the growth strategy with investors, the Chairman said the company would provide a roadmap to transform its clients’ IT infrastructure into digital infrastructure.
“We can work with them to build and leverage direct-to-consumer channels that provide consumer insights. We can also help them emulate platform companies that bring customers more choices by moving into adjacencies,” he said.
The firm is also training the employees to explain its clients how their competitors, with a ‘winner take all’ approach, were moving to change the rules of the game.
“We can contribute to shaping counter moves that bring data together with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning to chart new ways of creating value. We can also build systems for them to respond at the speed of data, much like the ‘adapt to survive’ response, typical of living species,” he said.
For instance, the company has developed ‘InfyMe’ app — a mobile-first window for its employees to access by tapping on their mobile phones. ‘Lex’ is another app that is popular among employees seeking to prepare for emerging digital opportunities by developing corresponding skills.
“These are early manifestations of the connected, sentient digital world we are beginning to build for our people,” said Nilakeni. Guided by the strategy of Chief Executive Salil Parekh, the IT major is increasing its relevance to clients and building greater business model resilience.
“Over the last fiscal, we have deepened our digital capabilities, especially in experience, data, analytics, cloud, SaaS, IoT, cyber-security, AI and Machine Learning,” said Nilekani.
To enhance its ability to engage with clients for their large digital transformation programmes, the $12-billion company invested in nurturing specialised client-facing teams to drive strategic partnerships. “I cannot ask for better preparedness to focus on our clients and the transformational work we need to execute for them,” Nilekani added.