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    Vishal Sikka wants Infosys to hardsell its automation, ecommerce plans to clients

    Synopsis

    Infosys said it was hoping to become the go-to IT provider for its customers and reducing the amount of work that comes from requests-for-proposals (RFP).

    ET Bureau
    MUMBAI: Infosys is looking to become a strategic partner for about a quarter of its roughly 1,000 clients in the next four-tosix quarters. It is also building new digital sales teams and using technology to improve their effectiveness, as it looks to touch $20 billion in revenue by 2020.

    At the company's analyst event on Friday, Infosys said it was hoping to achieve this target by becoming the go-to IT provider for its customers and reducing the amount of work that comes in from purely responding to requests-for-proposals (RFP).

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    Infosys' revenue was $9.5 billion at the end of last financial year.

    "In case of about 50 clients, Infosys is involved in strategy decisions helping clients in the process of reimagining their business. In four-six quarters, Infosys is targetting such engagement with about 250 clients," Urmil Shah, analyst with IDBI Capital, said in a post-event note. The target was disclosed in a post-event interaction with analysts.

    INCREASING CLIENT BASE

    Becoming a strategic partner would mean Infosys will consult on projects before they are finalised, and would be able to help its clients craft an IT strategy.

    Such a strategic provider would be able to garner a larger share of its clients' IT spend, compared with companies that just respond to an RFP.

    'DISAPPOINTED'

    At the analyst event, CEO Vishal Sikka said he had been disappointed by the number of strategic conversations the company has been having with customers.

    "The thing I find two years after being in this industry is the kind of conversations we have with clients that are still not strategic, not very high-level. It is something I have accepted and we are transforming from within. But that has been a source of unhappiness," Sikka said.

    To help the level of discussions with clients, Infosys also created a sales overlay team to sell its new-age offers like ecommerce platform Skava, and automation platforms Panaya and Mana.

    NEW SALES TEAM

    "The new sales team will be a force multiplier for the new service.The idea was that the existing sales force was selling multiple things and there was expertise that was needed in-house," Mohit Joshi, one of Infosys' four presidents, said. He added the new overlay team had targets but did not elaborate on what they were.

    However, analysts worry that too many sales teams might confuse the issue, as Infosys is already planning to split into smaller units to drive growth.

    "The risk Infosys is running in establishing an overlay sales team is that it may be introducing complexity into company, which could confuse its customers and distract it from capturing share in its core market place and backfire," Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT advisory Everest Group, told ET.

    USING TECHNOLOGY

    Joshi added Infosys was boosting its existing sales team using technology. "We have a revamped internal CRM to reduce the number of routine tasks the team would have to do. We are using machine learning to provide recommendations to the team about what propositions they should take to customers."

    Part of the target is its plan to drive revenue productivity, the amount of revenue each employee generates to $80,000 from under $50,000 currently. Analysts hope the move to automation platforms and use of `zero-bench' strategy will help in the same.

    "We will also see the goal of $80,000employee within reach by 2020, if the zero-bench initiative delivers results," Ravi Menon, analyst with Elara Capital, said.

    Infosys told analysts it has utilised 80% of its bench have participated in zero bench projects.

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