Vishal Sikka places Infosys report card before investors

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Malini BhuptaMoneycontrolVishal Sikka, the Chief Executive Officer of Infosys, shared with investors key performance metrics of the company and progress of the transformation at a Kotak Securities conference. He shared numbers to show that the company’s strategy was working.In the two and half years that Sikka has been at the helm, the company’s revenues have grown from USD 8.2 billion to USD 10 billion on a LTM (last 12 months) basis, while attrition has come down from 24.2 percent to below 15 percent. Margins, too, have held on despite the challenging environment. Sikka said that while the company continued to grow its core business, the focus was on value-added services and innovation to improve portfolio mix. He said: “One area of disappointment is consulting business. We intend to focus on it and improve negative performance of consulting. The 'Zero Bench' project has helped improve utilization to over 80 percent.” High performer attrition is down also to single-digits, Sikka added.He said automation has played a huge role in growth of the traditional business, too. New software and new services have seen healthy growth. He said USD 100 million accounts had increased to 18 from 12 accounts at the time he took over, while the USD 200 million accounts have increased to six from three.He also said that there has been a lot of progress on internal policies. Infosys has been focusing on zero distance innovation and new services too have been launched. CXO satisfaction has jumped as shown by an internal survey. Getting into new dimension of business is needed, but it is more difficult he said.Sikka said that he was also focused on the cultural dimension, which was a key part of the strategy. Education and agility were key pieces to drive transformation. He said: “Learnability will be a critical thing in future. Infosys Learning Platform is to teach our employees in what is happening in the world and in the company so the learning is accelerated. One of the most interesting programmes is a global leadership programme with Stanford. We have invested in onsite learning. Design thinking training has become an integral part of Infosys now.”Sikka made it abundantly clear that the journey ahead was not easy but he was not likely to be distracted. He said that when he took over, customer feedback showed that the company scored low on strategic relevance and innovation. Sikka said: “A lot of the ideas of zero distance came from that (CXO survey). Educating employees has come from Mr Murthy. In particular letting go of way of doing things and learning new things is difficult.”