Infosys aims to increase revenue per employee in next 2 yrs

Sikka reiterates focus on 'design thinking' and use of automation

Bangalore-based IT services company Infosys today said that in the next two years its revenue per employee will go up. The company, though has in the past mentioned that they want to increase revenue per employee, this is for the first time that it has set a timeline.

The comment was made by Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka while addressing Axis Capital investors meet. "Our revenue per employee will go up from here in the next two years. If in two years this number does not go up then that is a problem," he said. At present the revenue per employee at Infosys is around $50,000.

Sikka also said that this should be possible with several of the initiatives that the company has put in place. One of them is increasing automation and use of technologies such as artificial intelligence. He also added that the company is already working on atleast 40 projects that were signed in the last 60 days in the predictive maintaince and Big Data space.

"We will continue to be a services company but you will see an increased use of artificial intelligence, automation and reducing our dependence on human intervention. I think we can see this happening in our BPO segment where use of automation can change customer experience," he added.

Noting the changing pattern of client demand, he reiterated that Infosys will focus on 'renew & new' to drive growth and use of 'design thinking' to solve client problems. Infosys has already set in motion the process of 'design thinking' by training 30,000 employees in design thinking by the end of this fiscal.

"Every business today has a renewal agenda where they want to keep existing investments intact and improve life of the system. In parallel, these companies also have a new agenda, where they are looking at new ways to reach their customers. So, there is a constant dual agenda--new and renew. Our strategy therefore will be a reflection of our client's strategy."

Though the requirement of new and renewal business proportion will vary from company-to-company depending upon its advancement in the transformation space, the underlying requirement for both across all companies exists, he said.

For the renewal agenda of customers, Infosys plans to improve its existing services like BPO, infrastructure management, application development and maintenance etc, via automation and artificial intelligence among others.

Infosys is also keen on complimenting its renewal agenda with own new agenda and plans to use design thinking as the key tool.

"For this (to tap the new agenda of clients) we are investing in design thinking, which are techniques for helping out clients think about new opportunities and new kind of ways to be proactive to identify problems," said Sikka.

The company is also starting to work with more and more startups to invest in them to become extension of their engineering so that Infosys can accelerate their roadmap.

"The future that we see is help our clients renew existing businesses and also enter new exciting areas of business," said Sikka.

As we go ahead, we will lay our strategy more in details with more financials but this is something we are doing and we are incredibly excited about it, said Sikka.