 "technology landscape and skill demands")
With the evolving technology landscape and skill demands, businesses are increasingly prioritising skilling initiatives. For the IT services industry, this shift presents a significant opportunity as they collaborate with clients to enhance their upskilling efforts.
India’s second-largest IT services player Infosys recently announced a deal with German tech giant Siemens AG to accelerate its digital learning initiatives with generative AI. The collaboration aims to provide over 250,000 Siemens’ people globally with upskilling opportunities, and a personalised learning and growth experience.
Siemens’ My Learning World, a digital learning platform that is accessible from anywhere anytime, will leverage Infosys Topaz, an AI-first offering using generative AI technologies, and Infosys Wingspan, an AI-powered next-gen enterprise learning experience platform.
Jasmeet Singh, EVP and global head of manufacturing, Infosys said, “Infosys rolled out Lex to its employees that helped them learn, anytime, anywhere and on any device. Building on this success, we expanded our vision, and extended Lex to empower both our clients and the wider community.”
In 2018, Infosys Wingspan, an AI-powered digital learning platform, was launched to help clients fast-track their talent transformation initiatives. In 2021, Infosys Springboard took flight to impart digital and life skills to communities as a part of our Tech for Good charter, driving broader societal impact, added Singh.
This is not the first deal that Infosys has signed, in the past the firm has worked with several players in creating such learning platforms for auto majors, and the healthcare sector.
Last year, consulting and IT services major Accenture announced the acquisition of edtech firm Udacity. The edtech platform was added to the tech giants learning platform Accenture LearnVantage. This acquisition was part of the $1 billion investment in LearnVantage over the next three years.
“The addition of Udacity to Accenture LearnVantage will enable us to bring Accenture’s deep capabilities as a world-class learning organisation to clients at scale, helping them build the skills of their people to achieve greater business value,” said Kishore Durg, global lead of Accenture LearnVantage at the time of the acquisition.
These deals and acquisitions are interesting as companies in the past have preferred to work with edtech firms or universities to create curated content for their employees. However, now companies are looking at players who can create an end-to-end platform that is part of the firm’s training ecosystem.
Karine Alloouche, global head of enterprise, Coursera, highlights that this trend is only going to increase as micro certifications become essential in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
“We are already working with Accenture on their LearnVantage platform. Rather, we have had a few IT majors talking to us and asking how we can help them in training their client ecosystem,” she told Business Standard in a recent visit to Mumbai.
Thirumala Arohi, executive vice-president, head- education, training and assessment, Infosys shares that though Infosys has been talking about this since 2018, the uptick for such services is gaining now.
“The narrative that we had for the last four to six years back is now picking up steam. Talent transformation as an agenda is becoming big and it will manifest in different ways. It will mean adoption of learning platforms like Wingspan, but it will also kind of get into moving the traditional learning place to a partner like Infosys which in turn provides a 360-degree kind of partnership,” he added.
Skilling is something that the IT services industry is based on. IT services have invested hours and years as they have trained engineers passing out of colleges and making them job-ready.
As Arohi explains for Infosys, they were client zero. “We are our own client, and we have over 300,000 employees already part of this platform. This means that whatever we are telling is backed by our own experience,” he said.
Pareekh Jain, founder of Pareekh Consulting and EIIR Trend shares that this will only grow further. He also says that though these deals may not be large, but gives strategic play to services players.
