Case Study Solving: Infosys Technologies

Q – 1: Trace the history and the spectacular growth of Infosys as one of the best managed
IT companies in India, and even of the world at large.

Answer: Infosys is a multinational company providing information technology services

and business consulting. The company is headquartered in Bangalore, in the electronic city
of India. Infosys was co-founded in 1981 by CEO Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N.
S. Raghavan, S. Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora. They started
off as Infosys Consultants Pvt. Ltd. in Pune, Maharashtra. Now, Infosys have global
presence with 32 sales offices in 17 countries and 33 global development centers. It
employed 200,364 people as on march, 2017.

Q – 2: Discuss the vision and message of Infosys that have paved the way to its becoming
the darling among IT companies in India.

Vision of Infosys:

“To be a globally respected corporation that provides best-of-breed business solutions,

leveraging technology, delivered by best-in-class people.”

Infosys does not just want to be a corporation which just focuses on increasing its business
and revenue, rather its vision is to be a corporation which provides best business solution
by indulging best talented people and eventually to become a reputed and respected
corporation.

Mission of Infosys:

“To achieve our objectives in an environment of fairness, honesty & courtesy towards our
clients, employees, vendors and society at large.”

Infosys focuses on maintaining fairness, honesty and courtesy towards their clients,
employees, vendors and society in their path of achieving their objective. They believe that
these three key aspects were the main factors in achieving their vision.

Q – 3. Discuss the factors that have made Infosys as the most admired IT company in India.

Answer: The factors that have made Infosys as the most applaudable IT Company in India
are as follows:
• Giving employees a world class environment to work and learn.
• Giving employees a high quality of life and wealth creation opportunities.
• Looking at potential employees’ ability to learn assimilate technical knowledge and
skills.
• Replacing obsolete technology regularly to remain at the cutting edge.
• Emphasising constantly on quality by benchmarking against the best processes in the
world.
• Diversifying income sources to minimise risk of revenue, i.e. setting limit to
contributions from one client, one technology, one industry.
• Complying with accounting standards of advanced countries and ensuring strictest
adherence to corporate governance.

Q – 4. What are the challenges Infosys faces to maintain its primary status amongst the IT
companies in India? How has the management of the company worked out a business
strategy to achieve the goal?

Answer: The particular challenge of greatest long-term interest was presented by

• Shrinking pool of skilled manpower

• Creation of a complete solutions provider with global reach and scale
• Increasing cost of adherence to global best practices
• Company’s Products
• Platforms
• Solutions (PP&S) operations and
• Being crucial to the firm’s long-term prosperity.

The company which currently has 36000 employees on its rolls, has addressed these
challenges through what it terms “PRIDE” (Process Repository @ Infosys for Driving
Excellence), an online resource that segues into the company’s fancied knowledge
management system termed Kshop (Knowledge Shop) at one end, and the actual
development environment at another. As a result of this, “Infosys will reap the benefit of
an army of employees that work the same way, gains in process efficiency and productivity,
and higher quality.”
Q – 5. Discuss the role of business ethics in achieving corporate governance at Infosys.
Has the Phaneesh Murthy case sullied the reputation of the company? Make a critical
assessment of the impact of the scandal on the growth story of Infosys.

Answer: Infosys has done following things to demonstrate its role of business ethics:

 Infosys has unveiled a code of ethics for its finance professionals and a whistleblower’s
policy to encourage and protect employees willing to share information on frauds, but
who chose to remain anonymous.
 Infosys has set new and effective standards in communicating with shareholders, stock
exchanges and general public at large.
 The code of Business Conduct and Ethics helps the company ensure compliance with
legal requirements and the company’s standards of business conduct.
 The culture of ethical behaviour in the organisation emanates from the top and
percolates down to the managerial and employees’ level, for the foundations of such
systems are made to rest on ethical value system.

The Punish Murthy Case

Defamation of Image
The stand taken by Infosys in this case seemed to go against its image of a company
considered to be a model of good corporate governance. Media reports blamed Infosys for
having kept the issue under wraps for a long time neglecting to put in place a structured
policy concerning sexual harassment, and for compromising on moral values.

Impact of the Case

A crisis brings out the best and worst in any organisation or in any person. It is also true
that a crisis provides a learning opportunity for them. Infosys also learnt its lesson and put
in place principles of work ethics to be followed by its employees and a whistle blower
policy. Infosys took further steps to strengthen their internal processes and improve the
checks and balances to handle similar situations.