Case
Teaching Notes
Abstract
June 2014 spelled an end of an era for Indian software services company Infosys Ltd. Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, the 67 year old co-founder and then executive chairman of the company announced that he along with two more co-founders S. Gopalakrishnan and S. D.Shibulal was leaving. He felt that to take the company to greater heights in the wake of new challenges in the information technology (IT) industry bold moves were needed. The intent was to allow a new leader to bring the company into the future and become a truly competitive firm. New chief executive officer Dr. Vishal Sikka was considered more familiar with newer paradigms like big data, cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence and automation. As a leader, he was expected to win bigger deals, renew core services and help Infosys to differentiate on value rather than cost. He needed to work on transformational initiatives such as: processes; onboarding; training; marketing; employees on bench; corporate culture; and customer-centricity. Moreover, the clients of IT services globally were facing extreme cost pressures due to disruptions which added pricing pressures on firms like Infosys. The firm needed to scale up innovation and drive strategy to be globally competitive.
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