Infosys tackles IT consulting

Beverley Head
Infosys Australia's recently formed strategic consulting group bagged its first big-bank client this month, signing up one of the big four for a range of IT consulting services.

Robert Liong, managing partner of consulting and systems integration, declined to name the bank, but said he hoped to sign three of the four majors by the end of the year.

Although Infosys works with the four already in various capacities, its core financial product Finacle is used by just one - ANZ in Asia. Infosys was dealt a blow last year when Oracle beat Finacle as the platform for NAB's UBank.

According to Liong, a former head of e-business at ING and head of strategy and business architecture and head of corporate channels at Westpac, Finacle makes up only about three to four per cent of Infosys' business worldwide. Nevertheless the "Financial services sector, especially in the start-up phase, is infinitely important" for the newly formed consulting group he said, predicting a "significant chunk" of the unit's revenues would come from this sector.

Banks, he said, were caught "almost in the eye of a perfect storm". They had experienced phenomenal growth but had "Not kept focussed on what that huge growth means." With the big banks having undergone sweeping senior management changes, they were all looking to revamp legacy core systems and develop streamlined banking platforms to enhance cost to earning ratios.

Infosys Australia established its consulting group in mid April. It announced the new division just after confirming 18 redundancies elsewhere in the business, and posting first-quarter results for the company as a whole with both revenues and operating profits down on the same period in 2008. While the consulting group now employs ten people, only Liong is a new hire - the other positions were filled by existing Infosys employees transferring across.

The new division offers a range of services such as business architecture analysis and planning, business process management, technical consulting and change management services.

Liong admitted: "We have always done this sort of work with the clients but we decided to increase the investment in these areas and make a much more comprehensive systems integration (offering) for customers."

In terms of the target clients Liong said, "We're the group that will work on large transformational projects."

While coy on revenue targets, Liong said that if he could sign up another two major banks he hoped to at least double headcount. He said the main competitors were IBM Global Services, EDS/HP and Accenture.

Liong said it was important the group maintained technological agnosticism, recommending the best solution depending on client need rather than advocating products and services Infosys sold.

"Previously we had these services embedded in each of the solutions," said Liong. By stripping them out and corralling them in a separate business unit it would be possible to provide clients with improved services independent of Infosys solutions. "As soon as anyone suspects we are swayed by our own solutions we'll never be successful," he acknowledged.