What Does InfoSys Consulting Think?

It just could be ... WORLD'S COOLEST COMPANY

--Tom Peters

As a commentary on thought leadership presentation, this blog usually covers what people say, not what they don't say. That's why there hasn't been coverage of InfoSys Consulting. The firm appears not to favor publishing white papers or articles on its website as examples of its thinking or to demonstrate problem solving capacity at a strategy level.

InfoSys Consulting is the three-year-old strategy consulting arm of Bangalore-based InfoSys, the very successful systems developer. Among InfoSys fans is change guru Tom Peters who says in his blog: ". . . they're winning top-of-the-market work because they are good and aim stratospherically high, not because they are cheap! In fact, the hook for me is their audacious vision for leading the revolution in IS/IT—and the Talent they're amassing from around the world to pull it off."

Much of that talent is now coming from BCG, Booz Allen Hamilton, and other strategy firms, according to Stephen Prat, InfoSys Consulting's president, himself an eight-year BAH alumnus. You can see a February 10th interview with him at Consulting Magazine's website. In that interview he highlights his firm's "disruptive business model" and talks about how they focus on "big change opportunities." The interviewer, Jack Sweeney, Consulting Magazine's editor-in-chief. contrasts that mission with "coding" and "lowering application costs" -- in other words, you're not just a systems developer anymore, are you? As if that would be somehow bad.

InfoSys Consulting doesn't do white papers or articles, but it does have a "Soapbox" section on its website in which it challenges other strategy firms to have a more inclusive vision. "We must change our business models to encourage global delivery," the page says. Another challenge: "We must break away from the notion that a firm has to specialize in either strategy or technology."

Most competitors would probably say that this vision is actually exclusive. Most buyers know they can choose between best-of-breed and one-stop-shop for almost any product or service that exists. The variables that go into making that choice are complex and organization-specific, and sourcing strategy has become a field unto itself.

A firm wedded to disruptive change would understandably try to create market advantage by claiming the competition is obsolete -- both on the IT side and the business strategy side. If you can't win under the old rules, you make up new ones. What's missing here is the reasoning behind the assertions. Of course, that would be following an old rule.