Disrupt & Grow
At a time when the IT industry is going through an upheaval of sorts with digitalisation, cloud-computing, and other technological advancements, Indian IT companies are trying to seed new businesses and overhaul business models keeping in mind the digital world. But having its roots as one of the pioneers in the Indian IT industry for five decades, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is no stranger to disruption and has been an early adopter of digital technologies.
And TCS’s digital technologies wing has seen revenues cross $3 billion in FY17. TCS has a long list of such accomplishments and so it is little surprise that the company ranks high in the BW Businessworld’s Most Respected Companies survey 2017.
It has successfully seen through many cycles of technological change and it has adapted and built new capabilities each time. Now, in this digital era, TCS has geared up and is providing solutions to segments like finance and retail with new digital initiatives. TCS recognised digital potential before others and provided the head start for the company, which is now seeing significant traction. Over 55 per cent of its customers are partnering with TCS on digital change.
This is also bringing in the awards and accolades for TCS. In November 2016, GE awarded the Digital Innovator of the Year for Ecosystem Excellence to TCS for its pioneering work in big data. TCS has also made some remarkable progress on the revenues front. It clocked a 16.3 per cent CAGR in revenues over the last four years clocking Rs 1.17 lakh crore. In 2017, TCS’s consolidated revenues increased 8.6 per cent, and net profit increased 8.3 per cent over FY16.
The Mumbai-headquartered company is also working on advanced technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence and automation, which also includes new areas like natural language processing, robotics, IoT platforms, among others. In block chain technology, the company is emerging as a credible player, and its platform has now been integrated into the TCS BaNCS software.
The Tata Group’s IT services arm has also been a pioneer in innovation, having filed many patents over the years. In FY17, TCS made 493 filings, taking its total patent filings to 3,350. It is also leveraging on the innovation of technology partners, startups, and academia. The company’s startup ecosystem initiative, the Co-Innovation Network (COIN) has expanded in FY17 to cover 150 partners, 2,000 startups, and 27 academic partnerships.
TCS recognises the need for speed in the digital age. “Competitive differentiation in the digital world will come from enterprises becoming smarter, faster, and lighter. ...this requires adopting distributed and location-independent agile services, embracing cloud-first strategy, and deploying automation at every level,” noted Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and MD, TCS in its annual report 2017.
TCS is also one of the most recognised IT brands, and the company broke into the top 3 brands in IT services industry globally in a brand valuation and ranking exercise. But for TCS, its strength lies in its human resources. It is also one of the biggest employers in the country with a workforce of over 3,87,000 employees, of which 34.7 per cent are women. The company is now retraining and reskilling its employees and, as a result, over 2 lakh TCS associates have been digital trained. It has one of the lowest attrition rates of 10.5 per cent in the industry.
Its digital initiatives and HR is what will drive this pioneer in the years ahead.
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