Name: Murtaza Adenwala Roll No:016

Term V: Business to Business Marketing

Answer the questions given in the space provided.

1. How is Infosys placed w.r.t Excalibur and Merrimac Consulting in competing for the implementation of Java
based Arima based e procurement system? (10marks)

Advantages Challenges
 Infosys was considered as an outstanding  Infosys is competing with Excalibur and
vendor for “offshore outsourcing of IT Merrimac which are among the top 15
maintenance projects. Excalibur and consulting firms in the world
Merrimac weakness has been in ongoing IT
systems maintenance. Their weakness is
Infosys strength
 Infosys benefited from the availability of  Excalibur and Merrimac have realized that
low-cost and world class IT professionals in offshore IT system maintenance projects is a
India. This resource cost advantage enabled highly lucrative business as a salary for a
Infosys to bid on and win lucrative contracts software engineer in India could be 40% to
for labor intensive, low value-added “back- 50% lower than a comparable individual in
office” work. Excalibur and Merrimac the U.S or Europe, hence both the firms have
employees were based out of U.S hence their opened large facilities in the Bangalore area
labor rates were non-competitive. They and will be stiff competitors to Infosys in the
avoided low value and low profit projects Near future
such as maintenance and therefore did not
have requisite expertise which again worked
in Infosys favor of competitive edge
 PFS has not employed either firm for any  Excalibur and Merrimac have an outstanding
large scale or long term IT projects reputation for operations consulting which
Infosys is now gearing up to master it by
announcing in newspapers about they hiring
well-seasoned people from the top consulting
firms as well as from the top MBA programs
worldwide and bolstering their consulting
resources and training in-house
 Over the years Infosys work has exceeded  Infosys have to demonstrate that they can
PFS expectations both in terms of quality and handle the strategic and conceptual
costs in maintaining PFS projects consulting portion of the project
 Infosys have a big advantage over Excalibur  Infosys have to assemble all available
and Merrimac – Infosys maintenance work performance metrics and case histories of
has exposed their people to all aspects of PFS their ongoing work to demonstrate the PFS
IT systems as well as to how PFS does managers that Infosys performance has
business. As a result Infosys will be farther exceeded their expectations
down the learning curve at the beginning of
the project. That might translate into better
work more quickly which would yield
significant cost savings for PFS
 Infosys has recently initiated 3 end-to-end  Infosys to provide evidence that it can handle
Ariba e-procurement system projects within a all aspects of end-to-end solution
year. Two of them for retailers and one for a  Infosys to justify whether their experience in
 healthcare organization. Infosys does have retail and healthcare is applicable to the
some limited experience when it comes to insurance industry
strategic and conceptual projects
  Infosys have to present logical arguments that
convinces PFS managers that the entire e-
procurement system project should go to a
single vendor
  Competitive pricing proposal backed with
creating long term value demonstrating
competencies and capabilities to deliver an
end-to-end solution that meets PFS
requirements and meets Infosys profit
requirments
  Excalibur and Merrimac will undoubtedly
tout their many online procurement system
design and implementation projects and
pronouncing that purchasing-related
consulting falls within their core
competencies and capabilities. Challenge for
Infosys was to show evidence that they are
equally capable of handling all aspects of an
end-to-end solution e.g. sharing ongoing
work on ariba e-procurement project,
highlighting the savings, competency of
employees associated with such projects

2. Assess the additional value Infosys has created for PFS in “Re-
engineering project assignments” and “Data corruption prevention subroutine”? (10marks)
(a) Re- Engineering project assignment
Scenario before Re-Engineering project assignment
 PFS had employed 250 people to complete maintenance projects of IT systems
 Each of those employees was assigned exclusively to one project

Scenario after Re-Engineering project assignment

 Infosys redesigned five major maintenance projects
 Once Infosys learned the nature of project tasks, it began to move some of them to
Bangalore
Pre-Scrutinization scenario
 During the scrutinization process Infosys was assessing the manner in which these tasks
were completed and to question whether the tasks could in fact be completed at the same
quality levels using fewer people

Period of engagement with Resource size

PFS

Year 3 75 Infoscions in U.S

 250 people in India

Post-Scrutinization scenario
 Infosys reengineered the processes for each project and planned the allocation of
resources across several projects
 Below resources are now commissioned to complete redesigned tasks

Period of engagement with PFS Resource size

Year 4 & 5 75 Infoscions in U.S

100 people in India

Resource Reduction and assigning surplus to other PFS projects leading to cost reduction and
demonstrating value
 Surplus 150 Infoscions in Bangalore were transferred to other PFS projects at “no
extra charge” to PFS
 Given that the cost of a fulfillment equivalent (FTE) are $8000 p.m. (Rs. 368000) in
the U.S and $3,200 p.m. (Rs. 147,200) in India , the resource reductions represent a
significant benefit for PFS
 Infosys demonstrated in contrast to their Indian and Chinese competitors that
improving employee productivity rather than just labor savings from moving people
offshore was their key goal and value proposition

Country 4-5 years ago Present Cost per month (in $) Total Savings
(in $)

U.S 75 75 8,000 0

India 250 100 3,200 5,760,000

(b) Data Corruption Prevention Subroutine

How batch programs are executed
PFS runs two major IT systems off a common database
 One uses a mainframe computer to run millions of routine data processing tasks in ‘batch
fashion’ from the hours of 11:00 p.m. (23.00 hours) until 5:00 a.m. (5.00 hours)
 Second entails some 125 networked personal computers (PC’s) that PFS employees use to
complete a variety of tasks from 5:00 a.m. until 11 p.m.
Impact of the batch programs running beyond schedule
  Prior to Infosys work at PFS, batch programs occasionally ran later 5:00 a.m. As a result
it would corrupt the data being used from the central database and shutdown the online
system, idling 125 PFS workers for at least 4 hours.
 Solution
 Infoscions wrote a subroutine that automatically shutdown all batch programs at 5:00
a.m.

What Cost Savings did Infosys efforts deliver to PFS?

 Reduced average number of corruption incidents per year from 24 to 0
 Infosys demonstrated to PFS early on in the engagement that Infoscions had
the ability to diagnose problems and write subroutines to correct them

No of FTE per Savings for 24

Particulars Resources hours/seconds hour/second disruptions (in $)

$45x4 = $180
(Rs.8,280)
One corruption 3
event programmers 4hrs $45/hr $180x24x3=$12960

Technical
$40 (Rs.1,840)
support
  assistance 1hr $40/hr $40x24 = $960

$42x4 = $168
(Rs.7,728)
Employees idle $168x24x125 =
time 125 4hrs $42/hr $504,000

Running
programs to
Reconstituting 15 seconds @ 15x$.39= $5.85
corrupt data   (CPU) $.39/second (Rs.269)
3. How can Infosys’ PFS Account Team persuasively sell the firm’s
ability to deliver a superior end-to-end solution for the Ariba e-Procurement System project?
Prepare an outline of the sales presentation to be made to the PFS executives concerning
Ariba e-Procurement System Project. (10marks)

PFS senior management saw Infosys as an outstanding vendor for “offshore outsourcing of
IT maintenance projects. Below are the e.g. of how the ability of the PFS account team in
delivering high quality maintenance solutions which would create a drive to sell firms ability
to manage superior end-to-end solution for e-Procurement project

Team Support
• Infosys senior management would assist the PFS account
management team by
assigning a number of support personnel to the project
• Program manager, 3 business analysts, a technical specialists on
Ariba programming,
a product specialist familiar with e-Procurement software, a development analysts,
and a technical analysts
• Enterprise Solution Group would contribute a team skilled in executing the company’s
award winning “Package Implementation Methodology”. This would insure that the
Ariba e-procurement software is up and running in a flawless manner in short order
• A technical specialist from Ariba would assist during the sales
presentation and
implementation phases of the project

Overall Quality of Infosys work

• At Infosys work is evaluated on 3 dimensions – quality, timeliness, and reliability
• Infosys has exceeded PFS targets by a wide margin during each of the 5 years managing
PFS portfolio of maintenance projects

Reengineering Project Assignments

• Reengineering project process and employee tasks are key competencies of the Infosys
human resource department

Data corruption prevention subroutine

• Ability to diagnose problems and write subroutines to reduce number of
corruption
incidents per year
Record Comparison algorithm
• Optimizing program process efficiency by writing a critical algorithm for PFS that
improved record comparison processing efficiency by 56% and processing time by 8
hours
• Due to the comparison algorithm Infosys was able to create additional 9 hours of
free CPU time and eliminate the possibility of sending the “compliance” analyses on all
of its customer accounts and report their findings to the insurance commission of each
state within the stipulated deadline (last day of each month). This made the possibility
of the state penalizing PFS negligible

Reduction in Disability Claims Reserves

• Reducing the cash reserves to pay disability claims by $14 million
• Accomplished this by streamlining and reengineering not only the claims submission
process but also the claims payment process
Skill of reengineering payment process will be essential in the case of an e-procurement
system

Ongoing Ariba e-Procurement Projects

• Infosys has initiated 3 end-to-end Ariba e-Procurement system projects for 2 retailers
and healthcare organization
• Incase of healthcare organization, Infosys has already been able to save them $100,000
(Rs. 4,600,000) per year by switching the company’s ‘change order’ procedures from
manual to an online software-based system

Provide a 5 weeks training of Java training to the vendor management team of PFS during
their visit to Bangalore
• Training sessions to be conducted in the Infosys Education and Research group
• Demonstrations of Java projects successfully completed in the past
• Introduce PFS visitors to the new hires who come to Infosys with considerable consulting
experience

Sales Presentation outline of Ariba e-Procurement System Project

Infosys – a business snap shot

- Sales
- Profits
- Employees
- Office locations
- Headquarter
- Stock exchange listing
- Culture

Client Portfolio across services

Core Competencies
- System design & Development
- Customization
- Reengineering
- Maintenance of personal and network computing
 - Mainframe
- Internet-based information systems

Business Models Evolved

- Describe each business model and its application in specific industries
- Infosys efforts in delivering efficiency, quality and cost savings

Infosys – PFS current relationship standing

- Describe the nature of existing business relationship (Offshore outsourcing
of IT maintenance projects)
- Demonstrate deliveries within the existing contractual scope
- Demonstrating added value that Infosys has delivered which lead to
quantifiable cost savings not mentioned in the project contracts over the
period of 5 years

Competition Analysis

Ariba e-Procurement System Project

- Objective
- Operational efficiencies in purchasing
- Project Challenges
- Investments V/S ROI
- Project Scope (top line view of the stages involved) and tentative time
frame of completion
- Resource Allocation
- Maintenance scope and approximate fees p.a.

Demonstrating Infosys capabilities to deliver the project

- Demonstrating performance metrics of the ongoing work at PFS that
reveals Infosys performance had exceeded expectations
- Showcasing high cost savings derived out of reengineering project
assignments and providing innovative solution for optimizing programs
leading to reduction in resource time and ultimately building cost
efficiencies
- Showcasing evidence that Infosys has the capabilities to handle all aspects
of the end-to-end solution, and in particular those that fall outside of their
traditional IT system maintenance activities (Talent management – hiring
well seasoned people from top consulting firms as well as from the top
MBA programs worldwide), (Showcase experience in the ongoing Ariba
e-procurement project for the retailers and healthcare organization and e.g.
that demonstrates initial savings by switching from manual to online
software based system
- Infosys leadership system (Enumerate key success factors of Infosys
leadership system)