Winning in the Flat World: How Infosys Transformed Its Brand

Think back to 1999. That was the year that Infosys, an Indian IT services company, hit $100 million in annual revenues. Flash forward to March 2006 and Infosys, fueled by growth in the outsourcing industry, had hit the $2 billion mark—a remarkable feat by any companys standards.

But Infosys had no intention of resting on its laurels. Rather, aware that it still needed to step up its branding efforts, the company launched a global branding campaign built around the idea of winning in the “flat world.” Instead of being seen as simply another offshore services provider, the company’s goal was to build a reputation as a trusted transformation partner that can help businesses compete in a global market.

Creating a Differentiated Position

Setting itself apart from many other companies that were still thinking about brand in terms of logos, slogans, and attractive visuals, Infosys knew that to compete with the global leaders, it needed to launch more than a “me, too” marketing campaign. It needed to differentiate itself from its competitors in a way that was relevant, credible, unique, and defensible.

To achieve this goal, the company first conducted research to uncover the issues its customers were struggling with in the new global marketplace. The research revealed three important things:

• There were four forces “flattening” every business environment:
  • The rise of emerging economies
  • Changing global demographics/redistribution of the global talent pool
  • The ubiquity of technology
  • Increased regulations
• Companies were unaware that they needed to shift their operational priorities to deal with the consequences of these forces
• Customers looked at Infosys itself as an ideal flat-world company

In response, Infosys set out to help companies shift their operational priorities in four ways:

• Shift focus to fueling growth by becoming globally efficient, cost-competitive producers
• Stop focusing simply on better customer service and start focusing on creating customer loyalty through faster innovation
• Shift focus from merely spending money on information systems and process to making money from information
• Shift focus to winning in industry cycles rather than only in the straightaways

Infosys achieved these goals by creating a new offer to assess the impact of these global forces on clients’ businesses and provide a roadmap for the operational changes required to address those impacts. The offering defines four stages of excellence for the flat world and offers clients a financial model that measures the impact of their efforts. All other solutions within the company were aligned to the flat-world offering, and subject matter experts were instructed to focus on establishing thought leadership around the issue.

With unique offers in place, Infosys shared the results of its research with key clients. The research, combined with Infosys’s own reputation as a flat-world company, made the company’s new positioning credible and defensible. Now all Infosys needed to do was get the message out.

The Campaign

The company conducted a multifaceted marketing campaign aimed at Global 2000 firms. It was designed to target four different audiences within an organization—C level, lines of business, sourcing executives, and IT—and focus on “flat-world” topics that were relevant to those audiences.

But before Infosys kicked off the external campaign on July 31, 2006, by ringing the NASDAQ opening bell from India, it conducted an extensive internal campaign to bring over 50,000 of its employees on board with the new positioning. The company launched its extensive internal campaign in January 2006.

Infosys included the following elements in its customer-facing campaign:

• Infosys Website
• “Think Flat” microsite and blog
• Thought leadership white papers
• Digital ads in top-tier publications
• Partner programs
• Annual report
• Executive events
• Industry events
• Analyst outreach
• Marketing and sales collateral

Achieving Fifty Percent Growth

From March 2006 to June 2007, Infosys increased its annual revenues from $2 billion to $3 billion. A significant portion of that increase is directly attributable to the online marketing conducted around the flat-world campaign.

In addition to the company’s astonishing growth, Infosys became the first Indian company to be added to any of the major global indices in December 2006, when it was added to the NASDAQ-100. Analyst firms such as Yankee Group, Forrester, and TBR are singing the company’s praises. And the Infosys sales group created a special new award to recognize marketing’s impact on the business.

All in all, the flat-world campaign has enabled Infosys to differentiate itself from both other Indian outsourcing firms as well as the global consulting companies, and it is beginning to neutralize the legacy advantage that traditional IT consulting firms have long enjoyed. Infosys is now seen—by customers and influencers alike—as a trusted business transformation partner rather than just another outsourcing firm.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the “Win in the Flat World” campaign, be sure to register for ITSMA’s Annual Marketing Conference (November 14-15), where Srinivas Uppaluri, head of global corporate marketing at Infosys, will go into more detail about Infosys’ branding efforts.

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