Infosys to buy US firm Simplus

Infosys Ltd will acquire Simplus, one of the fastest-growing Salesforce platinum partners in the US and Australia for up to $250 Million. The acquisition is expected to close during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020.

Simplus is a leading provider and advisor in cloud consulting, implementation, data integration, change management and training services for Salesforce quote-to-cash applications with more than 4,500 projects.

This acquisition, along with that of Fluido announced in September 2018, is expected to strengthen Infosys’ position as an end-to-end Salesforce enterprise cloud solutions and services provider, providing clients with the necessary capabilities for cloud-first digital transformation.

The acquisition would also help Infosys expand its geographic presence as Simplus has offices across North America, Sydney, Melbourne, London, and a large delivery centre in Manila. The Infosys the acquisition comes at a time when last week Cognizant too made two strategic acquisitions by acquiring the French operations of Paris-based EI-Technologies and Atlanta-based Code Zero Consulting.

Infosys to acquire WongDoody

IT services firm Infosys Ltd will acquire WongDoody Holding Co., a US based digital creative and consumer insights agency, for a total consideration of up to $75 Million. The move would strengthen the company’s creative, branding and customer experience capabilities.

Previously, Infosys had announced the acquisition of Brilliant Basics, a London-based digital design and customer experience innovator that works with clients across Europe and Middle East. The addition of WongDoody strengthens Infosys’ ability to fulfill the needs of global clients for comprehensive digital transformation solutions required to meet customer demand for next-generation, enhanced customer experiences.

Founded in 1993, WongDoody is headquartered in Seattle and has an office in Los Angeles. It has clients across industries like telecommunications, consumer electronics, healthcare and consumer packaged goods. WongDoody’s expertise in driving innovative creative solutions is already yielding significant results in Infosys’ initial collaborations with clients, and this acquisition will further enhance the company’s capabilities in this space.

Wipro buys Viteos

Wipro Ltd. has agreed to buy Viteos Group, a securities processing and fund administration services provider, for $130 Million in an effort to expand its portfolio of services to financial companies.

The 12 year old New Jersey based Viteos provides services including processing, reconciliation of trade, settlements and customer data across asset classes and currencies for investment banking clients in the US, Europe and Asia. Wipro plans to use Viteos licensing platform to offer services to buy side companies, a term used by investment bankers to refer to institutions that buy investment services such as mutual funds, pension funds and insurers.

Wipro, India’s third largest software exporter already offers many of these solutions to its clients on the sell side of capital markets. They in turn, sell investment services to asset management companies. Viteos, which generated $26.5 Million in revenue in the year ended March with roughly 400 employees, will retain its brand identity to further strengthen its presence among existing clients.

The acquisition reflects a broader shift in India’s software outsourcing industry towards building an arsenal of intellectual property led high margin software platforms rather than relying on an army of engineers to offer technology solutions to clients. Wipro and Infosys have also been investing heavily in startups to build new age technology solutions for clients.

Infosys to acquire Noah Consulting

India’s second largest software services exporter Infosys Ltd has acquired a 100% stake in information management consulting firm Noah Consulting LLC in an all cash deal valued at about $70 Million. The acquisition will help the information technology company gain expertise in providing end to end data management services to oil and gas industry.

Established in 2008, Noah helps upstream oil and gas companies plan, architect and deploy information solutions to unlock the value of their oil and gas assets. It works with different players in the sector so called super majors, independents and oil field service companies to provide strategic data management solutions. The company has two offices in oil rich areas of Texas and Alberta.

Acquisition of Noah comes at a time when global oil prices have fallen steeply, resulting in a need for oil and gas companies to improve operational efficiency by using data analytics and smarter information technology solutions. With this acquisition, Infosys is uniquely positioned to offer end to end data management services to oil and gas companies globally.

The combination will bring together Noah Industry knowledge, information strategy planning, data governance and architecture capabilities with Infosys ability to provide technology and outsourcing services to oil and gas clients on a global scale. 

Infosys Buys Panaya

Infosys is an Indian Multinational corporation that provides business consulting, information technology, software engineering, and outsourcing services. It is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. Panaya is American software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides cloud based quality management services for enterprise applications worldwide. Its services run on the Amazon Product Advertising API.

Infosys announced that it would buy automation technology company Panaya Inc, at an enterprise value of about $200 Million, as the third largest IT Company in the world looks to boost competitiveness and margins. Panaya Technology would help it to bring automation to several service lines through software as a service model, reducing risks, costs, and the time taken to bring services in the market.

For $8.25 Billion turnover Infosys, which has a cash reserve of $5.4 Billion, this is the second largest acquisition after the September 2012 buyout of Switzerland based SAP services company Loadstone Management Consultancy for $345 Million. Infosys is acquiring Panaya at a time when IT services companies are laying greater emphasis on automation as workforce optimization holds key to profitability for the industry which is primarily driven by human resource.

Infosys and its peers TCS, Wipro, and HCL have been deploying automation to enhance delivery to their clients. Infosys has been traditionally shy of acquisition making less than half a dozen buyouts in its existence of over 33 years most of which were small with deal size below $50 Million. Infosys has been making big bets on automation and other new technology like artificial intelligence and cloud based services as the company tries to regain some lost ground from rivals like Tata Consultancy Services.

Companies Social Media Strategies

With increase in use of Social Media Platforms, Companies are shifting their focus towards Social Media and engaging with their customers and employees. In PepsiCo, the company launched a responsiveness survey through which all teams are related on responsiveness every two months and the feedback is related to organization verbatim. Under this, the CEO shares his observations experiences, thoughts with employees in a weekly letter.

To get real time opinions from the ground, Vodafone has its own People Survey Engagement Index and Management Index. Through ‘My Voice’, the company collects feedback from new joiners on recruitment, compensation, performance management, training, and engagement. “Employees make suggestions to the cross-functional senior management team in the forum captioned ‘Voice of Customer’. The company also runs the website Idea Space to encourage employees to share suggestions and ideas. A survey tool called ‘Qualtrix’ helps in gathering internal employee voices for short-term initiatives.

Over the past one year, through gaining feedback with employees from a mix of informal coffee corner sessions and frequent leadership meets, Philips has revamped some of its policies, like launching their own internal retail portal of discounted Philips products for staff. The company has also tried to engage employees in groups through discussions on important business plans before notifying them on emails.

An internal radio channel called InfyRadio serves a twin purpose of keeping employees informed about activities within the organization and ensures they are motivated. Tools like ‘My Voice’ provide executives with a simple online platform to log enquiries or grievances within built tracking and escalation for monitoring and follow up. ‘YES Connect’ provides YES bankers a platform to bond with colleagues and share best practices. Organizations who listen to their employees and are transparent, create trustworthy relationships that breed loyalty.

Infosys ties up with Hitachi, Huawei, and Microsoft

Infosys is an Indian Multinational Corporation that provides business-consulting, information technology, software engineering and outsourcing services. It is India’s second largest IT services company. Infosys is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka. Vishal Sikka is the current CEO of Infosys. It had widened collaboration with Microsoft, Hitachi Data Systems, and Huawei in a bid to expand offerings in Cloud Computing, Big Data & Analytics, Communication, Infrastructure, and Data Transformation segments.

The Bangalore based firm, which is a systems integration partner of Microsoft Corp, will also establish a global ‘centre of excellence’ for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning that will train over 1,000 engineers by the end of Fiscal year 2015. This collaboration will offer enterprises easy access to an analytics platform without the need of big investments and extended time to market. A recent report said that, Infosys is strong in delivering services but lacks innovation, hinting if its areas of execution became less significant, customers might switch.

The expanded partnerships with Hitachi Data systems will add to Company infrastructure and data centre transformation solution capabilities. Infosys would set up a centre to co-create pay per use solutions with Hitachi Data Systems. The new solutions will facilitate transition of clients IT infrastructure to Cloud based environments and will be tailored to meet the refresh cycles of enterprise data centres at lower costs. China has committed $20 Billion investment in India over next five years and has agreed to provide greater market access to Indian products in farm, Pharma, gems and jewellery sectors with a view to reducing trade gap.

Under the partnership with Chinese Huawei, the two companies will jointly develop IT solutions that combine Huawei Cloud Infrastructure and Infosys IT services expertise. The solution develops under this partnership will target enterprise customers looking to modernize their operations by leveraging and infrastructure.  Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub, a solution that help firms build and manage a unified hybrid cloud environment, will be integrated with Hitachi Unified Compute Platform to reduce time to market and simplify complex migrations. The combination will enable enterprises to move to a 100 percent virtualized environment with management, orchestration, and hypervisor integration.

Cognizant Buys Trizetto

Cognizant is a global leader in information technology, consulting, and business process services. It provide services such as claims processing, billing and call center operations to insurers, hospitals and some state run health care exchanges set up under President Barack Obama’s affordable care Act, as known as Obamacare. Colorado based Trizetto provides information technology services, including care management and the administration of benefits. 

Cognizant struck up its biggest deal, acquiring healthcare IT services provider Trizetto Corp for $2.7 Billion. It is the biggest acquisition in Indian IT sector. Healthcare is undergoing structural shifts due to reform, cost pressure, and shifting responsibilities between payers and providers. Trizetto will provide Cognizant to increase their market share. In 2008, Apax acquired Cognizant, a London based private equity firm. Trizetto was built up through 16 acquisitions in last 15 years, according to their website. It serves about 350 health care plans and supplies software to almost 245,000 doctors and other care providers.

Following this acquisition, Cognizant grip on the segment will increase further, leaving behind peers like WIPRO, Infosys, and TCS. At present, healthcare accounts for around 26 percent of Cognizant revenue, which is estimated to go up to 30 percent on integration with Trizetto. Cognizant and Trizetto have had a long-term relationship. This acquisition represents a great opportunity to integrate services across three horizons. Traditional IT services, high growth businesses like management consulting, business process services, and IT infrastructure services and will provide greater value to clients.

There are lot of acquisitions and changes going on in Indian Healthcare sector. E-commerce sector is focusing on providing medical facilities online. Companies like Ranbaxy, Cipla, and Sun Pharma are into manufacturing of new medical products. IT sector is all set to provide services to clients and hospitals. Tech giants are developing products which includes health apps or which can tell people health status. We can assume that technology is going to play a major role in Healthcare sector and it is going to benefit millions of people. It is estimated that Healthcare business is to grow at a rapid pace.