Accenture has had a very successful ad campaign around Tiger Woods for a while now ("Go on. Be a Tiger").
Infosys, a relative pipsqueak with less than a tenth of Accenture’s revenues, has its own campaign challenging the entire IT services industry to change. Cocky, self-serving – for sure - but Infosys (the 2nd biggest Indian services firm behind TCS) has an amazing track record over the last decade of growth, margins, quality, customer satisfaction.
The similarities between Accenture and Infosys – beyond money for advertising – are striking. Both are organic, grow-from-within cultures (Infosys made a small Australian acquisition last year for cash, but has not used its highly valued equity for acquisitions).
Both tend to be rigid in their use of proprietary methods and home grown staff teams. Both have invested heavily in campuses and recruiting/training engines (and I mean engines which can process hundreds of thousands of applicants a year). Both tend to be premium priced in the markets they choose to focus on. Infosys has been public longer than Accenture and could teach it a thing or two about financial metric management. But then, Accenture could teach Infosys a thing or two about client boardroom relationship management.
But enough praise. As with Accenture, I can find buyers quite a bit of fat in Infosys contracts. As with Accenture, Infosys has a growing set of executive fans who are willing to pay a premium - costing their companies 10 to 30% more than they should. Go on. Get Infosys or Accenture. But at your terms! You will be able to afford several front row Masters tickets from the savings.
