At the recent EMEA Confluence held in December 2023 in Vienna, Infosys’ leadership and its EMEA teams presented a compelling story of growth in the region. The focal point was Infosys' expansion in AI capabilities and its market-penetrating AI-first strategy.
Infosys has made essential investments to build holistic capabilities with related technologies and skills. In EMEA, the company has more than 22,000 employees, approximately 30% revenue share and around 457 clients. With a presence across 40 countries in EMEA, Infosys has two digital innovation centers, two design studios and a cyber defense center in the region. It added four new delivery centers in 2023 and plans to continue to scale. Infosys boasts partnerships with academia and an in-house learning and development platform, Springboard, which provides training and upskilling programs to its employees.
The EMEA Confluence event included critical topics, such as women in leadership, ESG, ethical AI, technological advances, the future of AI and its impact, and a host of client presentations about their respective journeys with Infosys.
Infosys’ Top Three Priorities
- Being an AI-first provider: Recognizing the challenges with AI adoption, such as ethical use, responsible AI and hallucinations, Infosys’ Chairman Nandan Nilekani highlighted the criticality of data and the need for well-defined boundaries to create a safe AI environment. To build a successful AI strategy, he emphasized the need for an AI architecture designed to help organizations build AI-based applications and solutions. Along these lines, ISG’s 2023 State of Applied Generative AI Market Report highlights the importance of an AI architecture. An enterprise must understand the adoption trends across the business landscape. To achieve an architecture that can handle these, a few mature providers have developed GenAI-based structure maps. Infosys was careful to point out that its strategy to build AI-based solutions is not just technology-driven ─ it says its primary objective is to identify business outcomes and develop solutions that achieve these outcomes.
- Staying agile in the time of AI: The reasoning behind Infosys’ poly AI strategy is to take into account the evolution of AI models from generalized to specialized and enable it to build agile solutions that can adapt to newer AI models. This allows Infosys to replace existing AI models without having to change the fundamental applications or architecture of a solution. Given the nature of changes, the company believes this strategy will help enhance its agility. Scaling implementations will become easier with an agile model, given that scaling will be the next logical expectation from the enterprises. Infosys is adopting the same approach toward becoming an AI-first company by investing heavily in building AI assistants to amplify the human potential of various personas, including managers and leaders, support operations, developers, sales and marketing.
- Launching new market solutions: Currently, the company has more than 12,000 AI assets, including solutions, services and platforms, that encompass 150 pre-trained AI models and more than 10 platforms. These assets are managed by a team of AI specialists and data strategists. Responsible by design, Infosys has developed the AI3S suite — comprising its Scan, Shield and Steer capabilities — to ensure the creation of responsible AI solutions. This approach is integrated into its cloud-based solution, Infosys Cobalt. Solutions are conceptualized on Infosys Topaz, and the learning experiences are shared to help clients with their AI journey.
In building an AI-first company, Infosys says it recognizes the urgency for talent and the need to scale and acquire skills at speed. It highlights the importance of continuous learning and is making significant investments to upskill its employees with more than 7,500 learning assistants — teaching about AI with AI.
Infosys’s EMEA Confluence had more than 500 participants, primarily C-level customers of Infosys, business partners and approximately 25 advisors. The company took the opportunity to demonstrate its AI strategy and roadmap for the future. Still, the AI race is on, and it will not be easy to stay ahead of the curve without proven business outcomes that demonstrate the benefits of adopting AI at scale. Servie providers will also need to consider how they are managing cost and ROI. The challenges of data, ethics, safety and responsible AI are a reality, and working around them will be time-consuming. Deciphering the intricacies of AI while factoring in these critical elements is one of the struggles for Infosys and many companies in this domain.
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About the author
Namratha Dharshan
Namratha Dharshan is chief business leader for ISG Research. With more than 16 years of experience in IT/BPO outsourcing research, she has developed expertise in business processing outsourcing and customer experience broadly focused on horizontals such as finance and accounting and contact center. Her research focuses specifically on customer experience as it relates to digital transformation, omnichannel, analytics, AI and automation.
