Infosys best able to compete with Big 5 in consulting, SAP: Forrester

Infosys Technologies Ltd has been named a leader in consulting services and expertise among Indian IT services companies and most able to compete with the former Big 5 consulting firms.

"Infosys…is best positioned to offer high-value management consulting skills," wrote Stephanie Moore of Forrester Research in the report Forrester Wave: Indian Vendor Consulting Capabilities, (Q4 2005). "Of all the vendors profiled here, Infosys is most able to compete with both the former Big 5 firms for business process consulting work and the tier-one Indian vendors for the follow-on technical work."

The study conducted by Forrester Research, published in December 2005, Infosys received the highest scores in three evaluation categories - current offering, strategy and market presence.

"At Infosys we are reinventing the consulting profession to provide a new, better model for clients," says Stephen Pratt, CEO and managing director, Infosys Consulting, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian global IT firm. "Our model combines world class consultants working on site with clients and world class technology experts in India, China and other locations around the world. The result is more robust business ideas and higher quality implementations.

"We are thrilled with our rankings in this Forrester Wave report and believe our position is proof positive that our dedication to helping our clients become stronger competitors is resonating in the market."

Similarly, in its SAP implementation evaluation, another Forrester report, describing Infosys as "arguably the most prestigious of the tier one Indian IT service firms," Forrester Research said it was uniquely positioned to offer SAP consulting, planning and implementation services in direct competition with the traditional IT services providers.

The report titled The Forrester Wave: Indian SAP Services, Q4 2005, highlights the company's core consulting strengths and said the company's SAP services are an "especially good fit" for clients requiring full life-cycle SAP support and want to measure the full value of their SAP information technology objectives and results.

For this report, Forrester evaluated nine of the top Indian service providers across 24 different criteria. The report observes that the demand for Indian vendors in the areas of SAP implementation and maintenance support is increasing. The company is one of only four companies rated as leaders in this report.

"Infosys distinguishes itself with high-value consulting skills for large-scale SAP implementations," according to Forrester. "Not only does Infosys have the necessary implementation skills, but Infosys Consulting also uniquely positions the firm for high-value, pre-implementation work." Forrester added: "It's front-end consulting strengths, combined with its process and technical expertise set Infosys apart from its competitors."

Chandra Shekar Kakal, vice president and global head enterprise solutions, said the company's SAP group is one of the flagship practices in enterprise solutions.

"SAP is one of the largest and fastest growing practices within our organisation," said Kakal. "We are an SAP Services Partner across multiple countries & have more than 1,500 SAP experts worldwide. And we have the capacity to educate and train approximately 250 SAP consultants each year through our education facility. We are extremely pleased with Forrester's recognition and will continue to improve our full-range of enterprise solutions."