History and Work Culture free essay sample

Limited (TCS) is an Indian software services and consulting company. It is one of the worlds largest providers of information technology and business process outsourcing services. As of 2007, it is Asias largest information technology firm and has the largest number of employees among Indian IT companies with strength of over 116,308 employees in 47 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $5. billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. TCS is part of one of Asias largest conglomerates, the Tata Group, which has interests in areas such as energy, telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, chemicals, engineering and materials. Tata Consultancy Services was established in the year 1968. It began as the Tata Computer Centre, a division of the Tata Group, whose main business was to provide computer services to other group companies. However, the potential of computerization and computer services was realized early on, and an electrical engineer from the Tata Electric Companies, Fakir Chand Kohli, was brought in as the first General Manager. Soon after, the company was named Tata Consultancy Services. Global presence TCS has set up near shore centers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, regional development centres in Hungary, Uruguay and Brazil and a global development centre in China, in addition to India. In 2006, Tata acquired Chiles Comicrom S.A. , Australias Financial Network Services (Holdings) Pty Ltd, (FNS) and Swedens Indian IT Resources AB (SITAR) through subsidiaries. The Company has set up two subsidiaries, viz. TCS FNS Pty Limited in Australia and Diligenta Limited in the UK. It has also set up other subsidiaries such as Portugal Unipessoal Limitada in Portugal, Tata Consultancy Services Luxembourg S. A. in Luxembourg and Tata Consultancy Service Chile Limited in Chile. The Company has 49 subsidiaries as on March 31, 2006. In March 2006, the Company, through its subsidiary Diligenta Limited acquired, on a going concern basis certain businesses of Pearl Group Services Limited. The acquisition included specified insurance contracts and claim administration business and assets including goodwill and know-how. The Company has entered into a joint venture agreement with the Intelenet Global Services Ltd. For the GM deal, TCS is tying up with EDS to bid for parts of the business. In February, 2007, TCS kicked off a joint venture in China with Microsoft and three Chinese entities TATA Information Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd Key Success Variables , Challenges The different success factors attributed in IT industry are the dollar factor,the economic policies by the government as it is into exporting any changes in the policy will affect the business. Global IT firms have realized the depth of India’s base of knowledge workers and are keen to leverage the country’s cost competitiveness as an integral part of their business strategy while large multi-nationals are using the same talent pool to set up captive units for back-office transactions. To combat this, it will be important for TCS, to continuously move up the customer’s value chain by leveraging its proficiencies in emerging technologies like Radio embedded systems, and through new offering like engineering and industrial Services. The country’s strengths in Information Technology as well as the industry’s adeptness in providing the right solutions at the right time and cost highlights the increasingly important role of Indian companies in providing high-quality services to global corporations at the best possible value through a combination of onsite and off-shore services. IT sourcing has become a part of the business lexicon globally, and an important driver for the Indian economy. And given the value generated for business, this trend will continue to represent a significant growth opportunity for the country, in fields as diverse as banking and financial services to telecom, life sciences and engineering. A combination of value and costs will continue to be key drivers for big corporations to outsource operations to India. Given its wide expertise and long-track record, the industry is well poised to leverage this opportunity. The current competitors of Tata Consultancy Services are Accenture,IBM,Wipro,Siemens IT Solutions and Infosys TCS has proved its ability to compete with global giants like IBM and Accenture by being a joint contractor in the ABN Amro deal, one of the biggest outsourcing deals in Europe worth $ 2. 2bn Through this deal TCS has caught the attention of top InfoTech companies of the world. The growth of the Indian software industry can be attributed to some of the factors unique to Indian system in comparison to MNCs of the developed countries. These factors include availability of cheap labour, favourable dollar to rupee exchange rate, large scale availability of skilled, qualified and well trained manpower backed by organized software industry. Monitoring the measures TCS is trying hard to move up the value chain by expanding service offerings, deepening domain expertise, adding new vertical segments, and broadening its client base. TCS finds it challenging to differentiate with other Indians IT companies as well who are largely alike in service offerings, pricing, workforce quality, skill set, execution delivery, and client servicing. As the size and complexity of the projects increase, TCS will be required to take more risks. For the larger deals it will have to compete with the top global players. The integrated play of hardware and software will be very crucial for success in future as technologies evolve, as will the need for companies to have a solutions mind-set with customer centricity as the prime focus. Sustained value can only be created through continuous R D. This is a requirement for long term success in an increasingly competitive environment. As TCS matures as a global corporation, the R D efforts will increasingly be with a global perspective through alliances with the top academic and research institutes in the world in diverse areas like software engineering, life science and microelectronics. Work Culture, Leadership Style TCS follows a people centric leadership style and it has been very well received by their employees. Under Ramadorais leadership TCS was awarded the CII-Exim Bank Quality Award for 2006. In August 2004, TCS became the worlds first organization to achieve an integrated Enterprise wide Maturity Level 5 on both Capability Maturity model and People Capability Maturity model. Ramadorai firmly believes that learning is a continual process, which does not end with formal education. With this in mind, he has striven to make TCS a learning organisation, conducive to developing ones full potential. TCS enables team leaders, project head to focus their attention on the areas that will make the biggest difference to a teams performance, and provides a vehicle to track their progress along the way. It can also be a useful indicator in predicting the relative performance of teams within a business. Working at TCS provides extraordinary opportunities for growth. It gives you a working environment that allows you to challenge the tried and true, and to collaborate across technologies and continents. A wealth of diversity in culture, training, knowledge, and experience gives employees incredible opportunities to learn it becomes an ongoing learning process and expands the employees horizons. Innovation is one of the pillars on which TCS’s entire business operate. It provides a global peer community. They are committed to bringing their best people to bear on client projects regardless of where they may be located. Hence you get to work with people across continents and organizational functions. The employees in TCS call it an adventure, a thrilling roller coaster ride that combines work and personal life. By working in TCS they have been able to experience diverse fields and environments, and had the