India's Best Managed Company!

The latest Buiness Today edition has a cover story titled "India's Best Managed Company".... Can anyone guess who got that coveted award?

It is Infosys Technologies and there are several reasons, including a best-in-class planning process and a unique online how-to-work resource.

L&T bagged the 2nd price while Wipro came a close 3rd. The other companies that were ranked in the order were - ICICI Bank, TATA Power, Ranbaxy, etc.

Now you may ask - What's a Best Managed Company? Simply put, it's a company that not just delivers superlative financial performance, but is also adept at anticipating changes, learning and staying ahead of its peers. That apart, it must have a high social commitment. In other words, a corporate all rounder!!

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Guests at a wedding held in Bangalore late last year were pleasantly surprised to find a rather high-profile guest in attendance. N.R. Narayana Murthy, Infosys Technologies' Chairman and Chief Mentor, walked in unannounced, all because the 20-something Infoscion who was getting married had left an invitation with his secretary, purely as a matter of form.

People management is an area where Infosys excels. While its employee strength may have ballooned to over 35,000 from around 5,000 at the turn of the century, the intense focus on people and their skills has only increased over the years. Earlier this year, the
company launched its training and leadership centre in Mysore amidst much fanfare (it has been operational since 2000 but the latest phase, which makes it possible to accommodate 4,500 people on campus for residential training sessions, was recently completed).

Here's what BT says that makes Infosys different:

"Like its peers in the upper reaches of India's IT services industry, Infosys -- it has added 9,595 employees in the first nine months of 2004-05, and will probably add 2,000 more by March 31, 2005 -- faces the challenges of, all at once, inducting and orienting a large number of employees, ensuring that the Infosys way, a process-driven way of working, does not change, and distilling knowledge from all the projects it has completed or are work in progress. The company, which currently has around 36,000 employees on its rolls, has addressed these challenges through what it terms PRIDE (Process Repository @ Infosys for Driving Excellence), an online resource that segues into the company's fancied knowledge management system termed Kshop(Knowledge Shop; like others of its ilk, Infosys is big on acronyms) at one end, and the actual development environment at another. The benefits: An army of employees that works the same way, gains in process efficiency and productivity, and higher quality."