Interview: Tata, an empire built on Agile

TCS is on the shortlist for a UK IT Award. Ganesh Kumar, Senior Relationship Owner, tells us more

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a finalist in the 'Infrastructure Innovation of the Year' category at the UK IT Awards 2021. Ganesh Kumar, Senior Relationship Owner at TCS, provides more detail about the company and its goals.

Computing: Tell us a bit about the background of Tata Consultancy Services

Ganesh Kumar: Tata Consultancy Services is a global leader in IT Services, digital and business solutions, employing half a million employees across 46 countries who represent 157 nationalities. The products and services aim at transforming the customer's business and offer world class purpose-led transformation solutions.

Established in 1968, Tata Consultancy Services has grown to its current position as the Fastest Growing Brand of the Decade in IT Services (Brand Finance), based on the outstanding track record, long-term partnerships, collaborative innovation, and corporate responsibility. An integral part of the Tata Group, TCS oversees operations for over 100 companies in seven business sectors: communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products and chemicals. Headed by Mr Rajesh Gopinathan, TCS is among the top IT services company in the world.

TCS have been ranked number one for customer satisfaction in Europe's largest survey of service provider performance, conducted across 13 countries in Europe by Whitelane Research. This is the third consecutive year that TCS topped the customer satisfaction ranking for the IT services industry, with TCS also being rated number one across all nine individual key performance indicators (KPIs).

What makes you different from other technology companies?

Agile has primarily found use as an operating model to hasten the speed-to-value of deliveries in information technology. We, however, saw opportunity in the role it could play to elevate us as an organisation. The need to seep agile into the enterprise as a whole was part of our reimagination of the value stream across the organisation such that it moved -- from concept to the customer -- rapidly.

TCS developed Business 4.0, a framework designed to help companies with their digital-led business transformation.

TCS was also a pioneer in bringing in a concept of Location Independent Agile (LIA) to further the idea that agility doesn't require the physical co-location of teams for cross-functional collaboration. When the pandemic forced us to work remotely, it was LIA that helped us seamlessly migrate to working as a borderless enterprise.

We have a diverse workforce with 37 per cent of our total employees being women. In 2014 TCS set up the world's first ‘all-women' Business Process Services (BPS) centre in Riyadh. Today, the project has scaled to 1,000 women and consists of 85 per cent Saudi women professionals, who provide BPS and IT services to a range of global clients.

Long before sustainability came into the global business lexicon, the Tata Group, established in 1868, was already practising it. From as early as the 1930s, there are sterling examples of Group companies weaving their business activities around the local ecosystem and giving back generously to the community and the environment.

What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?

In July 2021, Tata Consultancy Services received the top ranking and was recognised as a Leader in Forrester Wave's Continuous Automation and Testing Services category. This comes as another feather in the cap for the Quality Engineering and Technology (QET) practice within TCS, which achieved this through investing both funds and personnel in cloud, AI, blockchain, IoT testing, autonomous testing and low/no-code testing. The high client intimacy scores achieved across several clientele due to TCS's commitment ongoing above and beyond to serve, also contributed towards this monumental achievement.

What are you working on this year?

As part of our efforts to align with the new ways of working, fundamental changes in customer behaviour, and ever-evolving customer needs and market landscape, TCS has been working on further improving the on-demand Platform Testing as a Service (P-TaaS) solution to deliver a compliant, standardised, and resilient IT environment. The offering is being developed in-house for one of our Customer within the UK. We are working on making this operate as a one-stop-shop test utility for all forms of automated Infrastructure Testing across different cloud platforms like Azure, AWS and different containerisation technologies which can be used as plug-and-play solution for any customer.

Why are events like the UK IT Industry Awards important to the IT industry?

UK IT Industry Awards has been a motivational award with the charm and recognition which it brings, along with giving an opportunity for the participating team members to raise their organisation's banner to the world-wide audience. It triggers a healthy competition among the IT organisations paving the way for larger and more innovative entries each year. The industry is indebted to the awards like UK IT Industry Awards, which promotes collaboration and learning, induces pride in the nominees, motivates and sets a platform for greater achievements, year on year!