In the post-pandemic world, technology will play a larger role in helping enterprises to come to grips with the new normal and differentiate themselves.
In its AGM speech, which was conducted virtually, N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, TCS, said that in the past few months, the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic developed rapidly into a global crisis resulting in an uncertain terrain and affecting the fundamentals of the world around us.
The lockdowns tested the agility, resilience and adaptability of TCS’ delivery model and the speed and agility with which we have responded has emerged us stronger, he said.
In such an unforseen scenario, TCS prioritised the health and safety of its employees while keeping its customer’s IT systems running under difficult circumstances and pitched in to help communities across the world to battle the pandemic.
New operating model
Chandrasekaran touched upon the new operating model called Secure Borderless Workspaces (SBWS), which was the brainchild of COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam.
This model involves a change of focus from a highly centralised locations where workforces used to concentrate, to distributed delivery with 90 per cent of its 4.48 lakh people having the ability to work remotely with security controls.
Chandrasekaran also sees Covid-19 as an opportunity with many sectors adopting digital technologies rapidly, a thought which has been echoed by others such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna.
“These channels which were secondary and nice-to-have are now primary channels and in some instances the only channels for commerce. The sharp shift in consumer preferences has now forced enterprises to significantly accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” he said.
Chandrasekaran also assured investors that though the pandemic reversed the positive momentum, TCS has had strong deal closures during the last quarter and had its highest order book.
“Around 49 customers spend more than $100 million a year with us,” he said. TCS reported a 7.8 growth in profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2019 at ₹8,428 crore compared to ₹7,815 crore in the corresponding period, and said that it will not retrench people and will honour all recruitment offers. Additionally, it had free cash flow of ₹32,303 crore as on March.
Chandrasekaran also touched upon employee additions, which were numbered at 24,179 in FY 20. He also made a special mention of the company continuing to have a diverse workforce that includes 144 nationalities across 46 countries and 36.2 per cent of them are women.
Around 4.17 lakh TCS employees are trained on “Agile” technologies and 3.35 lakh employees on digital technologies, Chandrasekaran said.