STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

(MSL 711)

Case Study

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

{TCS Capabilities and Indian Government Projects}

Submitted by: Submitted to:

GROUP- (8) Prof. Sanjay Dhir

Khushee Namdeo (2020CH10095)
Pawan Kumar (2021SMN6653)
Saurav Kumar (2021SMN6643)
Surabhi Singh (2021SMZ8144)

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 Tata Consultancy Services Capabilities and Indian Government
Projects

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an Indian IT MNC in services and consulting that provides
business solutions, IT services, and consulting services with an assurance that no other company can
match by delivering tangible outcomes to worldwide businesses. TCS’s new brand vision is “to help
customers achieve their goals along with better futures for individuals, communities and the planet”1.
In FY 2022, TCS crossed a milestone of $25 billion in revenues2. The geographic footprint of TCS
covers Asia-Pacific, Europe, Australia, India, LATAM, Japan, Middle-East & Africa, New Zealand,
and North America, with about 6 lakh employees globally3 (Exhibit 1).

Following the company success in 2019, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) COO N Ganapathy
Subramaniam noted, “Government projects not just in India but around the world are different. They
are highly process-centric, and there will also be a lot of exacting demands from them in terms of
performance guarantees, liabilities”.4 Admittable architecture, effective project management, and
efficient process management contributed to TCS in making it the largest software company in India.
Government collaborates with private companies to advance their services digitally and enhance
citizens’ quality of life by providing simple, user-friendly, and easy evaluable public services.
Therefore, a well-functioning society depends on a framework for public services that are flexible,
user-friendly, and inclusive.

Government departments offer multiple public services such as transportation, water, education,
sanitization, licenses, land records, passports, and many more. However, it might be quite challenging
to provide a few services on a large scale within a limited budget while maintaining total transparency.
TCS works with government departments worldwide to drive purpose-led transformation by
leveraging digital technology. The Passport Seva Kendra (Passport Seva Program), Indian Railway
(IRCTC) ticket booking corporation, India Post (India Post’s digital and financial inclusion project),
and Digital Exam system (Digitizes and automated end-to-end examination system) are some of the
essential e-governance projects that are developed and managed by TCS. N Ganapathy Subramaniam
stated about handling government projects, “The key thing is when you do a project for the
government, you have got to be very solid in program management. Second is that you need to get the
architecture right. Because there will be changes which keep on coming. You need to get the
architecture right to make all these changes”4.

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TCS manages government projects extremely effectively; nevertheless, what additional capabilities
could allow TCS to become a part of NextGen e-Governance initiatives? What are the new strategic
moves that could deliver the TCS vision? What initiatives should TCS take to meet the rising demand
for high-quality public services while handling the issues of ensuring security, privacy, and quality
excellence in the competitive environment?

Public Services Industry

The government provides and administrates the public service industry. Delivering good governance
and transparency through effective social services could be an ideal strategy for the public service
industry to accomplish sustained national development. In FY22 the government spent Rs.71.61 lakh
crore on social services, up from Rs.65.24 lakh crore in FY215 (Exhibit 3). The public service industry
includes national- or state-level departments and government-owned corporations (public service
companies) that are mainly focused on delivering good services to their citizens, including educational,
cultural, electricity, water, agriculture, health, and many more. Public services enhance the citizen’s
values, beliefs, and progressed lifestyles. Civil servants and government employees are considered
part of the public service providers, including individual authorities from central, regional, and local
levels. Either the service is provided directly by the government, or they take support from private
companies to develop the service. The planning of tangible or intangible resources to fulfill the needs
of public is based on “resource-driven” instead of “demand-driven”. The energy industry, the
telecommunications industry, and the utility industry are the three sub-industries of public service
industry6. The return on investment, value creation, economic growth, employment opportunity,
transaction cost, and gross domestic product growth are some of the metrics that can be used to
evaluate performance in the public service industry7.

In the past few years, governments have been transitioning to new technology and moving toward a
“digital first” strategy. The government collaborates with private companies to enhance transparency,
trust, and privacy and digitally transform public service by adopting new technologies. There are
multiple public services that have moved from a manual process to digitizing the process and now
moving into digitalizing the process. The public services that moved from a manual process to
digitization are online passport seva, online ticket booking (Indian Railway), land rent online payment
system, online mutation system, online examination system, online income tax filing system, and many
more. For moving the system from manual to digitize government collaborates with private companies
such as TCS, Wipro, and Infosys. The revenue generated in the public service industry in India is less

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than 5% for leading IT companies; for instance, in FY2021, the percentage of TCS’s overall income
was 5.1 percent, whereas the percentage of Infosys’s overall revenue was 3 percent, and Wipro
received about 2% of annual revenue8.

Indian business policies (service level agreement) and government ownership have a direct impact on
government and private company alignment. The competition is not very competitive for getting
government projects, as there are only limited business groups that fulfill the pre-requisite of the
government terms and conditions. Obtaining approval is the real hurdle in this industry due to
regulations. The business group cannot raise the invoice and get paid for their work until they have not
delivered the services per the contract. There is also a possibility that if the vendor is put on a blacklist
due to some reason, they would be unable to get another chance to get any new government projects.
Therefore, the quality deliverables, such as dependability, accessibility, user-friendliness, efficiency,
security, and viability, are expected from public services. Company portfolio, size, turnover,
technological capabilities, effective resource management, time management, quality management,
and effective estimate management are the important consideration factors when assigning a
government project to another company9.

TCS History

In 1968, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.) was founded as a startup by Tata Sons Ltd to meet the
needs for electronic data processing (EDP) and consultancy-based services. TCS used a systematic
approach to scale up its business performance by understanding the objectives, designing solutions to
address business problems, and effectively developing end-to-end projects. The performance growth
and business expansion of TCS are progressive (Exhibit 4). TCS diversified its expertise in several
verticals of industry with a completely diverse range of services (application services, cloud services,
digital transformation services, engineering services, service integration, etc.) (Exhibit 2) and finally
expanded its global presence. TCS faced few challenges and tried to overcome it.

1969 to 1985
TCS was founded to satisfy the company’s demand for internal management consulting, data
processing, and other information technology services (“financial accounting, share registry work,
sales analysis, inter-bank reconciliation, provident fund accounting, and operating software on behalf
of customers”)10. TCS gets the first-mover advantage in the field of delivering IT consultancy services

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in India11. Beginning in the 1970s, it started working to find foreign business opportunities in the
deployment of information technology application maintenance and development services to
customers from developed economy countries. From 1973 onwards, TCS started geographic expansion
by collaborating with companies in other countries to implement projects or providing technical
support.
TCS was the first IT company to be awarded a government project by the Detroit government in 1974
(software for the police department), and in 1977 TCS was chosen to develop a government project
for India (PAN - Permanent account number system). PAN became the key identifier for the tax
administration system. PAN became the first government project developed successfully by TCS. The
export revenue of TCS crossed $1 Million in 1976. TCS enhanced its technical capabilities and started
hiring skilled technical personnel. In 1985 TCS started its working stations in India (Delhi, Madras,
Bombay, Pune), New York, and UK.
Infosys is the competitor of TCS in India. Infosys was established in 1981 with the core vision of “to
amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people, business and communities”12.
Infosys started expanding its business in other countries, and the first client of Infosys was from New
York (1981). The “worldwide delivery concept” was pioneered by Infosys13.

1986 to 2004
When working on government projects, the primary goal for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is to
ensure that everything is done correctly from the start till the end. In 1991, TCS launched E.X software
in India which is basically an accounting software that is convenient to use and gains a competitive
advantage. TCS and Swissair formed a joint venture to handle their revenue accounting processes by
establishing the AFSS(Airline Financial Support Services).

TCS marked $1 Billion in annual revenue in 2003. TCS has now made it into the top 10 list of
worldwide IT service providers when ranked by market capitalization, number of employees,
profitability, and revenue. On August 2004, TCS became a publicly listed company and entered the
bioinformatics industry, becoming the first India-based IT services company to enter it. In 2014, TCS
changed tagline from “Beyond the Obvious” to “Experience Certainty”. To provide better public
services, TCS has done collaborations with public sector companies, such as BPCL(Bharat Petroleum Co.
Ltd.) (to provide highway retailing initiatives), BHEL (successful development of PowerPac-G software).
TCS received a few state government projects such as eSeva APOnline (Andhra Pradesh), criminal tracking
system (Bihar), data center projects (Utter Pradesh), and many more.

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Infosys, Wipro, and HCL are the competitor of TCS in India. Wipro was established in 1945 with the
core vision of “Continuous effort to enhance people’s lifestyle and quality by means of developing
new technology in wireless communication”15. Key capabilities of Wipro’s success are dedication to
clients’ success, thinking broadly and responsibly, and an honest, integrity working approach. HCL
was established in 1991 with the mission of “We will be the employer of choice and the partner of
choice by focusing on our stated values of Employees First, Trust, Transparency, Flexibility and Value
Centricity”16. Key capabilities of HCL Technologies success are transparent process, customer’s trust,
effective organizational learning, integrated capabilities, and innovation implementation.

2005 to 2022
Computer Associates (CA) International Inc. has formed a strategic agreement with TCS to protect the
latter’s operations across 55 centers worldwide through the implementation of “CA’s e-Trust end-to-
end security solutions”. TCS started developing services for aerospace solutions and started a new
development center in Kochi. TCS began work on the government’s “Indian Railway” project in 2006
with an anticipated budget of Rs. 2,000 crore, and in 2008 the company started work on the “Passport
Seva System 1.0” project with an estimated budget of Rs. 1,000 crore. Both projects were completed
effectively, and the complete developed technical systems were authorized by the government.
However, TCS was unable to get the “Aadhar Card” project in 2009; Infosys took over the project.
The capabilities of Infosys, that include digital services, AI, Internet of Things, and big data analytics,
provide the company an advantage over its competitors in terms of the provision of efficient reality-
based solutions17.

TCS developed iON services for SMEs in India, a cloud-based integrated platform with pay-and-use
model. And in the same year, TCS grew as the first software company to be evaluated at CMM Level
5 enterprise-wide in IT services. TCS began work on the government’s “India Post V1.0” project in
2013 with an anticipated budget of Rs. 1,100 crore. However, TCS was unable to get the “e-
Governance initiative MCA-21 V2.0, Fintech based e-Governance Projects, and India Post Device
Manufacturing” project in 2013. Infosys, Wipro, and HCL get the contract for deploying government
projects (Exhibit 5) and completed them successfully due to their in-house capabilities. TCS enhanced
its dynamic capabilities and organized multiple capacity-building sessions and training for improving
their employee’s capabilities and their organizational competencies.

In 2014, TCS launched ignio™ and launched digital exam system. Both systems are Cognitive
automation solutions that leverage its enormous body of knowledge and contextual awareness to

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diagnose and autonomously repair problems that happen in complex corporate contexts, which get
better over time. Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head of TCS stated, “Continuing our efforts to
help the education sector with remote enablement, we launched the TCS iON Remote Assessments
product. This will ensure that exam administrators are able to conduct exams in a secure way, at speed
and with no dependency on the candidates’, proctors’ or exam administrators’ location. This will help
authorities quickly schedule and complete the exam process”18.

In 2017, Tata Sons selected Chandra as the Chairman of the Tata Group. The TCS Board appointed
then-CFO Rajesh Gopinathan as the CEO and Managing Director, N Ganapathy Subramanian as COO
and Executive Director and V Ramakrishnan as CFO. In 2018, TCS contracted with three large
industries for digital transformation deals. TCS received multiple awards such as “Leader in Gartner
Magic Quadrant for Application Testing Services”, “Leader in IDC MarketScape for Oracle
Implementation” and “Ranked #1 for Customer Satisfaction by Leading German Companies”. TCS
always attempted to overcome a few obstacles (attrition, revenue creation pressure, customer’s
bargaining power, security threat, maintaining sustainability, excellent performance, etc.) that it faced.

In 2022, TCS reported that they had reached 6 lakh or 600,000 employees globally. The total revenue
of TCS is enhancing every year (Exhibit 6). In addition to this, it has the market value of the second-
largest Indian company and is ranked among the most valuable IT service brands in the entire globe.
TCS is integrating new technologies with Industry4.0 to enhance service quality, assist businesses in
accelerating the transition to net zero emissions, and implement innovative blockchain-based digital
financial services for companies in India and other nations. TCS is working to enhance its
technological capabilities while simultaneously improving its solutions, includes mainframe
modernization, database management services, large data warehousing, and a great number of others.
In 2022, TCS started working on the “Passport Seva V2.0” and “BSNL 5G” government projects, each
of which had an estimated expenditure of Rs. 8,000 crore and Rs. 200 crore (Exhibit 5).

Capabilities
The business growth enabled the companies to produce or deploy enterprise-sustaining improvements
consistently. Sometimes established businesses have trouble deciding which prospects to pursue, with
even the most experienced leaders hindered by the sheer complexity and limitless possibilities.
Therefore, to maintain performance sustainability, business processes tend to concentrate on the
traditional rather than radically reinventing the business process. However, business executives of TCS
state and acknowledge the importance of innovation and competitive adaptation to follow their long-

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term vision. TCS uses a strategic management framework to ensure the company’s long-term viability.

Collaboration and Leadership Alignment

Executives from the company worked together to grasp the “discipline of innovation” to survive in the
digital era to produce creative answers, communicate fresh possibilities, recognize unanticipated risks,
and envision future market situations. The capabilities of TCS in terms of collaboration and leadership
alignment are distributed within three distinct zones: performance zone, productivity zone, and
transformation zone. Performance zone is the beginning point for “running the business” that produces
the great bulk of sales and earnings as the “core business”. The productivity zone primarily focused
on a shared services supplier to the main business to maximize efficiency, toss off revenues to finance,
and free up capacity for “changing the business”. Transformation zone is focused on business builders
that align the capabilities for enhancing performance growth.

Focused, Flexible, and Customer-Centered Strategy

The enterprise’s long-term strategy, which should not be mistaken for static budget planning, can be
developed and regularly updated when executives are positioned for collaboration and are in alignment
with one another. The executives of TCS prioritize their client’s needs and determine their essential
“jobs to be done”, keeping both what is changing and what is not in the world in mind. Their viewpoint
enables companies to transcend the established limits they are hesitant to cross. TCS comes out as a
well-known company that has developed a highly successful customer-centricity-based service by
following focused, flexible, and customer-centered strategies.

Effective Risk Management

Effective risk management serves as the foundation for choosing the best mix of strategic
modifications to support business execution. Successful risk management helps TCS enhance its brand
value, expand its business globally, and invest in new service deployments. Because of this
competence, TCS is able to take on projects for the Indian government and ensure that such projects
are always viable and successful.

Innovation Implementation
TCS has the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the creation and implementation of incrementally
adaptable innovative concepts that enhance customer satisfaction and performance. TCS implements
a multi-modal innovation model that combines the ideal blend of structures to simultaneously “manage
the business” and “transform the business” effectively.

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Lean-Agile Method and Integrated Capabilities
Leaders may identify original and innovative concepts with potential and then develop them based on
data and tested assumptions using the “create, test, and learn” methodology. Lean-agile method and
integrated capabilities enhance the TCS’s likelihood of getting targeted results and lowers investment
uncertainty. TCS refers to this method as a Rapid, Iterative Experimentation Process (RIEP). By
transforming excellent ideas into significant breakthroughs, or in the event of “failures,” great learning,
RIEP aids businesses in “rehearsing for the future.” A positive workplace culture, adaptable reskilling
capabilities, and company expansion (organic and inorganic) are all made possible through the
integrated capabilities of TCS.

Sustainability
An ecosystem of TCS includes employees, consumers, supply chain collaborators, startups, academics,
VCs, governments, NGOs, and rival companies. TCS executives actively cultivate networks of
potential collaborators and co-innovation partners. Through its CSR activities, governance projects,
and environmental initiatives, TCS maintains sustainability. TCS CEO and MD Rajesh Gopinathan
stated, “We believe that enterprises can build sustainable, inclusive, and greater futures for their
stakeholders by adopting an organic, inside out transformation model, rather than outside in,
externally-driven standardized change agendas” 14.

TCS in coming decade?

TCS has developed its own "telescope" (Digital Exponential Table) that attempts to analyze
technology in the context of societal and corporate developments. The research and innovation center
of TCS is ready for assisting its project development teams in implementing other technological
government projects such as IoTsystems for agriculture, spacetech systems for disaster department,
computational biology for health department, environmental technological systems for environment
department, mobility & e-transportation system for transport department, and many more. TCS has a
good brand value and increasing growth in revenue. The questions for TCS in coming decade is “Will
TCS work together with other leading companies on the development of government technological
initiatives to provide high-quality products or services for the public?” or “Will TCS strengthen its
competencies in the area of technical product development in order to win more government technical
projects?”

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 Endnotes
1. Building On Belief. Retrieved October 10, 2022 from https://www.tata.com/newsroom/business/tcs-
new-brand-vision-belief
2. Stellar Q3 Helps TCS Hit $25 Bn in Annual Revenue. Retrieved October 10, 2022 from
https://www.tcs.com/tcs-financial-results-q3-fy-2022
3. TCS WORLDWIDE. Retrieved October 10, 2022 from https://www.tcs.com/worldwide
4. Indian government projects: How TCS cracked the code. Retrieved October 9, 2022 from
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/indian-government-projects-how-tcs-cracked-the-
code-7382731.html
5. Expenditure on social services rises 9.8% to Rs 71.61 lakh crore in FY22: Eco Survey. Retrieved
October 9, 2022 from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/expenditure-
on-social-services-rises-9-8-to-rs-71-61-lakh-crore-in-fy22-eco
survey/articleshow/89243314.cms#:~:text=Expenditure%20on%20social%20services%20rises,E
co%20Survey%20%2D%20Times%20of%20India
6. Chang, K., Baek, S. H., & Ko, S. K. (2004). A Study on Advanced Service Industry. Journal of the
Society of Korea Industrial and Systems Engineering, 27(4), 7-14.
7. Obondi, E. M., & Bett, S. (2018). Competitive strategies and the performance of matatus in the
public service transport sector in Nairobi City County, Kenya. International Academic Journal of
Human Resource and Business Administration, 3(4), 150-173.
8. Why Indian IT struggles with India government projects. Retrieved October 9, 2022 from
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/why-indian-it-struggles-with-india-government-
projects-7066591.html
9. BID Management. Retrieved October 11, 2022 from https://www.nationwideconsultingllc.com/bid-
management/
10. TCS 50. Retrieved October 11, 2022 from https://www.tcs.com/tcs-50
11. Tata Consultancy: First Mover In India. Retrieved October 10, 2022 from
https://www.forbes.com/2007/05/21/outsourcing-tata-ramadorai-oped-
cx_rd_0523interview.html?sh=59cb035c407d
12. Infosys. Retrieved October 11, 2022 from https://recruiter.shine.com/micro-site/infosys-jobs/about-
us/36
13. Infosys About Us. Retrieved October 11, 2022 from https://www.infosys.com/about/history.html
14. Sustainable futures are built using an ecosystem approach. Retrieved October 10, 2022 from
https://www.tcs.com/sustainability-services
15. Wipro Limited Mission, Vision & Values. Retrieved October 12, 2022 from
https://www.comparably.com/companies/wipro/mission
16. HCL T echnologies Mission, Vision & Values. Retrieved October 12, 2022 from
https://www.comparably.com/companies/hcl-technologies/mission
17. Infosys Vs Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Retrieved October 12, 2022 from
https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/business-analytics-services-
worldwide/compare/infosys-vs-tata-consultancy-services-tcs
18. TCS iON Launches Remote Assessments Product; Enables Students to Take Exams Anywhere.
Retrieved October 12, 2022 from https://www.tcs.com/tcs-ion-launches-remote-assessments-
product
19. TCS WORLDWIDE. Retrieved October 13, 2022 from https://www.tcs.com/worldwide

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Exhibits
Exhibit 1: TCS Geographics Footprint (October 2022)19

Exhibit 2: TCS Services

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Exhibit 3: Budget Expenditure Plans for Public Services Industry

Exhibit 4: Evolution of TCS 1968 to 2022

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Exhibit 5: Government IT Project lists
Project
Sl. Founded Project
IT Project Name Company Start Amount
No. Year Status
Year
1 Permanent account number (PAN) TCS 1968 1977 - Developed
system
2 Indian Railway Project TCS 1968 2006 Rs. 2,000 Developed
Crore
3 Passport Seva System V 1.0 TCS 1968 2008 Rs. 1,000 Developed
Crore
4 Aadhar Card Infosys 1981 2009 Rs. 11,366 Developed
Crore
5 Employee State Insurance Wipro 1945 2009 Rs. 1,182 Developed
Corporation (ESIC) Crore
6 e-governance initiative MCA-21 Infosys 1981 2012 Rs. 5 Crore Developed
V1.0
7 Fintech Based eGovernance HCL 1991 2013 - Developed
Projects
8 e-governance initiative MCA-21 Infosys 1981 2013 Rs. 100 Developed
V2.0 Crore
9 India Post V1.0 TCS 1968 2013 Rs. 1,100 Developed
Crore
10 India Post Device Wipro & HCL 1945 & 2013 Rs. 1,500 Developed
Infosystem 1976 Crore
11 Digital Exams (Gate) TCS 1968 2014 Developed
12 National Registry of Citizens Wipro 1945 2014 Rs. 70 Crore Developed
(NRC) project
13 GST Network Software Infosys 1981 2016 Rs. 1,380 Developed
Crore
14 Income Tax System Infosys 1981 2019 Rs. 1,64.5 Developed
Crore
15 BSNL TCS 1968 2022 Rs. 2,00 Started
Crore
16 Passport Seva System V 2.0 TCS 1968 2022 Rs. 8,000 Started
Crore

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Exhibit 6: TCS Revenue 2003-2022

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