SWOT ANALYSIS AND

RECOMMENDATIONS
(TCS IGNIO)

Submitted by : Dheeraj Arora

(Chief Strategist)
Table of Contents
Executive Summary: 2
1. Introduction: 3
2. Company Brief: 3
3. Competitors: 3
3a. Infosys Nia 3
3b. Wipro HOLMES 4
4. SWOT Analysis 4
4a. Strengths: 4
4b. Weaknesses: 5
4c. Opportunities 5
4d. Threats 6
5. Strategic Recommendations: 6
5a. Exploit the Opportunities by capitalising on strengths: 6
5b. Acting on Strengths: 7
5c. Shore Up the Weaknesses: 7
5d. Mitigate Threats using Strengths: 7
Appendix: 8
Table 1: Industry Growth trend 8
Table 2: Competitor Analysis 8
Table 2: PESTEL framework 9
Table 2.A. Political Factors 9
Table 2.B. Economic Factors 9
Table 2.C. Social Factors 9
Table 2.D. Technological Factors 10
Table 2.E. Environment Factors 10
Table 2.F. Legal Factors 10
Table 3: Porters five forces 11
Table 4: VRIO framework for TCS: 12
Table 5: SWOT Analysis 12
Table 6: TOWS Framework 13
References 14
Executive Summary:

This report evaluates the SWOT analysis of TCS Ignio to generate strategic suggestions for
it. Impact of external factors was evaluated through PESTEL and Porter five Forces
framework. Internal factors were also evaluated through VRIO framework. Strategic
recommendations were generated for TCS Ignio based on TOWS framework.

The findings suggest that there is huge potential for growth of Artificial intelligence-based
solutions in India due to economic growth and the initiatives taken by the Government of
India. It also suggests that increasing competition and attrition are threats to the business.

It is recommended that TCS Ignio should exploit the growth opportunities by leveraging its
strengths in partnership with the initiatives of the Government and also develop customised
solutions for developing countries. Considering the fierce competitive rivalry in its market,
TCS Ignio should focus on expanding innovation in different domains like Human – AI
collaboration.

The findings also suggest that TCS Ignio should work on improving customer experiences by
resolving their concerns over reporting capabilities. It should also mitigate threats of high
attrition using its strengths by focusing on multi-skilling and scaling up the Ignio certification
and training at Digitate Academy.

1. Introduction:
Information technology industry in India is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10.47%
(Statista,2022) in next five years, however Artificial Intelligence based software market is
expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.1% till 2025 (IndiaAI,2021). This indicates a steep
demand in artificial intelligence-based software market.
This report is written to evaluate SWOT analysis of TCS Ignio. It also evaluates competitors
dominating the Artificial intelligence-based solutions industry. The aim is to generate
strategic suggestions for TCS ignio. The report is structured as follows: Section 1 covers the
industry brief; Section 2 covers the evaluation of SWOT analysis and section 3 covers the
recommendations.

2. Company Brief:
Tata consultancy services is an information technology company, which provides services to
businesses on Consultancy, Analytics & Insights, Blockchain, Enterprise Applications,
Automation & AI, Cloud, IOT and Digital Engineering. It was established in 1968, with its
head office in Mumbai. TCS, being part of Tata conglomerate, has established trust among
its customers and partners. It has 5,09,058 employees (Upgrad,2022) and customers in
more than 100 countries (TCS,2022) with a consolidated revenue of INR 35 billion (TCS,
2022).

In year 2015, Digitate Ignio was launched as software venture of TCS. This platform
enhances innovative intelligence in business processes by using advance machine learning
and Artificial Intelligence (Upgrad, 2022). The Ignio suite offerings includes ignioAIOps,
ignioAI Workload Management, ignioAI ERPOps, and Cognitive Procurement. Ignio was
awarded with ‘AI Breakthrough award 2020’ in the category of ‘Best overall AI Platform’.

3. Competitors:
The key competitors in AI based solutions industry for TCS Ignio are Infosys Nia and Wipro
Holmes (refer Table 2).

3a. Infosys Nia

Nia is a platform based on Artificial intelligence and machine learning that provides deep
insights on business processes. Moreover, it brings in predictive and cognitive automation
using robotic process automation techniques. It was launched in 2017 by software giant
Infosys. Nia, in combination with Infosys Aikido service offerings, reduces the maintenance
cost for both physical and digital assets.
3b. Wipro HOLMES
Holmes is a platform based on artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. It was
developed and launched in 2017 by Wipro using machine learning, NLP, and pattern
recognition ontologies to improve cognitive experience and productivity with automation.
This AI platform provides a wide variety of cognitive computing services for robotics, and
drones.

4. SWOT Analysis
PESTEL (refer Table 3), Porter five forces analysis (refer Table 4) and VRIO framework
(refer Table 5) were applied to identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
(refer Table 6)

4a. Strengths:
Product Innovation: Ignio suite offers different solutions ignioAI.Ops, ignioAI.Workload
Management, Ignio AI.ERPOps, and Cognitive Procurement with unique features fit for
different processes (Upgrad,2020). It is awarded with awarded with ‘AI Breakthrough award
2020’ in the category of ‘Best overall AI Platform’

Brand Image: TCS is a part of Tata group, which is known for its ethical practices and
employee friendly policies (TCS,2022). Being a trustworthy brand gives it a unique strength
over its competitors.

Quick Return on Investment: Ignio has assured a payback period of 9 months of

investment (Businesswire, Apr 2022) and a return-on-investment of 185% ultimately
(Businesswire, Apr 2022).

Marketing Strategy: TCS has established a brand image for Ignio using a tagline of
“Reducing that Uncertainty” in processes (economictimes, 2017). As per Forrester study on
Ignio, it has resulted in 90% reduction (Businesswire,2022) in system downtime and
improved IT operations team productivity up to 60% (Businesswire, 2022)

Intellectual property / Patents: TCS Ignio has been in forefront in registering patents. It has
taken more than 75 patents till 2020 (TCS, 2022).
Skilled Manpower: TCS employs 5,09,058 employees (upgrad, 2022) and a renowned
employer globally.

Strong presence Globally: TCS Ignio has its customer base wide up to 105 clients
(Digitate,2019) globally in retail, manufacturing, telecom, and financial sectors.

SaaS suite: TCS launched SaaS suite of Ignio on Microsoft Azure in July 2020 (TCS, 2020),
which will enable quick configuration and deployment, cost effective, high scalability and
consistent updates.

First mover advantage: TCS has the first mover advantage in launching Ignio AI based
solutions in year 2015 (refer Table) compared to its key competitors.

Cash rich Organisation: TCS consolidated revenue of USD 25.7 billion in FY 2122 is up by
15.9 % year on year (TCS, 2022) and net income at USD 5.139 billion is up by 13.9% year
on year. (TCS,2022).

4b. Weaknesses:
Customer Experiences: Reporting capabilities are disliked by Retail industry (Gartner,
2021)

Legal Squabbles: TCS was penalised by Appeals court in August 2020 (Business today,
2021) for $165 millions in the case related to Epic systems for an unauthorised access to
Epic’s confidential information (Business today, 2021) Such instances damage the brand
image.

4c. Opportunities
#AIFORALL Strategy of Indian Government: Indian Government has announced its
strategy for #AIFORALL in June,2018 (Telecommunication Engineering Centre, 2020),
which will be applicable in various sectors and increase the demand for AI based solutions,
thus creating an opportunity for TCS Ignio.

Growth in developing countries: GDP of India is expected to be 8.95% in 2021

(Statista,2021). Growing GDP indicates significant increase in demand for AI based
solutions, thus creates an opportunity for Ignio.
Higher Inflation rate: Inflation rate in India is 7% in 2021 (Statista,2022) which is higher
than 2018,2019, and 2020. This indicates the significant increase in manpower and
manufacturing cost and consequently, push for the demand of AI based solutions.

Steep increase in Online shopping: India has 658 M active internet users (Statista,2022)
and ecommerce industry stands at USD 84 Billion in 2021 and is on growing trend. AI based
automation provides a better solution to manage operations at this scale, thus an opportunity
for TCS Ignio.

4d. Threats
Competition: IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro, Capgemini, Deloitte, Accenture, etc are
investing a huge amount on developing AI and ML based software, thus creating a fierce
competition in market.

High Attrition: Attrition rate at TCS rose to 15.3% in the third Quarter of FY 2021~22
(Indiatimes, 2022), as compared to 11.9% (Indiatimes, 2022) in the second quarter of same
financial year. This trend increases the cost for TCS and increase business risk due to skill
loss.

Immigration & its limitations: IT companies are affected by the change in immigration /
visa rules. This increases the risk and cost associated with global projects.

5. Strategic Recommendations:
TOWS analysis (refer Table 7) was applied to identify and generate strategic suggestions for
TCS and Ignio.

5a. Exploit the Opportunities by capitalising on strengths:

The Government of India’s initiative #AIFORALL has opened the wide spectrum of
opportunities for artificial intelligence-based solutions in various domains from agriculture to
banking and transportation (Telecommunication Engineering Centre, 2020). TCS should
leverage its strengths of brand image and domain expertise to exploit these opportunities.

Economy of developing countries like India is growing consistently, for instance, GDP of
India is expected to grow at 8.95% in 2021 (Statista 2021). This trend will create huge
demand for AI / ML based solutions. TCS ignio should create customised solutions as per
local needs by leveraging its strength of global footprints and skilled manpower.

5b. Acting on Strengths:

TCS has been investing a huge amount on research and innovation. It invested Rs 15 billion
in 2017~18 (business-standard,2022) on research activities. To keep them ahead of
competition, TCS should consider expanding innovation in domains like Human-AI
collaboration (TCS, n.d.) and humanoid robot which are going to be in demand in future.

5c. Shore Up the Weaknesses:

Many customers are experiencing concerns in reporting capabilities (Gartner,2021). TCS
should consider providing customised reports as per client’s requirements. This will
strengthen their brand image and customer satisfaction index.

5d. Mitigate Threats using Strengths:

TCS reported an attrition of 15.3% in third quarter of 2021~22 (Indiatimes,2022). Skilled
manpower, being the backbone of software industry, is in huge demand due to significant
growth in industry. Similar to practice in manufacturing industry, TCS should consider
multiskilling of employees to retain the skill in the organisation. It should also consider a
layered approach in employee engagement and review for skill-based compensation to
retain its employees. TCS should also scale up the Ignio certification and training at Digitate
academy (Digitate,2020) to bridge the skill gap in industry.

Appendix:

Table 1: Industry Growth trend

Revenue from IT services in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.47 % in next 5 years.
(Statista, 2022)

Year -> 2018 2020 2022 2025

Software
Industry (Billion 12.61 13.07 17.41 23.35
USD)
Source: Statista,2022

Table 2: Competitor Analysis

Parameter TCS Ignio Infosys Nia Wipro Holmes

Launch year 2015 2017 (Infosys,2017) 2017 (Wipro,2017)

AI Breakthrough Award
Award - -
2020 (TCS,2020)
8.7 8.8
Smart Score -
(Financeonline,n.d.) (Financeonline,n.d.)
Data Analytics,
Rapid Root cause Speech Recognition,
Machine learning
analysis, Automation of Natural Language
Unique platform, Robotic
tasks, Predictive impact understanding, Pattern
Features process automation,
analysis, Learn context, discovery, Cognitive
predictive automation,
(Digitate,n.d.) process automation
Cognitive Automation
SaaS version of Ignio
(TCS,2020) – quick
Others - -
configuration, high
scalability

Table 3: PESTEL framework

Table 3.A. Political Factors
Factor Implication to organisation Rating Source
 (1-5)
India has a stable government with a
Govt term completing in 2024. therefore, TCS
4 TOI, 2022
stability can have stable strategy for Ignio next 2
years.
The Government of India has published
its strategy document on Artificial
Policy Intelligence named #AIFORALL in Telecommunicatio
Framewor June,2018 (Telecommunication 3 n Engineering
k Engineering Centre, 2020). It creates a Centre, 2020
unique opportunity for Artificial
Intelligence based solution providers.

Table 3.B. Economic Factors

Rating
Factor Implication to organisation Source
(1-5)
Inflation rate is 7% in 2021 which is higher
than previous 3 years, increases the
Inflation manpower / manufacturing cost significantly.
4 Statista (2022)
rate Artificial intelligence-based automation is a
solution for this. Thus, an opportunity for TCS
Ignio.
Expected GDP growth in India is 8.95% in
GDP year 2021. Growing GDP indicates significant
4 Statista (2021)
Growth increase in demand of AI based solutions,
creates an opportunity for TCS ignio.

Table 3.C. Social Factors

Ratin
Factor Implication to organisation g Source
(1-5)
Demographic In India, 35% of people fall between the age 4 Statista
Trend group of 18~40 years, availability of ample (2022)
 manpower creates a barrier to automation.
India has 658 M active internet users (2022),
and ecommerce industry stands at USD 84
Online Billion in 2021 and is on growing trend. AI based Statista
5
Shopping automation provides a better solution to manage (2022)
operations at this scale, thus an opportunity for
TCS Ignio.

Table 3.D. Technological Factors

Ratin
Factor Implication to organisation g Source
(1-5)
India stands at 7th rank on research and
development expenditure (USD 65 Billions);
Research & therefore, technology trend is evolving at a fast Statista
5
Development pace. Competitors are developing advance (2022)
technologies on AI and Machine learning; this
creates a threat for TCS ignio.

Table 3.E. Environment Factors

Ratin
Factor Implication to organisation g Source
(1-5)
The govt. is encouraging use of renewable
Energyworld
Renewable technologies in operations to ensure long term
3 (economic
Technologies sustainability. TCS should focus on green
times), 2020
energy for its operations.

Table 3.F. Legal Factors

Rating
Factor Implication to organisation Source
(1-5)
Consumer Indian IT act is amended for the provision of Right www.digitalin
4
Data to compensation for disclosure of personal dia.gov.in
 information. TCS must ensure the compliance for
protection (2018)
user’s data protection
Govt. of India announced first policy on
Intellectual
Intellectual property rights in 2016. TCS ignio www.Trade.
property 5
must ensure the compliance to applicable laws gov (2021)
Laws
while upgrading its features.

Table 4: Porters five forces

Rating
Forces Implication to organisation (5-high, Source
1 -low)
Software industry in India is growing at a
CAGR of 10.34% (Statista, 2022).
Therefore, demand for Skilled manpower
Bargaining
being supplier of software industry is Statista,
Power of 5
increasing. Thus, retaining skilled 2022
Supplier
manpower is a challenge for the industry,
leading to high bargaining power of
supplier.
Considering the presence of multiple
Bargaining companies with AI solutions, buyer has Upgrad,
5
Power of Buyer many options to choose from. Thus, buyers 2022
have more bargaining power.
Due to presence of many big competitors
Industry Upgrad,
like Infosys Nia, Wipro Holmes, leads to 5
Rivalry 2022
fierce competition.
Being a research-based solution and
intellectual property related concerns, this
Threat of New
market is not easily accessible to new 1 -
Entrants
entrants. Thus, reduces the threat of new
entrants
Threats of Artificial intelligence is a substitute for 3 -
Substitutes manual work to enhance efficiency at work.
 Thus, has less threat of substitutes.

Table 5: VRIO framework

Competitive
Resource Value Rare Imitation Organization
Advantage
Brand No, Part of
Yes Yes Yes Yes,
Reputation Tata Group
Unique Yes, competitive
Yes Yes yes Yes
features edge
Yes Short term
Marketing
Yes (Reduce the Yes Yes competitive
Rights
uncertainty) edge
Yes (over 75
Intellectual
patents in
Property / Yes Yes Yes Yes
AI / ML
Patents
(TCS,2018))
Sustainable
Global Organized
Yes Yes No competitive
Presence well globally
advantage
Product
Yes No Yes Yes Short Term edge
Portfolio
Talent Yes, Yes, critical
Competitive
Attraction & culture of to the Difficult Yes
Parity
Retention innovation organization
Table 6: SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses

Product Innovation

Brand Image Customer experiences – bad

Quick Return on Investment Legal Squabbles

Marketing Strategy

Intellectual Property / Patents

Skilled Manpower

Strong presence Globally

First Mover Advantage

Cash Rich Organisation

Opportunities Threats

#AIFORALL Strategy of Indian Government Competition

Growth in developing countries High Attrition

Higher Inflation rate Immigration & its limitations

Steep increase in Online shopping
Table 7: TOWS Framework
Threats
ST1 : Intellectual property / Patents +
strong Competition
Strength ST2: Strong presence Globally + high
attrition and immigration rules
increasing risk and cost of skilled
manpower
WT1: customer experiences + Growing
Weakness competition (Client may shift to
competitors with such features)
Opportunities
SO1 : Brand Image + expanding
market of Artificial Intelligence based
solutions
SO2 : Strong presence Globally + GDP
Growth in Developing countries
WO1: customer experiences +
growing internet users and online
shoppers
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