TCS set to revamp quarterly results
Business Standard — March 31, 2007

In a bid to be among the top 10 IT service providers globally, the country's largest IT services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is drastically improvising the way it publishes quarterly results. The move will induce more transparency and simultaneously rearticulate the company's brand strategy with an estimated Rs50-crore annual campaign. Beginning this quarter, for the first time in corporate India, the $4-billion company will publish a separate operational results sheet along with its financial results.

The sheet will comprise a list of its ongoing projects benchmarked against 6-7 parameters. They would include details about whether the project was completed on time or not, whether it met with the quality expectations and whether the project cost was within that mentioned in the budget. "We will drive the behaviour of the IT industry by setting these benchmarks," asserts global corporate affairs head Phiroze Vandrevala. Analysts term this as a "very good move". "Financial results can be likened to a black box.

The operational results sheet will provide investors an insight beyond numbers," opines Pradeep Uddhas, global partner in-charge, sourcing advisory, KPMG. "It's a great development from a corporate governance perspective," concurs Alok Shende, VP (ICT practice), South Asia & Middle East, Frost & Sullivan. The move is part of its Delivery 25 dashboard strategy which comprises 25 different parameters to measure execution performance for clients.

"We discovered that IT delivery of companies was pathetic. Hence, this promise to deliver on time, within budget and without defects. This also explains why we are introducing the concept of operational results," says Vandrevala, adding that the campaign tagline Experience Certainty" focused on delivery and would be ingrained in its employees and communicated to its customers worldwide over the next 12 months. The exercise was started in October 2005.