Will Infosys Consulting be able to change the “rules of the game” in the consulting industry?
ICI’s new rules of the game (1-1-3 model)
Infosys consulting has come up with an innovative way of performing business process consulting operations. They are calling their model as 1-1-3 model based on the allocation of resources for particular project. This model could be summarized in the below diagram with the significance of the new approach highlighted in the purple callout (case p9):

The value of this model comes from allotment of the task between onsite and offshore teams and hence making the most of the time differences and wage differenced to accomplish maximum work at minimum cost and time. The differentiating factors of this …show more content…
This has effectively reduced the total lifecycle by half. Also by off shoring development work to India, Infosys incurs considerably low cost per employee. This has reduced the price by 50% ($100 per hour per person compared to $175-225 of IBM (case p10))

Furthermore, this advantage is hard to imitate by the incumbents like IBM and Accenture for the reasons like incumbents have to downsize their onsite operations substantially to beat ICI’s costs. It will be hard for these companies to change the existing processes completely. And Infosys is likely to keep its lead in terms of understanding and building relationship in the Indian market. All these factors have made the advantages hard, though not impossible, to imitate.

Disadvantages
While enjoying the benefits of its parent company based in India, ICI has to face some disadvantages as well while trying to expand its operations in US and Europe instead of India.
• ICI has to establish itself as a global brand. Right now the name Infosys is essentially attached to India. Thought this adds value in software development and services business, it probably hampers in consulting business where most of the clients are in US and Europe
• The lack of strong global brand name might affect ICI’s attempt to recruit the global talent. As vast majority of Infosys employees are Indian (case p13), they need to have more representation in local communities to attract local talent which in turn will lure the local clients.