Lessons from a purpose-driven collaboration between Infosys and a leading oil & gas major

Choosing the right partner to deliver results within an existing large vendor ecosystem is a daunting challenge for any enterprise. That’s especially true for a sector such as energy and utilities, which is undergoing a major transformation to build efficiencies, improve productivity, and accommodate end consumers’ changing needs. Moreover, enterprises in this sector prioritize meeting their net-zero ambition in the coming years, which requires them to engage with the vendor ecosystem and choose the right partners. Enterprises within this sector endlessly evaluate service partners to help them with critical engineering and design, operations and maintenance, supply chain and logistics, IT services and support, and sustainability projects.

A leading oil and gas major pivoted its strategy in 2020 to become an energy company and create a 10-year plan to progress toward its net-zero ambition. The company needed partners that shared its vision and goals. Infosys and this oil and gas major began their engagement in 2003. The partnership leverages Infosys’ digital capabilities and the oil and gas major’s expertise in the energy sector to create revenue opportunities while delivering mutual value for each partner.

A deeper look into the relationship (see Exhibit 1) presents what the partnership of Infosys and this oil and gas major has delivered over the past two decades. From a KPI-driven approach of providing support to small engagements and managed services to an outcome-based approach for digital transformation at scale to today’s purpose-driven strategic partnership, Infosys has achieved a strong track record of accomplishment with its oil and gas major client.

Exhibit 1: The two-decade journey between Infosys and a leading oil and gas major—from KPI-driven to purpose-led

Source: Infosys

The evolution from service provider to purpose-led partner (see Exhibit 2) involves building trust, innovating, and achieving successful projects. For such partnerships to succeed, the enterprise and the service provider must share a common purpose and vision.

Exhibit 2: Stages of maturity and value in services relationships

Source: HFS Research, 2024

Infosys invested in fostering synergies with this oil and gas major client to build a purpose-led engagement

While most supplier-client partnership engagements start transactionally, service providers must build trust, demonstrate ROI, and focus on value. This enables service providers to mature into a purpose-led association with the client, banking on each other’s strengths and capabilities to develop new sources of revenue. Both Infosys and this leading oil and gas major client continue exploring opportunities around sustainability, diversity, and inclusion, which are part of the larger industry challenges both organizations are working to solve.

In 2021, the oil and gas major and Infosys agreed to codevelop an energy-as-a-service solution to manage energy assets and services and help businesses achieve their decarbonization goals. They set out collaboratively to manage Infosys’ Pune campus energy system and then bring the solution they created to the market.

This collaborative solution uses IoT and AI/ML to support business insights on energy efficiency and carbon intensity. It helps businesses achieve energy savings, cost reduction, decarbonization, and supply reliability. The co-innovation proposition is today’s holistic energy management solution for commercial buildings and campuses. It demonstrates the purpose-led partnership between Infosys and the oil and gas major.

Infosys synchronized with the oil and gas major’s long-term goals and innovation strategy, transcending cost and efficiency considerations

Infosys already had a longstanding partnership with this leading oil and gas major for IT services that had matured from a cost and efficiency outcome to driving shared goals. This led to opportunities for joint solutions in integrated energy offerings in India and Infosys becoming a primary application services partner in the oil and gas major’s transformation journey into an integrated energy company.

In 2023, Infosys signed a multiyear contract with this oil and gas major, the second-largest deal the consultancy has won. This multiyear agreement entails transforming the oil and gas major’s digital landscape by providing end-to-end application services, including development, modernization, management, and maintenance.

This deal was possible because of the value-driven relationship Infosys forged over almost two decades with the oil and gas major. Infosys has been able to consistently deliver on the shared goals by not only bringing its technology expertise into context for the oil and gas major to accelerate its digital transformation but also delivering innovative solutions to help the company transition to a new operating model and achieve its net-zero ambition by 2050 or sooner.

The Bottom line: To become a growth catalyst, an enterprise-supplier partnership must transition from valuing shared effort to purpose-driven collaboration.

Enterprises expect a purpose-driven partnership to drive results and collaborate toward a common objective. Achieving this requires alignment on both partners’ long-term goals, risks, and strategic investments in innovation.

In this case, Infosys’ longstanding collaboration and continuous co-innovation with the oil and gas major have enabled the partnership to evolve into a shared purpose-led engagement.