Dataquest: Executive Vice Chairman of Cognizant India Talks About the State of Business and Market Forces

“We are in the midst of a once-in-a-decade shift in the technology landscape,” says R. Chandrasekaran. “More than ever, clients are grappling with the dual mandate to drive not just better efficiencies, but also greater innovation for the needs of tomorrow.” Excerpts:

“On one side of the dual mandate, the shift towards digital is front and center for clients. On the other side of the dual mandate, clients continue to drive down costs in their core operations. Within client budgets, we are seeing accelerated focus on addressing the dual mandate by driving operational efficiency and using the dollars thus freed to fund digital transformation and innovation.

Clients are adopting our traditional service offerings more broadly and driving demand for integrated, multi service deals—solutions that typically include a combination of consulting, IT services, BPS, and infrastructure services—while also exploring new frontiers of cost and operating efficiency through new as-a-service utility or platform-based models, which help them create variable cost structures, enhance efficiency, and drive agility and time-to-market.

We had seen this coming many years ago and embedded in the company a systematic capability, in the form of our three-horizon model, to manage reinvestment in our services portfolio by rapidly identifying changing market demands and capitalizing on them. As a result of our three horizon model, we now have a solid, comprehensive portfolio of services for the current needs of our clients as well as a robust mechanism to ensure that we have the organizational agility to make the right investments to remain relevant to clients going forward.

On the digital front, our differentiated approach that we call Digital Works has seen great traction. Having worked with clients on hundreds of digital projects, it’s very clear to us that winning in the new digital era requires a new engagement model. Clients need a partner who can bring new capabilities in design, data science and digital technology in addition to a deep understanding of their business, operating model and technology landscape. Clients recognize that they often do not have in-house capabilities in all these areas and are looking to deepen relationships with partners such as Cognizant who have invested for the digital landscape.

We are confident in our reinvestment strategy and our ability to produce sustained industry-leading growth over the long-term.”

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