Business Line, India: Cognizant’s CEO Says the Company has a Great Management Team That has Navigated Through Several Disruptions

“We were a Dun & Bradstreet company, and we have always stood for entrepreneurship and empowerment of our executives,” says Francisco D’Souza. Excerpts:

“When we took the company public in 1998, our revenues were $58 million; in today’s scenario, you can’t go public with such revenues. Our commitment was if you buy our shares, quid pro quo we will drive higher growth — not by margin expansion, but by faster top-line growth. In fact, we have delivered that over a period of time.

The faster growth came from a couple of bases. It came from financial flexibility because of lower operating margin; but in a services business, it is the people that have to take the baton and run with it. It has to be pervasive throughout the organization.

This empowerment and entrepreneurship are core and central to Cognizant. You can’t have them without transparency. I have to give information that will help executives run their part of their business. Else, they run in the dark. They need to know what is happening and what is ahead.

I think we have a great management team which has navigated through several disruptions along the way. We have not been afraid to say that we made a plan, like the 2020 plan where we shifted a little bit. We take this approach of telling as it is.

Cognizant has this practice of developing five-year strategic plans. During 2015 itself, we began work on Cognizant 2020 by taking inputs from clients, shareholders and the board. We launched that work in 2016.

At the same time, the industry and the technology world were going through this big digital transformation. Towards the summer of 2016, we started to realize that we needed to accelerate certain parts of the 2020 plan. In February 2017, we announced that we were accelerating our shift to digital. We took some outside help and consulted with a broad range of shareholders because we knew that as board members, our obligation is to the entire shareholder community. We do things we believe are in the best interests of our shareholders and long-term interest of the company.

Not just in the US, but in all parts of the world, we have to work with governments to find a balance between two things: we have to ensure what we are doing and how we are operating is good for the local workers and we have to balance it with what is good for American businesses. We hired 4,000 American citizens [in 2016] and will continue to hire more there. At the same time, American business needs access to technology and we can’t tie their hands and, say, limit their access to technology.”

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