Bloomberg Radio: Cognizant CEO Says Businesses Generate Competitive Advantage and Drive Productivity by Embracing New Digital Technologies

“Our business is doing well and we are really benefitting from this great environment that we are in for technology,” says Francisco D’Souza, in a conversation with Bloomberg Advantage hosts Carol Massar and Vonnie Quinn about Cognizant’s growth drivers, digital disruption across industries, STEM education, careers in technology, and investing in the future.

“There is a great renaissance for technology going on right now,” D’Souza adds. “Cloud, digital, social, mobile, analytics, the Internet of Things—all of these are opportunities for businesses around the world to generate competitive advantage for themselves, to innovate and we are benefitting from those trends.” Excerpts:

Dual Mandate

“Businesses in much of the developed world face continuous pressure; there is still a lot of volatility. Businesses are looking to use technology to drive greater degrees of efficiency, effectiveness and productivity, so that they can free up dollars to invest in new technology that’s going to drive competitive advantage and growth. Our mission is to help our clients run their businesses better on one hand and run differently on the other hand, using technology.”

Digital Disruption

“The models of deploying new digital technologies tend to be capital-light. When you go to the cloud, for example, you are not investing in big, traditional, on-premise infrastructure. You are buying services on demand from the cloud. We are seeing a tremendous amount of deployment of digital technologies for competitive advantage.  How do you interact with your customers better if you are a bank? How do you serve your patients better if you are a healthcare company—all using mobile technologies and using the cloud? We see a lot of that deployment going on right now. That investment in innovation and growth isn’t necessarily coming along with large capital investments.

We are investing very heavily in a few areas. Number one is digital technologies. We think that digital technologies are going to reshape many industries and so we are investing to stay well ahead of our competition. We are investing very heavily in platforms. We want to be able to combine services and software together to create differentiated solutions for clients. We think our differentiation is going to be in the quality of our solutions, the quality of our people, and the quality of our digital technologies.

Both financial services and healthcare are great industries right now because they are both going through periods of fundamental change. That change is driven by regulation and macroeconomic forces, but it is also being driven by technology. The opportunity for technology to reshape financial services and healthcare…I think we are only beginning to see that disruption.”

Macro-Economic Environment

“From where we stand, I think that the macro-environment in North America is improving every day. When we look at the markers in the industries that we serve, we feel that the investment cycle in technology is picking up and we see growth in our business. Growth in Europe is still muted, but that still continues to be an opportunity for us because when our clients are in an environment of low growth, they look to drive ever greater levels of efficiency and we can help with that.

Since 2008, we have been going through a period of great structural shift across many of the industries in the United States. And when you go through these periods of big structural shifts with big portions of the economy, like we are seeing right now, sometimes productivity gains take time to ripple through the economy and show up in the macro numbers that we look at for productivity. But companies are deploying technology every day for competitive advantage to drive greater degrees of productivity and innovation.”

STEM Talent and Careers

“There is a substantial shortage of STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics—talent in the United States. We can’t recruit enough talent in the United States. We recruit aggressively from the job market and universities in the United States. We just can’t find all of the talent that we need in technology.

We are doing a lot to encourage kids to build careers in STEM. We are going to schools, colleges and universities, and stimulating a passion in STEM through Cognizant’s “Making the Future” initiative. We want them to understand that STEM disciplines are not abstract; they help you.

We have to encourage more people to take STEM careers in the United States. But that’s a generational thing, it is a long-term solution. In the short run, we have got to allow talented folks from around the world who want to build their careers in the United States to come here and contribute to the economy, to help businesses in the United States continue to be competitive and remain competitive going forward.

One of the things about a career in technology is that you have to continue to reinvent yourself. You have to continue to learn because the technology cycles are short. That attribute of being a constant learner or being able and willing to relearn new skills is one that you have to have if you are in the technology industry.”

Click here to listen to the interview.