NDTV Profit: Cognizant CEO and President Discuss the Highlights of the Company’s Q4 2011 Performance and 2012 Outlook

“We are very excited about the low attrition rate we saw in the fourth quarter,” says Francisco D’Souza. “We think this is the result of the fact that Cognizant is growing ahead of all competitors. This allows us to create tremendous career growth opportunities for our associates. We promoted more associates than virtually any other company this year. Over the last year-and-a-half, we have really been focused as a company on building an employee value proposition, understanding how we can create a 360-degree experience for our associates about their careers, about their long-term growth, about all aspects that constitute their relationship with the company and we want that to be world-class.”   

Gordon Coburn says, “2011 was an incredible year for us. We started the year thinking we will grow 26% and we ended the year growing 33%, driven largely by greater than anticipated strength in discretionary development work. We won a lot of that. We saw strength across our industries. Typically, economic slowdowns are good for our business, because they serve as catalysts for clients to think how else they want to use global delivery. In 2012, clearly the biggest driver will be clients looking to outsource a broader range of services, going beyond the traditional maintenance and development work into areas such as business process outsourcing, IT infrastructure services, and consulting. The addressable market for Cognizant is growing very substantially. Even as IT budgets are flat to up just slightly, the opportunity for us is very strong.”