The world of work is changing faster than ever, and machine intelligence is at the centre of this change. Most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has played a leading role in the fight against Covid-19. Scientists have used AI to help predict future outbreak zones, sift through research, and even run simulations on drugs to determine their efficacy.

It's safe to say most aspects of life will be quite different after the global coronavirus pandemic ends. A new report, "After the Virus" from digital firm Cognizant, looks at just how different things will be, from national politics to socioeconomics, work, business, and well, life in general.

Cognizant head of industries for Australia and New Zealand, Gaurav Sharma said Australians are already spending more time online than usual, and as Click Frenzy drives traffic to websites, retailers must facilitate smooth e-commerce experiences.

After the coronavirus pandemic, the world will be quite different. Whether the lockdowns last weeks or months, very little will remain unchanged. In a bid to contain the spread of Covid-19, governments around the world have instituted health monitoring policies, leveraging GPS and other data from a variety of personal devices.

Having visibility of your own skills, including level of expertise allows you to be aware of your evolution and measure your growth, your professional profile. You set your goals to develop autonomy, and measure… While making constant, incremental improvements.

Premankur Roy Paladhi shared these recommendations: “To cope with the coronavirus pandemic, consumer goods and retail organisations need a robust business continuity plan (BCP), one that is based on a holistic supply chain strategy and built on flexible and strong digital foundations. Any BCP should anticipate disruptions and provide proactive recommendations to keep pace with fluctuating demand and fulfilment cycles.

Countries around APAC are starting to phase slowly back into normalcy with additional safety measures like COVID-19 tracking apps for citizens. However traditional businesses have had to adapt to new realities of a post-virus world and the implications for CIOs will be profound. The days of the IT department being responsible for infrastructure and operations, with a relentless focus on cost reduction, are gone.

In a recent report forecasting life after the virus, Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work envisioned the creation of a massive Health Security Agency that would mandate automated illness scanning for any building, space or country.

“5G will help realise the benefits from the evolving IoT environment, including the development in endpoint devices such as environmental and situational sensors, vehicles, wearables, drones, robots, and virtual reality equipment,” says Rohit Gupta, vice president and head of manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities, Europe at Cognizant.

“Inclusive leaders recognize the realities of what it means to work virtually and the need to be flexible," says Ben Pring, Director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work.

Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries says the restructuring done last year has helped the company lay the path for M&As and a better standing in the cloud technology market, despite a difficult business climate this year due to Covid-19. Edited excerpts of an interview with ET.

In a Q&A, Brian Humphries says his firm has handled the ransomware attack well and doesn't see any impact on client engagement.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp on Friday posted revenues of $4.2 billion for the first quarter ended March, up 3.5% year-on-year in constant currency. In an interview, Brian Humphries, chief executive officer, spoke about growth drivers, demand environment and its strategy to sail through the covid-19 crisis.

When it comes to the 5G roll-out, AI will definitely be supercharged. Smart, AI-based devices that operate at the edge for buildings, cities, and vehicles, can make complex decisions in real-time based on the data they see.

With healthcare organizations focused on battling COVID-19, the recent federal healthcare regulation requiring data interoperability may have become an afterthought. However, compliance with this rule will create a powerful tool for fighting COVID-19 recurrences and future pandemics.

After the coronavirus global pandemic, the world will be quite different. Whether the current lockdown lasts weeks or months, very little will remain unchanged by COVID-19. A special report from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, After the Virus: A Special Report Looking Back on the Next Five Years, explores the most probable shifts across healthcare, education, retail, travel, technology, and government as the world becomes more connected and virtual.

The show must go on: Even as COVID-19 inflicts a new, jolting reality on business operations worldwide, this has become the new charge for COOs and CIOs everywhere. In my conversations over the past few weeks with manufacturing clients, I have learned a lot about how businesses are coping with the sudden onset of change and how – as these new practices are followed, enhanced, and supported – they could end up accelerating enterprise modernisation in the long run.

Forward-looking businesses are offloading data centre maintenance and management to the cloud to keep things running during the covid-19 pandemic. Raja Renganathan, vice president at Cognizant and head of Cloud Services Business takes a closer look at what it takes to keep things ticking over during lockdown.

Just as Y2K served as an inflection point for the IT services industry, businesses are now going through another period of significant change and opportunity, says Cognizant’s Humphries, in an interview with Forbes India.

More than a dozen doctors employed with technology major Cognizant for its healthcare and life sciences practice in Mumbai have volunteered to be a part of a telephonic helpline for addressing questions on COVID-19.

This article was first published in the Spring 2020 issue of Best Execution. www.bestexecution.net.

For the financial organisations swimming through a sea of regulation, the news that the European authorities were delaying the impending stricter clearing and settlement regime was a huge relief.

AI driven solutions are becoming a competitive differentiator for banks and other financial services — delivering a hyper-personalised customer experience, improving decision-making and boosting operational efficiency. Yet, many financial services institutions (FIs) remain in an experimental phase and will need to accelerate actual AI deployment. Otherwise, they risk being left behind by digitally native players.

The ongoing technological revolution continues to change the world in unforeseeable ways, which can make difficult the accurate forecasting of jobs we cannot yet imagine. Nevertheless, to help organisations and individuals prepare for changes we are expecting to see in the coming years, we embarked on the enormous endeavour of applying our knowledge across several industries to predict the new jobs that are likely to emerge over the next decade.

The pharma manufacturing landscape is evolving as never before. Much of this change is driven by greater connectivity and Industry 4.0. The subsequent availability of data is driving operational efficiencies and providing unique insights.

After the coronavirus pandemic, the world will be quite different. Whether the current lockdown lasts weeks or months, very little will remain unchanged by COVID-19. A special report from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, After the Virus: A Special Report Looking Back on the Next Five Years, explores the most probable shifts across healthcare, education, retail, travel, technology, and government as the world becomes more connected and virtual. The report was written from a future perspective – as if the events were being chronicled in 2025, tracing the changes that unfolded in the immediate years following this pandemic.

We do not need a crystal ball to determine the future of payments, it can be summed up in a few words: speed, transparency, personalisation, choice, and safety. The evolution of entities in the payments ecosystem in the last decade – whether traditional banks, payment processors, fintechs, or merchants – points to the fact that we are moving to a model where the transfer of money will be instant, frictionless, and omni-channel.

After COVID-19, banking will be much different than it was pre-pandemic. The change in the way people bank, the future of work, the use of modern technology and the value of brands will all depend greatly on the time it takes to settle on a 'new normal'. A look into the future provides a good foundation for what needs to be done today.

Tata Consultancy Serivces, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Persistent Systems have emerged on the frontlines in the battle to contain the coronavirus outbreak. The IT services providers are helping governments as well as drug developers identify new molecules to combat the pandemic, create simulations on how the virus spreads and build digital tools for clinical trials.

The rollout of 5G has been met with an element of scepticism. There are questions around whether the technology will deliver on expectations, concerns around security for both businesses and consumers and, although not proven, worries about potential health risks. Whatever reservations people may have, the fifth generation of cellular technology is upon us, bringing with it an abundance of opportunity for businesses to capitalise on increased data speed and potential new revenue-generating models as well as benefits for society at large.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp will pay an extra 25% of base pay to some employees in India and the Philippines as a majority of its offshore workforce work from home amid the coronavirus pandemic, taking on extra work, Chief Executive Officer Brian Humphries said.

Many banks and other financial services institutions (FIs) are beginning to recognise the benefits of AI-driven solutions as a way to get ahead in the market and challenge the competition. Amongst many other benefits, the technology enables organisations to offer hyper-personalised customer experience, dramatically improve internal decision making, and drive operational efficiency. However, many businesses are struggling to move beyond the experimental phase and reach actual AI deployment. It is those organisations that are at risk of being left behind.

Having the ability to access additional information via augmented reality AR is becoming more commonplace as businesses realise the advantages this can deliver. Enhancing what people see via smartphones, tablets and – increasingly – head-mounted displays (HMDs), has the potential to transform many business processes.

This month, some of the world’s largest interdealer brokers, who negotiate OTC trades between the big banks, have seen record trading volumes as sudden changes in interest rates, coupled with the plummeting oil price, trigger a whirlwind of global price volatility.

The Internet of Things is now powering industries but we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. The advent of 5G will enable enterprise companies to have unprecedented insight into the digitization of almost everything. As 5G rolls out nationally and offers more reliable connectivity, the manufacturing companies that forego increased digitization within their plants will be left behind financially. Especially with the rise of smart factories – digitally connected production facilities that improve processes through automation and self-optimization, traditional manufacturing operations will be at a disadvantage.

End-to-end product transparency has fast become a key factor for millennials when deciding whether or not to purchase from a brand. A recent McKinsey study revealed 52% of millennials do research for background information on a product before making a purchase. Because of this, product traceability has become ever more important for retailers wanting to gain and maintain trust with their customers, but this comes with its own challenges.

In line with this year’s International Women’s Day theme of #EachForEqual, Human Resources Online reached out to HR leaders to find out what their organisation’s call-to-action is in the push for a gender-equal workforce.

It takes a lot to lead a business. And while there are several things you can do to ensure you’re being the best leader, other rules may best thrown out.

"The opportunities in tech are endless and rewarding and while digital skills are important, human skills such as creativity, abstract thinking, and adapting to changing conditions are equally important," says Carol Cohen.

To provide a positive experience at a stressful time requires insurers to rethink how they approach customer service and explore how AI can improve communications and accelerate claims handling.

The Central Securities Depositories Regime (CSDR) has been at the top of many agendas in the asset servicing industry for some time now. The regulation addresses Europe’s settlement systems, to create a smarter and more efficient industry best practice.

Brian Humphries was appointed as CEO of Cognizant last April. He took over at a time when the company lost its bellweather status. In conversation with TOI, he details his plans and vision to get back to industry leadership.

In April 2019, Brian Humphries replaced Francisco D’Souza as the Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Technology Solutions to set the house in order as the US-based software company faced a series of challenges…

Cognizant has witnessed a slew of changes in terms of its strategy, spearheaded by Brian Humphries who took charge as CEO on 1 April, 2019. Mr. Humphries talks about the company’s strategy and hiring plans.

Software services exporter Cognizant will double investments in building cloud capabilities this year, CEO Brian Humphries told ET, as the company pushes to grow faster in digital technologies and regain its bellwether status.

The science of applied artificial intelligence doesn't get the same kinds of headlines as the pure research efforts of Google or Facebook or others. Mostly that's because what gets built by companies is obfuscated by those same companies, either for proprietary reasons or because the companies actually have nothing much to speak of.

In the race to the top with technology adoption, the industry has reached an inflection point where businesses are arguably becoming too obsessed with their technology prowess. However, in the rush to innovate, the industry may have missed a step in translating technology investments into true business impact.

On Monday, in more than 40 cities nationwide, thousands of women who understand the value of networking and who hope to make connections to advance their careers will come together for discussion and to share business insights. Ahead of those on-site conversations, we asked a lineup of executives and entrepreneurs from across the country what advice they would offer to a mentor. The women we spoke with represent the likes of Deloitte, the Sofia Fund and Cognizant.

The complex nature of apparel and footwear product manufacturing processes has resulted in a lack of trust along the supply chain. Consumers are increasingly seeking transparency about the origin of their products. Their buying decisions are now influenced by factors such as how and where items are produced, under what working conditions, and whether components are ethically sourced.

The National Broadcast Network has been a hot talking point across the corporate and technology sectors for more than a decade, with everything from timing and logistics to the underlying technology and rollout drawing a lot of attention.

BENGALURU: Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries spoke to TOI after the earnings announcement.

Cognizant beat its full-year growth guidance in 2019, but the company wants to do better and sees momentum returning. CEO Brian Humphries told ET in an interview that the IT services provider is making investments in sales and marketing to boost long-term growth.

Since taking charge on 1 April, 2019, Brian Humphries, CEO, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., has just completed nine months in the hot seat and will now be expected to deliver results on some of his initiatives especially the ones relating to organisational restructuring. In an email interview, Humphries talks about the strategies, demand environment and the India market.

The future of work is always in the future, but it is approaching much faster than ever before. We believe 2020 will be the year of realisation for many organisations and leaders. Here are our top five predictions of how the way we work, live and play will change in 2020.

Customer satisfaction is not just a measure of how well a company’s products or services meet or exceed customer expectations, but also a critical determinant of overall business success. In this article, we explore customer satisfaction and its importance through selected quotes from leading industry experts.

The US$8.8 trillion industry is growing at 3.9 per cent ― ahead of the global economy for the eighth consecutive year ― and continues to be one of the most dynamic industries. In this day and age of selfies and social media, travel industry providers must distinguish themselves in providing “Insta-worthy” experiences.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the power to completely transform the way we do things, personally and in business. We have seen many cases of small businesses that have used AI to deliver exceptional services and products that go on to outshine the competition, or examples where businesses have completely revolutionised an internal process.

Businesses have entered an era of eternal data-harvesting, making data an extremely valuable commodity. And for that reason, as with any other high-value asset, it is vulnerable.

A generation of executives uncomfortable with technology spell trouble for business longevity. While CIOs have ascended the ranks, many failed to translate technology’s benefits to business value.

New January jobs data from the United States Labor Department shows that women now outnumber men in the workforce (50.04%) for the first time since the Great Recession. Driven in part by the country’s lowest unemployment rate since the mid-1960s, every industry – even traditionally male-dominated ones – must now aggressively compete to attract and retain female employees.

The last quarter of 2019 saw a big jump in demand for a bundle of jobs that could dominate the future, per an index tracked by the IT services firm Cognizant.

Hollywood film-making is a boom-bust business. But might fast evolving technologies like AI improve the odds?

Perhaps so.

The digital era is catalysing business; it is unleashing technological change that may appear chaotic on the surface, but is resulting in massively powerful systems of intelligence that enable humans and machines to collaborate securely. By opening up newer means of communication with large data exchanges, new, connected ecosystems are changing the way people, devices and organizations exist, work and interact.

Would you buy a product or service from a company you have not heard of but was recommended by your voice-based personal assistant? Well, 46% of consumers in Southeast Asia recently surveyed said they would.

If you have been exploring blockchains and distributed ledger technology (DLT), you know it’s a noisy and confusing space. As with any early tech, very smart people disagree about what the future will look like. Fueled by open source tools, innovation has dispersed and accelerated to a pace at which no organization on their own can keep up. Throw in a steep learning curve, and it’s really hard to know if you are making the right move. So what can you do?

As we look ahead to the trends and technologies that will likely dominate this next year and decade, it makes sense to begin by unpacking how AI might continue its march forward and the opportunities it will create for female entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, and others.

“The pace of business change has intensified dramatically as the fruits of digital technologies expand to the entire economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In 2020, I hope to see the transformative potential of technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation reach the next level in helping businesses solve bigger challenges and invent entirely new products, services and experiences.”

In mid December, LinkedIn revealed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialist was the top emerging job for 2020; this may not be of much surprise but it does beg the question of what AI specialists actually do, and what the job entails. What are the exact skills and knowledge businesses need from AI Specialists?

(First published in The Business Times, Singapore, on January 3.) If we were to think of digital networking as vehicles, 3G would now seem like riding a cart, 4G like driving an economy car with decent mileage, and 5G would be like breaking the sound barrier with an F-16 fighter jet. Put simply, speed is the benchmark for network connectivity, and 5G is set to be more than 30 times faster than the fastest available option.

Cognizant’s Bret Greenstein, global head of artificial intelligence and analytics, and Matt O’Kane, head of artificial intelligence and analytics for Europe discuss how organizations can approach implementing evolutionary AI.

There are legitimate questions about the ethics of employing AI in place of human workers. But what about when there's a moral imperative to automate?

Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, the recently-anointed chairman and managing director of tech major Cognizant’s Indian arm says that quality of talent available for recruitment has actually improved in the last few years. But that isn’t enough for an industry that is turning really hungry for some new-age skills. He elaborates on these skills in this two-part interview.

Ramkumar Ramamoorthy was recently appointed as Chairman and Managing Director of tech major Cognizant’s India operations. With new CEO Brian Humphries taking charge at the global level, Cognizant has brought about changes to its strategy and operations.

David Ingham, digital partner in media and entertainment, explores the various ways in which AI is changing the entertainment industry.

In 2007, Pradeep Bhaskaran joined Cognizant to oversee HR for 10 countries around the world. Today, that number is 47. As head of HR for global growth markets, Bhaskaran is responsible for more than 60,000 associates across 52 nationalities that speak 34 languages. And those figures are only set to grow.

Cognizant on Friday announced the retirement of its Chief People Officer (CPO) James Lennox and appointment of Becky Schmitt, currently senior vice president and CPO at Sam’s Club

“The lesson here is that business leaders need to be AI-aware,” says Jeff Olson, Head of Applied AI & Analytics for ANZ. “To do this, they must embrace data as the source of wisdom and value for their business. They need to ask better questions and expect more ― don’t ask for another report or spreadsheet, ask ‘Why?’ until you understand the root causes.”

To “beat the robots,” we shall need to join them. Robotic personal assistants will help buy back at least that 15 percent capacity (or more) needed for the skills of tomorrow. And that is nothing to be afraid of.

“With greater visibility of technology-driven initiatives, CIOs have to be better politicians than ever,” says Pring.

Earlier this year the potential for widescale disruption of the electric grid was highlighted, following a nationwide powercut. This vulnerability was caused by the combined complexity of integrating more renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DERs). We need to treat this as a serious wake-up call.

“We have reskilled our employees at scale through every disruptive technology shift to date, be it Mainframe, distributed computing or Internet. While those shifts were driven by single technologies followed by long periods of stability, digital is significantly different. In digital, we see the coming together of multiple technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blockchain, additive manufacturing and 3D printing, and we are less likely to see long periods of stability,” says Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, CMD.

Smart devices, powered by the hyper-connected Internet of Things (IoT), are becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive in our lives, and the trend will only continue. With a growing number of devices, the opportunities to use IoT to reshape industries and societies are also increasing.

“Hybrid cloud in all its permutations supplies the capabilities, agility, standardization, scalability and enhanced control needed for an enterprise to quickly develop, deploy and support...

“Conversational AI is the next stage, and it is what is making voice way more popular than it was before,” explains Philippe Dintrans, Chief Digital Officer, Banking and Financial Services, Cognizant.

For those living with chronic conditions, clothing can serve as a frictionless digital Sherpa leveraging biometrics, environmental data, and feedback mechanisms to guide the wearer toward better managing their disease and medication.

We are already witnessing the infiltration of healthcare and healthcare delivery by robots. In the next few years this infiltration will become a full-on assault on the traditional apprenticeship nature of medical training and care delivery. The reasons for this are simple: demand for care exceeds capacity; our clinical knowledge base is expanding at unprecedented rates that make it impossible for any clinician to keep abreast; cost of care is too high; access to care has been constrained by physical barriers – the location of a facility or the hours of its operation.

Technology advancement and broad-based commercialization of wearables and sensors are pivotal to the shift towards siteless trials enabling remote, unobtrusive and real-time capture of patient data. This use of sensors and real-time data capture vastly improves the quality of clinical data with the potential to reduce site queries and monitoring visits, not to mention the accessibility to unprecedented volumes of patient data to power safety and clinical insights.

Like it or not, AI will soon infiltrate every aspect of our society from our refrigerators to autonomous cars and everything in between. Combined with data and data science, AI offers new, smart ways to solve existing problems and create fresh and exciting opportunities. But how do you determine the importance of an AI initiative for your organization and how do you ensure you derive the maximum benefit from implementing such projects?

IT firm Cognizant has appointed Greg Hyttenrauch as its Executive Vice President and President of Digital Systems & Technology.

Intelligent process automation is increasingly seen as a complement to robotic process automation, extending the scope of robotic process automation with AI technologies. CIOs and other IT leaders should consider some of the important distinctions between the two automation technologies as part of their technology roadmaps.

Companies remain as confused as ever about how best to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act, the act that enhances privacy rights and consumer protections for California residents, which goes into effect on January 1, 2020. For most organizations, the overriding questions are how big is the CCPA transition going to be; how much interest will consumers have; and how many will click the Delete My Data button?

A global survey of more than 2,500 business and technology leaders conducted by the research firm ESI ThoughtLab, on behalf of Cognizant, a provider of IT services, suggests that the amount of money organizations are willing to invest in IT as a percentage of revenues has substantially increased. This is mainly thanks to the rise of various digital business transformation initiatives.

“To be successful in today’s competitive retail industry luxury brands need to grow and scale. But opening stores internationally is no longer enough. As a result, we are seeing more and more well-known labels merging, as with LVMH’s acquisition of Tiffany announced today.”

“Whether new advances in technology fill us with excitement or dread, the fact is that the physical aspects of our lives are only going to become more integrated into the virtual world. With the likes of swarm intelligence, the tactile internet and edge computing becoming increasingly advanced, the technology around us is simply becoming smarter and significantly more insightful.”

“Gen Z has provided a glimpse into the future,” writes Tiran Dagan, chief digital officer. “Now is the opportunity for marketers to create it.” Excerpts from MarTech Advisor’s article:...

While most executives at financial institutions agree that artificial intelligence (AI) is important to their organization’s success, few have fully implemented AI projects.

Excerpts from Business Insider Australia’s article: “2020 is almost upon us. As this year winds to a close, we took a look at some of the big tech trends business executives predict will take...

“The story of Cognizant will be the return to growth,” says CEO Brian Humphries. “We have always been the bellwether of the services industry and our great ambition is to re-accelerate...

“Organisations must conduct a rigorous ‘needs’ assessment and carefully plan their roadmap to deliver a flexible, secure and scalable IoT solution,” writes Muthu Kumaran, Global Delivery...