Deal Architect: Cognizant’s Executive Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Says the Big Delta in the IT Industry Today is Around Platforms
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“When it comes to the “Digital” buzzword, I have a bit of a giggle about this. We’re all going to look back a few years from now and say collectively, “Oh, that was so 2015.” If you view it from the CXO perspective, the term is still too ephemeral,” says Malcolm Frank. “You can also see how the SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) stack has evolved in the market zeitgeist year over year.” Excerpts:
“Around 2010 cloud was the rage, as it seemed everybody was marketing solutions around the “cloud” to the point where the term became meaningless. Then around 2012, it was about building the social enterprise. Then in 2014 the market conversation seemed to focus on Analytics and Big Data.
I think we’re moving in the right direction. In the next couple of years, you will likely see more digital solutions become crystallized and clients understand them better and how to procure them. For example, a bank will likely talk about to vendors about robo-advisory automation solutions as opposed to something “digital.”
As a general trend we see the market moving back to larger players like ourselves who sit at the intersection of business and technology. When clients get serious about digital—in moving the needle in their companies—they go beyond issues like planning, design and understanding the new technology stack. They say things like: “I need to figure out the business process change, I need to have somebody that has a vertical industry expertise to understand the regulatory issues, I need to have somebody who understands where the bones are buried in my internal IT. At the end of the day, I may have systems of engagement or systems of intelligence that are on the digital side, but they all have to tie back to the systems of record. I need somebody who knows that. If I want to do it on a global scale or at least on a broad scale, I need somebody who can do that heavy lifting.” We’re finding that’s increasingly how clients are framing the problem.
Part II: Davos, Design Thinking, Automation
“Design thinking is absolutely taking off. Yet some are confused as to what “design” means in the new business context. Think of big D design as opposed to small D design. Small D design we’ve been doing since the web blossomed in the mid ‘90s. How does something look on a screen? How will be it rendered on a mobile device? That’s been the classic design if you will. What we’re talking in Big D is business model design. How do you design new experiences for customers in a completely new digitally-based process?
For example we’re helping several banks with a branch to the future. How do we blend next generation mobile banking with the physical branch?...Those are the types of things that require true design thinking, when we bring the best of the physical model and merge it with the best of the digital model.
Folks look at [design] from one of two angles. Some will turn to classic design firm. The problem is often they don’t have the industry expertise. They certainly don’t have the enterprise technology chops, and don’t focus on critical, but more prosaic, issues like process mapping and change management. On the other hand, there are firms that come from a more technology or outsourcing model, that are acquiring their way into this business, organically building a way into this business. Ultimately, I think it just really depends on what the specific issue is for the client and who they’re more comfortable with in terms of starting on the design process. Think of it as the difference between designing products vs. designing customer experiences vs. designing new business models.
In today’s world, I think there are two things to think through. One is implementing bespoke digital solutions like we’ve just been talking about the past few minutes. Those, from a delivery standpoint, at least as they’re currently defined, won’t look much different than what we’ve been delivering in the industry from the past 30-40 years.
I think the big delta we have in the industry, today, is around platforms. Not for individual clients, but a one-to-many model for white spaces in specific industries. You are seeing a number of these popping up. It’s still quite early, though. They could mature over the next couple of decades or at the other end of the spectrum, they could end up being like the 4GLs.
We think automation is a big deal. If you look at it from a client perspective, this may be the largest opportunity in a generation to rethink their businesses and find cost savings within their operations. We’ve already seen with some of the robotic process automation (RPA) that we’ve been implementing, there are tremendous cost savings that can be achieved. That is an area that I think clearly merits watching.
I always worry will our industry have its Uber moment? I’m always paranoid about that. Yet I don’t see a disruptive competitor rushing in and gobbling up lots of market share. The digital opportunity is driving so much opportunity and change that you may see some firms gain some momentum and some slow down.”