The Times of India: Cognizant’s Executive Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Says the Company’s Investments are Paying off Across Geographies

“We have seen our investments begin to pay off,” says Malcolm Frank. “These are across geographies, especially Europe, in digital capabilities, and the SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) stack.” Excerpts from the interview:

“There was an overall weakness in North America in the first quarter. But we see that getting better moving forward. We have seen slow decision-making in a couple of areas. But we feel quite good about the year as a whole.

The main driver [in Europe] is tech-based. These firms have to compete on a global platform. Industry by industry, technology is becoming central to their product, service, and customer experience. These European firms have to have that technology sophistication. The second trend is that budgets for IT are not necessarily increasing and companies need to lower the cost of certain portions of their IT portfolio and also invest in new capabilities. That necessitates a move to global delivery models.

We are seeing big movement in IT organizations on mobility, analytics, and data sciences. But a larger trend taking hold in the last two quarters is that businesses are adopting SMAC not from a technological standpoint, but more from a business impact standpoint. Investment banking and wealth management are asking how they can interact with customers on virtual platforms. The Internet of Things is starting to redefine the value of machines. SMAC is transforming customer relationships.

We had a strong quarter in terms of discretionary spends. A lot of it is driven by innovation around digital pursuits.”

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