Mint: Cognizant’s Senior Vice President of Consulting Says Consulting is Driving the Company’s Transformation

Mark G. Livingston, SVP, Consulting, Cognizant

“Everything we do today at Cognizant is consulting-led,” says Mark G. Livingston. “Consulting is driving the transformation of the company on how we interact with our clients, sell services, value employees. We are growing at 15-20% faster than the company, our margin contribution is substantial, our revenue, headcounts have been increasing at a rate that nobody else in the marketplace is doing.”

Livingston says that what the company is seeing today in the market impacting consulting and IT services is business without boundaries and an un-bundling of the entire value chain in terms of somebody saying “I will do the back-office” and another one taking IT services, and so on. “Customers are saying somebody “will do my entire distribution” and somebody else all of manufacturing. This has had a massive impact on the entire IT services. Companies are saying this is core, that is context, and starting to give away chunks to third-party providers,” he notes.

IT and business have become almost one today, he says. “We are actually seeing that in order to sell technology-based services, you can’t be dealing with an IT organization, but different businesses.” He avers, “Consulting work is sold on not the cheapest price in the room but to the person with the most innovative answer.”

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