One day in January 2009, Francisco D’Souza flew from London to Mumbai for a visit that lasted just eight hours. He was meeting Ulf Henriksson, CEO of Invensys, a leading supplier of automation systems, to strike a research and development partnership with Cognizant Technology Solutions.
A Changing Landscape
In 2007, D’Souza surveyed the scene around him. The period between 2002 and 2006 had been one of relative stability. Economies were growing. There was no major technological disruption that was forcing the clients to fundamentally change their business models. Bob Weissmann, who sits on Cognizant’s board, says he made it a point to tell Narayanan and D’Souza that “today is a part of good old days.” That you are successful right now does not mean that you will be successful tomorrow.
D’Souza knew things were going to be different and more difficult. Multinationals such as IBM and Accenture were stepping on the gas. Customers were demanding more from their IT vendors. Technologies like Web 2.0 threatened to disrupt business models. And for the software services sector, demand and supply were becoming more global.
The Tweak
That is why D’Souza is making changes to the company’s winning formula. His first task has been to isolate parts of the business that are getting commoditised (where the scope for differentiation and thus raising prices is rather low) and improve margins there by reducing costs. The second is to finetune the organisation to deliver higher value services that can bring the big bucks.
The Partnership Play
While D’Souza is ready to take a longer term view for building up the consulting side of the business, he is a man in a hurry when it comes to other market expansions.
(This story appears in the 05 February, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Really impressive... Feeling proud, having Frank as our boss.
on Aug 24, 2013I really am baffled at the media's mollycoddling of Cognizant. In fact, I feel some of this relentless praise of Cognizant could be the result of paid journalism. This is just another outsourcing company with high paid managers and poorly paid workers.
on Mar 5, 2011Great article. So aptly put: "Cognizant is one of the last decade's biggest success stories in the offshore industry."<br /> <br /> A couple of other areas where Francisco and Cognizant have done exceptionally well in the last few years is in aggressively growing Europe and in investing in a highly differentiating platform called Cognizant 2.0 which can change the way outsourcing is done globally. It truly reflects the "future of work" and this platform is a killer differentiator, if you will, for Cognizant.<br /> <br /> Makes compelling reading.
on Jan 25, 2010This is a truly “Indianised” version of Forbes. I just read the article in print and there are several spelling and preposition mistakes. The datelines in the graphic are also incorrect. The magazine could do with better proofing. Unless, this is a way of affirming its Indianness.
on Jan 25, 2010The article says some nice things about Cognizant and then someone from Gartner says that the leadership of the company is not comparable with another company. Can this analyst even name the top 100 in both the companies? Why would a publication carry such a sweeping, unsubstantiated statement? It is public knowledge that Cognizant is the fastest growing company in the industry. Their numbers are for all to see. Last heard, the company had guided for revenue well upwards of 3 billion dollars and would be adding more revenue this year than TCS, Infosys and Wipro. What else does it take for a company to be in the big league? And if the magazine is not sure yet if Cognizant is indeed in the big league, as its choice of the Gartner quote implies, why has it devoted so many pages to an article about the company? It is ridiculous to see the magazine contradict itself so dimwittedly in order to appear balanced.
on Jan 25, 2010Great article. The graph image depicting Cognizant absolute revenues in each quarter in 2008-09 seems to have an error. The last 3 sets of bar should be shown for 09 and not 08 as is shown currently.
on Jan 25, 2010