Diversity Player
Cognizant was able to diversify its revenue base and client roster, invested for growth, and further strengthened its ability to partner with clients on high value digital initiatives
Cognizant Technology Solutions
In January 2019, Cognizant celebrated 25 years of innovation, growing from revenue of just USD 16,000 Mn and fewer than 200 employees in 1994 to more than $16 billion in revenue and more than 280,000 employees across the globe. The company also moved to rank 195 in 2018 Fortune 500 edition, after their first debut in 2011 at No. 484 position. It Indian revenue for 2018 is estimated to be approx USD 400 Millions.
Fiscal 2018 was action packed for Cognizant that has successfully positioned itself as a digital era transformation partner for organization’s business, operating and technology models. Re-organising its horizontal capabilities into Cognizant Digital Business, Cognizant Digital Operations and Cognizant Digital Systems & Technology to make it easier for clients to approach for solutions they require, helped them acquire big clients in banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare, retail, life sciences, media and entertainment, communications, energy, utilities, manufacturing, logistics, travel and hospitality.
Cognizant was able to diversify its revenue base and client roster, invested for growth, and further strengthened its ability to partner with clients on highvalue digital initiatives, from strategy through execution. The strategy to keep a sharp focus on their 100 largest clients, instilled greater operating discipline across the company, expanded their local talent and innovation hubs, and thus ensuring that more than 90% of our annual revenue comes from returning clients. And in the journey they acquired several digital solutions companies in the areas of marketing, healthcare, life science, media, and fintech.
What is worth watching is that all their acquisitions in the past year had a digital focus - IoT, SaaS, digital content, digital engineering, CRM, cloud, and data analytics. Zenith Technologies, a leader in life sciences manufacturing technology services with IoT capabilities. Meritsoft, an award-winning fintech innovator in post-trade processing, expanding Cognizant’s software-as-aservice platforms; Mustache, a New York-based creative content agency, for leveraging Cognizant Interactive’s digital content capabilities; Softvision, a digital engineering and consulting company focused on agile development of innovative software solutions and platforms; Advanced Technology Group (ATG), a provider of customer and revenue management consulting and implementation services focused on the Salesforce platform; SaaSfocus, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation, also leveraging the Salesforce platform, that will help expand Cognizant’s end-to-end digital transformation services and Salesforce cloud capabilities; and finally Hedera Consulting, a Belgian advisory and analytics company specializing in business advisory and data analytics services across a number of industry sectors.
However, the company has over 94% business coming from just US and European markets where uncertainties are growing; and over 65% business from financial services and healthcare. Clearly, it has too many eggs in too few baskets, which ha sit’s inherent risks. On top of this the growing employee anxieties due to onset of disruptive technologies like robotics and AI, and slow salary growth will continue to keep the future very challenging.