'Clients' requirements have changed now'

Malcolm Frank, Cognizant's Chief Strategy Officer

Malcolm Frank, Cognizant's Chief Strategy Officer, takes time out to chat with BT's Sunny Sen on how business-shifts globally are changing Cognizant in the market place. He also talks about what the future of IT will be like. Edited excerpts:

On Cognizant's strategy for future: There are two big shifts playing in the market place. One is the secular business shift, towards which the four forces of future of work are projected. This is all about what is happening to US with the rise of the BRIC nations. There are industries going through a change and they are looking at providers who are capable of handling these shifts. There are four things happening here - cloud computing, mobile, social and big data. From 2009 to 2020, it is estimated that data is going to grow 34 times. So there is a lot about how does a company manage the huge data explosion. Today clients are requesting for a very different thing from what it was 2-3 years back. The discussion is more about how to envision them in managing their strategic changes. It is about how can a company make use of the business changes that are happening around.

On relevance of Cognizant in the market place: We are ensuring that we maintain true relevance to the customers. I keep on trying to put myself in the shoes of the customer. It also requires getting onto airplanes and sit and discuss with clients much more. We also use video conferencing very heavily to talk to our clients. Francisco did a very wise thing during the downturn. Most companies were turning inwards during the downturn. He said, "This is a time to go to the market and get intimate with clients."

We launched our campaign, 'Future of Work' which was not only a marketing campaign. We created thought leadership and we created consultancy practices. When we talked to our clients on Future of Work they knew this was coming. The CIOs asked us to talk to the rest of the management team and make them also understand. We discussed things like arming all the sales people with tablets and we talked about banking through mobile. We did this for quite a few of our clients in the real estate, pharma and other areas.

On Cognizant changing for clients: We have helped customers build a social enterprise. We have our own Cognizant 2.0. We have demonstrated by giving our own experience to clients on how we run our own businesses through this. We are looking at the change we are going through and the rest of the industry is going through.