OCTOBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 13bilities across all of our business segments
along three areas—digital business, digital
operations, and digital systems and tech-
nologies. Each is focused on transforma-
tion in that area.What did this entail?
Even before the [acceleration of ] digital,
Cognizant had a diverse set of people.
In addition to engineers and M.B.A.s,
we’ve got doctors, nurses and chartered
accountants. It became clear that there
were some new capabilities that we need-
ed. The main ones—and we built signifi-
cant capabilities around the world—were
design, data science and a small group
of very-high-impact sociologists and an-
thropologists, who look at human factors.
Business-model transformation is an
iterative process and one that takes in
people with a broad set of skills and tal-
ents—technologists, consultants, data sci-
entists, designers, industry experts—who
have to be collocated with the client. They
then go through the iterative process ofdiscovering market opportunities, course
correcting, prototyping and so on. To
facilitate that we have built what we call
“collaboratories” around the world, which
are co-innovation spaces for clients and
Cognizant teams.How is the work and the composition of
your staff changing?
I don’t think the global distribution of
our workforce has changed or will change
substantially in terms of where people are.
There haven’t been any big shifts, and I
don’t forecast any, either. India is far and
away our largest location, and it contin-
ues to be our largest recruiting base. In
the digital world, design, data science
and human factors become more impor-
tant and our specialists need to be close
to the clients, and we’ve built them close
to the clients. Some of these specialists are
in India as well to serve clients here and
in Asia, but I would say the bulk of them
are close to the clients. The overall mix
of work and the distribution across cen-ters, however, is not meaningfully differ-
ent from earlier.And you will accelerate acquisitions?
We had said earlier this year that we in-
tend to accelerate the pace of acquisi-
tions, and you’ll see us do that. It’s impor-
tant right now as we continue to make
the shift to digital. With the exception of
our 2015 acquisition of TriZetto Corp.,
most have been tuck-in acquisitions, and
that will continue to be the primary ap-
proach. TriZetto established us strongly
in the health care space with a strong set
of intellectual property (IP) and software.
We will continue to build our platforms
and software, both in-house and via pur-
chases.How can we illustrate the rise of digital
services?
Take health care. A lot of the work is
underpinned by TriZetto’s IP. In other in-
dustries like insurance, retail and CPGANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES [consumer packaged goods], we also have