Technology Is No Longer Just A Business Enabler. It Is Extremelycore To The Business Model Itself, No Matter What Industry

Debashis Chatterjee, President, Digital Systems & Technology, Cognizant decodes the nexus of forces disrupting the tech industry and Cognizants play. Excerpts.

- Shrikanth G

What is your overall view of the performance of the Indian ICT industry, given the social-political changes in the US and Europe and the digital disruption?

Globally, we are witnessing what the founder of the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution— where physical and virtual worlds have seamlessly fused. In this world, technology is not just an enabler of business; it is often the business itself.

Digital technologies have become so integral to business models and core processes that no enterprise can ignore them and still remain competitive. That’s why the rate of digitization across industries and countries continues to rise. Digital now accounts for a substantial and growing percentage of new enterprise IT spending.

There are also challenges in many countries, including a shortage of qualified talent with emerging tech skills.

Thus, the current business environment is defined in part by global socio-economic factors, accelerating technological changes and changing client preferences for collaboration.

Given this scenario, we have done very well at anticipating changes in the market. Cognizant continues to be one of the world’s fastest growing professional services companies, even at our scale. We have sustained our growth by innovating in response to macroeconomic and technological changes and the resulting shift in our clients’ needs.

Our clients have trusted us to envision, architect, design and implement their digital transformation initiatives. With Cognizant as their consultant and partner, our clients are combining their industry expertise and assets built over decades with powerful technologies like cloud computing, analytics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, robotic process automation and others to create entirely new business models and customer experiences.