IT firm Cognizant bets big on automation advisory service in BPM space

Cognizant is taking automation deeper into its business process management (BPM) services unit, which it has aspirationally named Digital Operations.

The Nasdaq-listed information technology services company, which claims to have around 6,000 virtual workers (or bots) for the BPM business, is betting big on automation advisory service wherein it is looking at making a few acquisitions, Sumitra Gomatam, president, digital operations at Cognizant, said.

Gomatam said Cognizant is driving intelligent process automation (IPA) with clients in key verticals such as health care, banking, and financial services.

By implementing IPA technologies, Gomatam said the company has been able to help organisations identify which processes to automate, and how best to augment human talent. This enables them in significant savings, faster time to market, better regulatory compliance, and transformation of core business processes.

“Specifically to IPA, initially projects comprised proof-of-concept. But now many of our clients are setting up enterprise automation centres of excellence looking beyond proof-of-concept projects,” said Gomatam. Almost half the client projects the company has delivered to date or which are ongoing are automation-based.

Gomatam said the core expertise for these very domain-specific services comes from over 1,500 IPA consultants with a diverse background.

“We have over 200 different job roles on board. With a large part of this business coming from banking and financial services, health care, and life sciences, we have experts from these fields, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacologists, to help us analyse and translate the data points to be automated.”

While Digital Operations is just one part of the overall digital portfolio of Cognizant, the company’s digital revenue saw a growth of around 20 per cent in the September quarter to constitute 30 per cent of its revenue.

The company is looking at possible acquisitions in the automation advisory space as it provides a larger scope of understanding client requirements.

Last year, Cognizant acquired the UK-based digital agency Netcentric and Zurich-headquartered digital marketing and experience firm Zone. Over the past few months, Cognizant has announced three acquisitions to further its digital capabilities.

“While the industry is still in its early stage of adoption, we estimate the market for automation advisory, implementation, and operations to be a well over $1 billion today. We think it will be $5 billion in the next three years,” added Gomatam.

Within Digital Operations, IPA service line has been growing almost 100 per cent year-on-year for the past few years.