Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro may be the best-known Indian software services companies, but a much smaller U.S. firm has raced ahead of the Big Three in financial performance.
Cognizant Technology Solutions (with Latin American facility in Argentina), which was spun off from credit-information provider Dun & Bradstreet Corp. in 1996, is headquartered in Teaneck, N.J., and listed on the Nasdaq, but most of its operations and three-quarters of its work force are in India.
On Tuesday, it said its revenue rose 6.3% to $960 million for the quarter ended in March, compared with the prior quarter. It forecast a $55 million increase for the current quarter ending June 30.
The growth forecast is aggressive even when compared with bellwether Infosys, which expects a $34 million to $44 million revenue increase in the current quarter.
Cognizant added 52 clients and expanded its staff by 7,100 employees last quarter, indicating …
Backed by Big Indian Firms, Lobbyists Fight Anti-Outsourcing Attacks
January 25th, 2010Melanie Carter-Maguire and Robert Hoffman are regulars at Capitol Hill, rubbing shoulders with lawmakers to try and influence events at the centre of US power. But the two lobbyists have perhaps their toughest assignments yet, as they brace to drum up support for their companies on immigration and outsourcing, high-strung issues in the US after the Great Recession.
Ms Maguire, who was hired by India’s third-largest software exporter Wipro last week, and Mr Hoffman, who joined as first vice-president of global public policy last year at Cognizant, another top IT company, have been entrusted with pushing their companies’ cases in a key market where the public outcry against outsourcing is getting shriller by the day.
India’s $60-billion technology services industry, which has had a largely uninterrupted run in its key market, has recognised that political lobbying is the need of the hour to educate local lawmakers about the economic benefits of outsourcing, …
Big Indian Players Answer the Call to be Closer to US Clients
December 9th, 2009Coinciding with a turnaround in business sentiments in its largest market, top-tier IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies appear to be aggressively ramping up North America-based delivery capabilities.
While Infosys Technologies has bought McCamish Systems based in Atlanta, Georgia, HCL Technologies has completed the acquisition and upgradation of a data centre in Parsippany, New Jersey. In the last four months, Cognizant has announced the expansion of two of its delivery centres in Phoenix (Arizona) and more recently in Toronto, Canada.
Market watchers are of the opinion that industry seems to be carrying on from where it left-off when global financial crisis put a spanner on client IT spends.
“The slowdown hit demand visibility, as customers held back purchase decisions or pruned their budgets. During that period, we saw IT services companies focus on internal costs and efficiencies. But now that the bad news has subsided, the IT industry is hopeful …
Cognizant Boosts Presence in Canada
December 3rd, 2009Press Release (Dec. 3 /PRNewswire):
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), a leading provider of consulting, technology, and business process outsourcing (BPO) services, has announced the opening of an expanded delivery center in Toronto. The delivery center will continue to serve a growing roster of U.S. and Canadian clients, as well as the Canadian subsidiaries of global clients that seek the resource flexibility and time zone advantages of near-shoring.
“Since opening our first Toronto office in 2004, we have steadily grown our presence and investment in the Canadian market, serving clients in banking and financial services, insurance, life sciences, retail, and other sectors,” said Chandra Sekaran, President and Managing Director, Global Delivery, Cognizant. “With the support of an outstanding university system and local talent pool, our Toronto center will continue to attract IT and business professionals with deep domain expertise.”
“Cognizant is one of the world’s fastest growing companies, and we welcome Cognizant’s decision …
Shared Services a Major Engine for Cognizant’s Latam Strategy
November 6th, 2009US IT services firm Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) expects Latin America to represent 3-5% of global sales within the next three years, the company’s country manager for Argentina, Cristián Argüello, told BNamericas.
Latin America currently represents less than 1% of the firm’s global sales, which hit US$2.82bn in 2008. Cognizant expects global revenues to reach US$3.1bn this year.
Within Latin America, Cognizant has a development center in Argentina, which serves 15 global clients in industries such as insurance and pharmaceuticals. Cognizant focuses on providing those firms with business application support and maintenance.
Argüello said the company has started work on a new development center in Brazil and an office expansion plan in Mexico to help capture IT outsourcing business opportunities.
“We have an expansion and business development plan for the region,” he said. “The center in Brazil will focus on developing the domestic market. It will not affect development at the center in …
Global Sourcing Firms will Capture More Captives
November 6th, 2009Cognizant acquired UBS’ Indian Subsidiary for $75 million – the former supports UBS around the globe with Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT Outsourcing (ITO) and employs 2,000 people in India.
As part of the deal, UBS signed a 5 year $442 million service agreement with Cognizant.
This “Captive Spin-Off” Approach is tried and true approach in outsourcing and a large number of similar transactions are currently in progress around the world.
Analysis
Spinning of a client owned share service center (a “Captive SSC”) is a classic model for growing a BPO business. Most of today’s leading BPO providers used this technique at one time or another in their growth models. Some similar transaction in the past include:
1. Warburg Pincus creating WNS (NASDAQ: WNS) by spinning off British Airway’s SSC in India (“WNS actually stands for “World Network Services” which was the name of the BA …
The Latinization of TCS: Five Nearshore Growth Strategies for 2010
October 16th, 2009[Editors Note: Read the Full Post to See our Top 5 TCS Growth Strategies]
Newly appointed TCS Chief Executive N. Chandrasekaran knows his way around South America.
Moves by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to make Latin America a big part of its future reflects a carefully constructed strategy that is going to be felt in a variety of ways across the Americas in the next few years.
Frankly, LatAm affords TCS what it can’t find at home in India – a business consultant population equipped with an obligatory cultural saviness that plays well with US customers, accomodating time zones, growing prominence as a services player that in South America enables TCS to go toe-to-toe with Accenture and IBM, and a shrewd and well-connected executive leadership team that have skillfully helped TCS become a regional powerhouse.
“More and more customers prefer to have dual strategy and they are looking at India plus one more geographical presence” – Gabriel Rozman, EVP Emerging Markets at TCS
In the course of the last seven years, TCS Iberoamerica has gone from running a tiny 15-person office in Uruguay to now employing over 6,000 consultants and establishing global delivery centers in four countries. The driving force behind TCS’s success in LatAm is undoubtedly Gabriel Rozman, EVP Emerging Markets at TCS, a native of Uruguay who has literally opened the door to Latam, through which others like Wipro, Cognizant and Infosys have now traversed.
