Innovation Journal - Cognizant

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20
12
Innovation
Journal
02
RETHINK
Your Business
Model
04
RE-
INVENT
Your Workforce
FUTURE
of Work
03
REWIRE
Your
Operations
05
About
COGNIZANT

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12
Innovation
Journal
Foreword
Foreword by
We are currently living at an important “shift point,” a time where key megatrends are
re-shaping the rules of the market, how work is conducted, and value is created.
Organizations in every industry are reassessing their business models as they grapple with
unprecedented and unpredictable markets, greater margin pressures, and a drought in
investment capital.
At the same time, irreversible and interconnected forces like globalization, virtualization of
people, process and technology, the rise of millennials and cloud technologies are gaining
momentum worldwide.
I strongly believe the organizations that convert their work into a more fluid and intimate
collaboration among employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders, by
leveraging wisdom of the crowds and unlocking hidden insights for delivering continuous
business value will emerge stronger and survive in the long run.
These demographic, economic, and technological changes are already forcing organizations
to rethink how, where and by whom work should be conducted. These forces are making
forward-thinking organizations seek a more collaborative, flexible and global approach —
we call it the Future of Work.
And at Cognizant, we are helping customers around the world to find new methods to
increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling them to:
• RETHINK how they compete,
• REWIRE how they operate, and
• REINVENT how they collaborate
The Cognizant Innovation Journal 2012 is our way of sharing how we do it and is a
testimony to many innovative teams defining the Future of Work.
As you read this 4th edition of Innovation Journal, I am sure you will realize that the future
of work is no longer in the future. In fact, you don't need to look too far to see it. These
operating models already in practice, for many of them are currently hiding in plain sight.
The Future of Work has arrived...
Sukumar Rajagopal
SVP – CIO and Head of Innovation
“The future is already here – it is just not
evenly distributed.”
— William Gibson

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Innovation
Journal
The future of work is no longer in the future.
A business environment never stands still. The notion of
“work” as a place where employees perform tasks in
isolation from each other and customers has been
losing relevance for some time.
Increasing globalization, rapidly evolving technology, a
changing generation of millennial workers and
customers are forcing organizations to redefine their
operating models.
In fact, we don't need to look too far to see new future
of work operating models already in practice, for many
are currently hiding in plain sight. In certain pockets of
industry, the future of work is thriving, and the
organizations that have embraced it are currently among
the performance leaders in their industries.

THE FUTURE OF WORK
This is the
New Way to Work
80%
80% of workers perform their job functions with team members in
different locations.
Next-generation organizations virtualize core processes to enable better
workflows among subject matter experts and to maximize knowledge
sharing.
These companies are able to react to market developments faster and
consequently, capitalize on opportunities better.
20%
The models that defined business in the 20th century won't meet today's
challenges. Organizations are rethinking traditional ways of working and
changing how they interact with consumers, employees and others.
Rethink your business models.
Tap on the video to watch
“The act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.“
- Pablo Picasso 3

THE FUTURE OF WORK
This is the
15%
New Technology
About 15% of companies today have embraced a powerful combination of
cloud, mobility and social tools.
Next-generation businesses using these technologies are making
knowledge and expertise available across their globalized and virtualized
teams.
Companies that have adopted these new technologies make more
informed decisions, often in real time, resulting in faster responses to
customers and proactive insights for outperforming their competition.
85%
Rewire your operating processes using social, mobility, analytics and cloud.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure
is trying to please everybody.”
4
- Bill Cosby

THE
This is the
New Worker
The millennial generation is currently 25% of the world’s population and
increasing.
The next-generation worker is predisposed to using new technologies
to draw on collective knowledge to overcome obstacles and solve
problems.
Companies that empower these workers to find information,
communicate and collaborate tightly with colleagues and customers
are reaping the benefits.
Reinvent your workforce using collaboration models.
25%
75%
Tap on the video to watch
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”
5
- Albert Einstein

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Innovation
Journal
Rethink
Your Business
Model
The models that defined business in the 20th century
won't meet today's challenges. Organizations are
rethinking traditional ways of working and changing how
they interact with consumers, employees and others. We
help companies find new methods to increase
productivity and gain competitive advantage. In this
section, we bring you five innovations that enabled just
that.
1. Intellipeak
2. Mustang.NET
3. Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure (CII)
4. Cognizant UPgrade Impact Determination (CUPID)
5. Trade Reconciliation Hub
“Become a creative thinking detective! Ask probing questions.
There is no such thing a wasted question.”
-Elaine Dundon

RETHINK
Article 01
Intellipeak
Intellipeak helps retailers get ready for the peak holiday
selling season.
Intellipeak is a framework that helps our retail customers
formally assess the readiness of their processes,
systems and infrastructure for the holiday season, as well
as create a comprehensive risk management plan and
peak performance dashboards that help manage their
system performance during the busiest retail seasons.
Tap on the video to watch
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we
used when we created them.”
7
- Albert Einstein

RETHINK INTELLIPEAK
Retailers realize 30% to 40% of their annual revenue during the holiday season, when their IT systems are at maximum stress.
IT systems frequently fail to keep up with business volumes (Web site crashes, system failures, availability issues).
No comprehensive risk management system is in place to ensure smooth and successful peak trading.
Peak season dilemma
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RETHINK - INTELLIPEAK
Intellipeak assesses the readiness of processes, systems and infrastructure for the peak holiday season.
A set of comprehensive risk management plans and peak dashboards help manage the performance of systems during such
times.
Way of life for retailers

RETHINK - INTELLIPEAK
Ensures peak sales is not impacted due to underlying IT and system issues.
Ensures all risks related to peak sales season are identified proactively and addressed upfront.
Identifies weaknesses and eliminate surprises.
Improves communication between IT teams and the business.
marketing felt strongly that they needed better tools to face this
It was late summer 2011, and as the sun beamed through the window,
the marketing managers attending their retail firm’s weekly meeting
were feeling the heat. Their discomfort wasn’t due to the effects of the
glaring sun, but due to the pressure of the upcoming holiday season.
As the vice president of marketing reviewed the plans for the peak
retail period, which runs from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve,
they were worried.
Being a large retailer with over 2,000 stores in several countries and
billions in online transactions, the company faced a big challenge every
holiday season despite heavy investment in technology. The VP of
• Peak shopping season is vital to almost all retailers, yet systems get
invariably overloaded. The risk is greater these days because of
channel proliferation. In fact, downtime during peak seasons is getting
worse and more costly, even for the largest retailers.
• According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s largest
retail trade association, the holiday season can represent anywhere
from 25% to 40% of annual sales for some retailers. Holiday
sales, which combine the months of November and December, rose
5.7% to $462 billion in 2010, representing the best holiday sales
gain since 2004.
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RETHINK - INTELLIPEAK
challenge, especially since last year, the systems had suffered outages
due to heavy loads.
He turned to the Client Partner from Cognizant to see what could be
done to ensure things went more smoothly this holiday season by
proactively identifying and addressing all risks related to the peak
shopping period upfront.
Cognizant’s Client Partner discussed this situation on his weekly call
"With the help of Cognizant's extensive peak management and
technology expertise, we were able to provide a seamless experience
to our customers. Cognizant supported us with peak planning,
training and system health checks and monitoring to make
sure it was 'business as usual' for Staples, even at the height of
the peak season.”
Brian Light, CIO, Staples, Inc.
with Cognizant’s “Two-In-A-Box” offshore delivery director and his
team. The team had already been reviewing the lessons learned from
the prior holiday season and had some ideas percolating. As the
meeting went on, they recalled what Cognizant CEO Francisco
D’Souza had said about the retail industry: “When you put the
challenges of the peak shopping season together with the main
business drivers for retailers today -- customer intimacy and channel
expansion -- it presents a huge opportunity.”
By the end of the meeting, it was clear that the goal should be to
enable retailers to manage key risks and achieve trouble-free, highvolume
sales during the peak shopping season by assessing the
readiness of business processes, IT systems and the underlying IT
infrastructure. Such a solution should cover all the key business
processes and assets, and it should support the entire retail lifecycle,
including merchandising, warehousing and distribution, and
multichannel sales and fulfillment.
A few weeks later, the Client Partner met with the retailer’s CIO, VP of
Marketing along with their team, as they were just beginning to plan
promotions and branding for the holiday season. As he started to
present the overview of Cognizant’s solution, they were excited about
its prospects.
The solution, dubbed Intellipeak, was capable of evaluating the
retailer’s preparedness for the peak sales season, thus enabling them
to manage key risks and achieve trouble-free high-volume sales by
assessing the readiness of the business processes in place. Moreover,
it would assess the readiness of all the IT systems and the underlying
infrastructure, across the entire retail lifecycle.
He further explained that Intellipeak included KPIs and diagnostic tools
to check out weak links across the retailer’s systems and strengthen
these weaknesses across the value chain. Furthermore, peak
dashboards and heat maps were available that simulated trouble spots
and indicated readiness levels through red, amber and green color
codes.
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RETHINK - INTELLIPEAK
Over the next few days, as the client’s business and IT teams delved
into the details of Intellipeak, it became clear that this solution
addressed most of their needs. They were pleasantly surprised that the
solution offered collaborative enterprise 2.0 features, such as
community blogs and dashboards for peak business performance
monitoring; a peak readiness index to calibrate risks and heat maps to
identify peak timing of key business processes. Best of all, the
implementation plan was timed to deploy the solution for the upcoming
peak season.
The CIO gave his final approval for deploying the Intellipeak
framework, which meant the retailer’s IT team was able to take
advantage of the following capabilities:
• Identify business demands and draw a heat map: A heat map
helps capture system changes, business plans and actions in a
single sheet across a time dimension in order to identify the inherent
risks present in the environment on the road to peak season.
• Determine a Peak Readiness Index Score (PRI): A structured
questionnaire objectively assesses peak readiness across the
system, infrastructure, people and process dimensions.
• Perform a face-to-face external review of the heat map, PRI and
risks: The external review panel, comprising experts and
practitioners from Cognizant’s Business Consulting Practice,
provides an objective and unbiased review of the findings.
• Capture peak activity in a diary: Identified risks are captured and
tracked through a central portal.
“At a time when retailers are focusing on increased customer intimacy
and channel expansion as key business drivers, a hectic
holiday shopping season presents a huge opportunity.
Working with the world's leading retailers across the retail value
chain, we recognized the need for an end-to-end, nextgeneration
solution that could handle peak-season volumes
across diverse channels in multiple retail formats.
We are happy that Intellipeak provides a flawless platform to address
this need."
• Identify vulnerabilities, hot spots and risks within the landscape:
Results from the heat map and PRI score enable the identification of
“weak links” and “hot spots” within the landscape that might turn
into an issue during the peak sales season. Respective teams could
be advised to resolve these weaknesses in order to prevent failures.
Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer, Cognizant
• Capture peak performance and prepare PRI report: A structured
peak review deck helps to capture peak system performance, which
would act as input for next year. 12

RETHINK - INTELLIPEAK
As the peak holiday season began to roll, except for a few necessary
escalations, the Client Partner was happy that Cognizant had enabled
the highest degree of operational efficiency, business process agility
and infrastructure preparedness for his retail client.
With Cognizant's extensive consulting, management and technology
expertise, he was able to provide a seamless experience to his client,
with peak planning, training and system health checks and monitoring
to make sure it was “business as usual,” even at the height of the peak
season.
He was also proud of the intellectual power of his team and that their
insights and solutions had become a framework that was ultimately
fine-tuned as a platform that has since been used by many customers.
Intellipeak Toolset
13

“Genius is infinite painstaking.”
– Michelangelo
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Photo: Yusuff Mohamed Sultan, Mohamed

RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
Article 02
Mustang.NET
Making the Move from Cap-Ex to Op-Ex with
Mustang.NET
Mustang.NET is a framework to jumpstart adoption of
Software-As-s-Service. It is built using Microsoft
technologies and extensible, customizable components
to address SaaS, enabling Web and rich client
applications. The framework offers a way to accelerate
business model transformation from a perpetual
licensing model (Cap-Ex) to a subscription-based (Op-
Ex) model.
“Discovery consists of SEEING what everybody has seen
and THINKING what nobody has thought.”
— Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
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RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
Enable customers to get up and running quickly with software-as-a-service (SaaS) implementations.
SaaS requires solid data isolation and tight security, with resource-sharing across tenants.
There is a need to support design time integration (tight coupling) and runtime integration (loose coupling), while managing
application quality of service (non–functional) requirements.
SaaS implementations need to co-exist with common enterprise application development frameworks.
A vendor-neutral framework that provides complete application portability.
A layered, extensible architecture that facilitates clear separation between tenants.
Utilization of Inversion of Controls (IOC) and Dependency Injection (DI) architecture to enable both design time and/or runtime
coupling.
Co-existence with other standard enterprise-class frameworks, such as Castle Windsor, Microsoft Enterprise Library and
Spring.NET.
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RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
Reduces application development time by up to 30%.
Reduces application development costs by up to 50%.
Enables software developers to continue using the familiar native interfaces.
Standard set of tools and templates integrated with the Visual Studio IDE.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is an increasingly popular one-to-many
application delivery model, in which:
• The application is deployed and maintained centrally and
administered and accessed remotely.
• Users (grouped as tenants on virtualized servers) share resources
and have self-service capabilities.
• Application features are billed on a subscription (pay-per-use) license
model.
According to IDC, nearly $1 of every $6 spent on packaged software,
and $1 of every $5 spent on applications will be consumed by the
SaaS model by 2015. In that same timeframe, about 24% of all new
business software purchases will be service-enabled software, and
SaaS delivery will constitute about 13.1% of worldwide software
spending across all primary markets and 14.4% of applications
spending.
Benefits of SaaS include the ability to reduce or eliminate hardware
costs, IT support / staffing, upgrades, software maintenance and cost
of capital. Additional benefits include reduced training costs and the
ability to scale subscriptions up or down to match usage needs.
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RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
Challenges in SaaS Development
Some of the common challenges in developing a SaaS framework
include:
The framework needs to enable resource sharing across tenants,
while ensuring data isolation and the desired level of application
security.
To efficiently manage application quality of service requirements,
the service components should support design time integration
(tight coupling) and runtime integration (loose coupling).
The framework should co-exist with common enterprise application
development frameworks.
Commonly available SaaS frameworks have a significant learning
curve, which increases project time lines and costs.
Cognizant’s Solution
Cognizant’s Mustang.NET is a framework to jumpstart the adoption of
software-as-a-service. The framework is built using the latest Microsoft
technologies, extensible and customizable to cater to multi-tenancy
requirements of Web/rich-client applications.
This framework can be used for both new application development for
SaaS-enabling existing Web applications. Mustang.NET is aimed at
accelerating the business model transformation of clients from a
perpetual licensing model to a subscription model.
Design Principles:
Mustang.NET architecture and component
Mustang.NET is built on simple design principles to address most
SaaS challenges. Its key components include:
A layered architecture that facilitates clear separation and makes
the framework robust yet extensible.
The use of Inversion of Controls (IOC) and Dependency Injection
(DI), which allows the components and services to be used both
during design time and/or at runtime coupling.
Coexistence with other standard enterprise-class frameworks like
Castle Windsor, Microsoft Enterprise Library and Spring.NET.
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RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
The use of native interfaces. Other SaaS frameworks wrap the
foundational libraries, creating additional layers of indirection, but
with Mustang.NET, developers continue to use native interfaces
with which users are familiar
Tools and templates integrated with the Visual Studio IDE, which
makes the consumption of the framework and services much
easier.
Mustang.NET architecture and component interaction
Productivity Benefits:
• Development: The Mustang.NET framework provides tools,
components and services that address concerns such as
authentication, validation and authorization out-of-the-box and
enable the SaaS service provider to concentrate purely on
implementing the required business functionalities.
• Setup: Typically, SaaS development aspects such as context setup,
runtime engine setup, usage metering services and exchanging
relevant context data across multiple tiers in a highly distributed
environment are error prone and require a considerable amount of
time to implement. Mustang.NET increases developer productivity
by encapsulating these capabilities.
• Integration: Mustang.NET integrates with popular Integrated
Development Environments (IDE) such as Visual Studio to provide a
standard project template that allows SaaS developers to quickly
begin implementing business functionality. Mustang.NET is
equipped with the standard metadata model and tools to annotate
business functions within the application (either from the ground up
or enhanced) and configure the application startup with the
framework boot-strapper. These increase developer productivity.
• Adoption: The framework was designed so that clients from any
industry could build their SaaS solutions from the Information
Services, Media and Entertainment industry, to the Healthcare and
Life Sciences domain.
• Pricing: SaaS transforms software pricing from a perpetual license
model to an Op-Ex-based pay-per-use/pay-as-you-go model. This
aspect of SaaS removes the need for capital investment for the
SaaS consumer and increases access to capital for the SaaS 19

RETHINK - MUSTANG.NET
provider. The multi-tenant architecture of SaaS makes business
process as a service more efficient and cost effective for both
Cognizant and our customers.
services but don’t have the IT resources or capital to purchase
them.
Customer Benefits
Mustang.NET has been implemented in a benefits management portal
of a Fortune 500 pharma client and is currently used for building the
SaaS platform of a leading healthcare products company, both based
out of North America. It is also improving Cognizant’s existing BPaaS
(Business Process As A Service) platform capabilities.
Based on the above implementation experiences, the following
benefits have been realized:
A significant reduction in application development costs. On
average, an enterprise can expect anywhere from 40% to 50%
cost savings over the traditional model. This reduction in cost
could be even higher based on the feature coverage provided by
the SaaS framework.
Since SaaS frameworks like Mustang.NET provide the necessary
plumbing, enterprises can expect to save anywhere from 20% to
30% of development time against the traditional development
model.
SaaS providers can expect anywhere from 15 to 25 times more
revenue per customer compared with an ASP (Application Service
Provider) model due to the inherent infrastructure sharing. SaaS
allows service providers to attract new customers who need these
Quick glance at Mustang.NET differentiators
• Mustang.NET has been implemented in the flagship portal of a
Fortune 500 pharmacy benefits management client based out of
North America.
• The Mustang.NET framework is currently being used for building
the SaaS platform of a leading healthcare products company
based out of North America.
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“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great
energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of
opposites.”
- Carl Jung
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Photo:Gupta, Bikash - Cognizant Banking & Financial Services

Article 03
Cognizant Intelligent
Infrastructure
Manage distributed assets in real-time with real-time
information streams
Cognizant IntelligentI Infrastructure (CII) is a decision
support system that enables better decision-making,
proactive maintenance and remote monitoring of
distributed asset bases. The core of this system is its
ability to collect live information from assets using smart
sensors and smart networks.
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through
ignorance that we can solve them.”
- Isaac Asimov
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RETHINK - INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
Distributed assets need constant monitoring and preventive care.
Different types of assets require different techniques to connect and collect information.
Improper asset management can result in reliability, safety and operational issues.
Most of the existing infrastructures are not energy efficient.
A sensory network to connect to various distributed devices.
A data logging system to collect and aggregate data.
A decision support system to provide insights and automatically trigger alerts and updates.
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RETHINK - INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
Improves operational performance and asset management.
Reduces efforts in manual inspection and monitoring of
assets.
Enables proactive and predictive maintenance.
Improves safety and reduces risk of catastrophic failure.
Improves asset reliability, availability and fault handling.
The Chief Architect at Cognizant’s Engineering and Manufacturing
Solutions (EMS) Group knew the pain points his customers faced
when managing and maintaining assets. He had been working in the
areas of analytics, modeling, simulation, controls and optimization in
different industries for more than 15 years. In industries like rail,
power and oil and gas, the systems used for controlling critical
operations are geographically distributed, often across a country or
across the globe.
Typical challenges faced in asset management and
maintenance include:
Enables insight-driven asset renewal.
Assets that need constant monitoring and preventive care are
usually distributed.
Assets are of different types, and each needs a unique way to
connect and collect information.
Multiple teams are involved in measuring, monitoring and
performing proactive and reactive maintenance of these
distributed assets.
Improper asset management may result in reliability, safety and
operational issues.
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RETHINK - INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
The existing infrastructure may not be energy efficient, and there
may be a need to identify energy consumers and arrest energy
leaks.
And, finally, there is a need to extract additional asset insights, such as
average lifecycle, power consumption patterns, environmental
conditions, etc.
Real-time asset management solutions cannot be easily and rapidly
deployed.
The team defined the objectives of Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure
as:
The Chief Architect’s team from the EMS Center of Excellence
envisioned Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure (CII) for smart and
intelligent asset management. They believed developing such a
solution could improve information integrity and operational efficiency
while streamlining the business processes associated with maintaining
and sustaining assets over their lifecycle.
In an asset-intensive industry, data is collected from different assets
placed at various locations. The acquired data is stored in a
central repository and then contextualized for providing insights
such as:
Whether the asset is functioning properly.
Whether the operating environment is safe.
Design a common communication infrastructure for interfacing with
diverse systems and applications to enable remote monitoring.
Develop an intelligent decision support system to tap into the
operational data from a large distributed asset base.
Provide a set of tools and information to improve proactive and
reactive decision making.
Create a platform that enables a systematic approach
to handling degradation, maintenance and renewal of
assets, thereby improving operational efficiency.
Enable interoperability for coexistence with
newer computing platforms, like the cloud.
Whether the asset is nearing end of life.
Whether assets are available for
the next lifecycle or operation.
To begin with, the group developed
Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure
for rail systems as a platform that
constantly monitors live data
from fixed assets such as
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RETHINK - INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
points, signaling systems and track circuits through sensors, wireless
devices and on-board systems. The core of the platform comprises a
set of logical blocks that enable:
Acquisition of data
Aggregation and processing
Data storage
Data analytics
Decision support
Reporting
Key features of Intelligent Infrastructure include:
Data management: Enables centralization of data collection, along
with data management activities like archival and contextualization in
the form of actionable insights, for operations and performance.
Data analysis: Helps analyze trends and patterns while monitoring
asset conditions. It detects and classifies failures, performs root cause
analysis of different failures and even develops models that predict the
availability of assets for future operations.
Report generation: Generates reports on performance and reliability
of assets at multiple locations for various categories of users.
Notifications and alerts: Links with asset management and workorder
systems to create alert messages for technicians and
maintenance engineers through rich clients, Web clients and mobile
devices.
Scenarios for Implementation:
Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure is beneficial in the following
scenarios:
Datacenter monitoring: As an experiment, Intelligent Infrastructure
has been deployed for monitoring data centers at Cognizant. The data
center monitoring system has a wireless sensory network for remote
monitoring and can handle up to 100 sensors. This system can
perform the following:
Send SMS to the data center supervisor for any abnormal changes
in temperature or humidity levels.
Enables supervisors to perform Web-enabled monitoring to
visualize real-time events from the data center.
Connect to any system from the supervisor’s mobile device for
proactive actions.
The initial results have shown an average cost saving of up to 85%,
with a savings of $400 per person per month per data center
management team, in terms of logistics.
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RETHINK - INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
Remote patient monitoring: CII has also been implemented in a
remote patient monitoring scenario by integrating Bluetooth/Wi-Fi
enabled blood pressure sensors. This approach can perform the
following:
Overview of Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure
Transfer data without manual intervention to a remote server, which
could be accessed by a medical expert through a mobile device or
PC.
Make decisions based on the patient’s health profile (based on
previous history) and send a warning if abnormal functioning is
detected.
Now, physicians and nurses can use this technology to avoid frequent
patient check-ins, thus maximizing their time to serve more patients at
the same time. Hospital staff receive alarms if something is abnormal
with a patient’s blood pressure and can decide if a face-to-face visit,
specialist consultation or any medical intervention is required. With the
monitoring of more parameters, like glucose level, pulse rate and ECG
data, the impact would increase significantly, saving approximately
12% of nurses’ and physicians’ productive time.
Potential Opportunities for CII:
Alert for supervisor on abnormal data center temperatures
Cognizant Intelligent Infrastructure is applicable wherever a diverse set
of devices needs to be connected for collecting data for reactive/
proactive monitoring and maintenance. The nature of the opportunity
includes platform-enabling intelligent device and communication
infrastructures that interact with each other and provide better
guidance for critical decision making in mission critical environments,
analytics framework, business integration, and performance and cost
optimization. CII will transform the delivery of vital and non-vital data
services using standardized protocols and technologies. It is expected
27

to lower capital costs and rapid deployment, along with connecting
multiple bearer services.
By: Selvaraj, Surest - Banking & Financial Services
28

“Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
- Helen Keller
29
Photo: Durai, Santhanakrishnan, Data Warehousing Business
Intelligence & Performance Management

RETHINK - CUPID
Article 04
Cognizant UPgrade
Impact Determination
CUPID
Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite? Rethink your
strategy with CUPID.
Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) upgrades poses many
challenges. CUPID automates the technical impact
analysis of custom objects in Oracle EBS during such
upgrades, thereby reducing the manual effort of a large
custom code-base.
Technical assessment efforts for such migrations can
amount to 15% of the project cost. This tool reduces this
effort by 70%, thereby providing direct cost savings.
“Some men look at things the way they are and ask why?
I dream of things that are not and ask why not?”
- Robert Kennedy
30

RETHINK CUPID
Many enterprise customers customize Oracle EBS to suit their business needs. While this helps their business run efficiently and
effectively, the custom code creates issues while upgrading EBS to the next version.
With the introduction of Oracle Fusion Applications, customers planning for a migration from existing EBS versions will have to
upgrade to E-Business Release 12 as a prerequisite.
Before such an upgrade, an impact analysis is done to identify various aspects of the deployment. One of the aspects is the
amount of customization and, in turn, the custom objects. The more custom code, the more time, resources and cost it will take to
upgrade.
Since an E-Business version upgrade is essential for embracing Oracle Fusion Applications, CUPID helps reduce the manual effort
of scanning through a large custom-code base. CUPID helps identify custom code in the source version that requires
modifications before migrating to the target version.
It also provides a flexible reporting framework for tailored reporting on the percentage of customization, custom objects per
functional domain, and customizations by application modules.
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RETHINK - CUPID
CUPID identifies the application extension objects, as well as the standard packaged items that get customized over a period of time. It points to the
exact customized lines, with details on what has changed. The benefits include:
Improved upgrade planning
Accurate estimates for changes in custom components.
Parameter-driven categorization of impact.
Reduced time in complex upgrades
70% reduction of effort on as-is analysis.
70% reduction in time spent on technical impact analysis.
Reduced scope of manual error and ensuing iterations while porting custom components to the target environment.
Better return on investment
Creation of foundation for in-depth scoping.
Help in deciding high-level action plans (roadmap) for upgrade.

RETHINK - CUPID
Customers need to be 100% sure and have perfect understanding of
the differences between the two versions. This difference is often
referred as a “change repository.”
If you have ever moved from one home to another, you would know
how difficult it can be to fit your old belongings in the new place. The
That’s exactly what our Oracle Solutions Practice consultants
same is true for anyone migrating to a new PC or a laptop. Now
implemented in CUPID. The change repository is created when the
imagine the time, effort and money required to migrate an Enterprise
CUPID solution scans for customized objects in both versions of
Application like Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to the next version.
Oracle EBS. The change repository can then be queried, and reports
These complex systems have an average of 50,000 or more packages
can be generated that represent the state of the impact, and migration
per source code, where the size of every package can vary from 2KB
complexity in multiple dimensions. This report discovers the precise
to 4GB.
percentage of customizations
made by the functional
Consultants within Cognizant’s
CUPID reduces effort in as-is analysis and technical impact domain, the application
Oracle Solutions Practice have
analysis by up to 70%.
module, the technology, the
diligently performed this tedious task
complexity involved, and the
of migrating blocks of information that
effort estimation.
are referred to as “objects” from older
versions of Oracle EBS to a newer version for many clients. The task at
In short, CUPID automates the technical impact analysis of custom
hand was to identify the impact of transferring customized objects from
objects in Oracle EBS during an upgrade process, thereby reducing
the older version to the newer one.
manual effort of a large custom-code base. The tool helps identify
custom code that requires modifications on the current deployed
Each enterprise would have customized Oracle EBS to suit their
version before migrating to the new version.
business needs. Hence, a technical impact analysis involving careful
inspection of all the source code, including 50,000+ objects to be
With the insights gained from performing multiple migrations, our
transferred, could be a daunting task. With the release of Fusion
consultants packaged the tool with many features, including:
Applications, which can only comply with Oracle EBS V12, all
customers are forced to migrate, making this pressing task even more
Analyzes the current environment, customizations, extensions and
tedious.
modifications in a structured manner.
33

RETHINK - CUPID
Identifies areas where customization can be minimized and
removed by process re-engineering.
Identifies the percentage of customization by functional domain
(HR management systems, finance, procurement, manufacturing,
etc.)
CUPID can reduce the time required to complete the impact analysis
by up to 70% and decrease the time required for the entire migration
by over 40%. It also reduces the number of manual errors and ensures
the number of iterations while porting custom components to the
target environment of Oracle EBS.
Helps with effort estimation by complexity type, thereby enabling
a ball-park estimation of technical effort.
Delivers a flexible Excel-based reporting framework, where
different reports can be generated with minimum effort.
Can assess any version of Oracle EBS.
Changes in source code can be identified with details through
CUPID reports:
• % of customizations by functional domain
• % of customizations by application module
• % of customization by technology
• % of complexity calculation and rough effort estimation
Provides a flexible reporting framework and does not require
application downtime.
Sample report: Dependent column and impacted text
Provides an easy and flexible technical effort estimation
framework required to migrate the identified customizations.
34

“By your stumbling the world is perfected.”
- Sri Aurobindo
Photo: Kumar, Jyothish - IT Infrastructure Management

RETHINK - TRADE RECONCILIATION HUB
Article 05
Trade
Reconciliation Hub
Global trade spurs need for synchronized reconciliation
Globalization of financial markets and high-speed
networks have increased global financial activities and
financial transactions. Trade Reconciliation Hub ensures
synchronization and consistency across different
technical systems that record these trades. This system
helps financial houses meet regulatory demands,
manage risks, support a wide array of asset classes and
ensure a smooth reconciliation process.
“The problems of this world are only truly solved in two
ways: by extinction or duplication”
- Susan Sontag
36

RETHINK - TRADE RECONCILIATION HUB
Huge risk drives the need for an effective system of
controls for regulatory compliance.
Most reconciliation implementations are complex and
heterogeneous.
Reconciliation efforts are shifting from matching to
exception management.
Many systems are poorly defined and insufficiently
integrated.
Why Trade Reconciliation?
Vendor based solutions are proprietary and expensive,
while in-house solutions are inflexible.
37

RETHINK - TRADE RECONCILIATION HUB
A platform for accurate matching and n-way reconciliation.
Ability to raise and log all exceptions for thresholds and breaks.
A flexible process for archiving all exceptions.
Accuracy: Matching rate of 98.5% or higher.
Speed: Reconciliation processing time for 10 million records below 30 minutes.
Architecture: Flexible node-based architecture easily scales for increased volumes.
Integration: Seamless integration with other LOBs and strategic systems such as Online Transaction Management.

RETHINK - TRADE RECONCILIATION HUB
I was part of a 20 person team that worked for one of the biggest
multinational banking corporations, with the key responsibility of
financial reconciliation. Reconciliation refers to a process that
compares two sets of records of financial transactions to make sure
that they are in agreement. We would often have meetings with top
managers to discuss the technicalities of the reconciliation work.
One day, the client’s lead project manager shared some interesting
facts; according to the AITE research, IT spending in the global
reconciliation market would reach $520 million by 2014.¹ The financial
reconciliation industry is growing at around 20% every year, driven by
globalization of financial markets and high-speed networks, which
h a v e i n c re a s e d g l o b a l fi n a n c i a l a c t i v i t y a n d fi n a n c i a l
transactions,thereby causing huge data volumes, stressing
performance, and business complexity that was challenging accuracy.
Added to this, changing market conditions were calling for cost-saving
options.
Meanwhile, the team relied on workaround solutions, as every
department, line of business and customer was requesting a special
requirement that could not be addressed by the existing systems. As a
result, the team was stuck with manually processing reconciliations,
given few affordable solutions existed in the trading world.
My project manager at Cognizant saw this situation as an opportunity.
“How might we build a one-stop solution for trade reconciliation
between the front office, middle office and general ledger that delivers
a fully automated reconciliation management capability, including data
acquisition, enrichment, user workflow, reporting and daily/month-end
AITE Group predicts IT spending in global reconciliations
market to reach USD 520 million by 2014
600
520
450
480
500
445 460
300
150
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
trade control requirements?” he asked. He pointed out that our
customers are saddled with the following problems:
Complex, heterogeneous environments.
Poorly defined or badly implemented systems integration.
Expensive and proprietary vendor solutions or complex inflexible inhouse
solutions.
Huge risk from the lack of a reconciliation solution.
39

RETHINK - TRADE RECONCILIATION HUB
The requirements initially seemed simple and clear, but once we
started the first phase, we realized there were a lot of anomalies in the
data itself. The client team was very supportive and provided all the
necessary guidance, but at times we had to change our approach
based on the validated assumptions.
The culmination of these efforts came in the form of Trade
Reconciliation Hub (TRH), a scalable, configurable and flexible
framework that ensures synchronization and consistency across
Trade Reconciliation Hub was built using Java, Flex (for the user
interface), Oracle (for the database), Informatica (for data warehousing)
and Cognos (for reporting). It offers the following features:
Dynamic and generic data processing
• Flexible design to dynamically implement business rules
• Generic framework to adopt multiple reconciliations
• Meta-data-driven processing control
Multi-threading
• Multi-stage, multi-threaded processing
• Meta-data-driven controlled threads
Informatica hub
• Shared across all core processing platforms
• Linux with Oracle RAC (clustering)
• GRID installation
Reporting hub
• Ad-hoc and on-demand reporting
• Drill-through capability to external reports
Benefits of Trade Reconciliation Hub
• Intelligent data fetching
different technical systems that record these trades.
40

User interface hub
• Query, view, investigate and comment on each anomaly
• Interface with other Transaction Management Systems
• Integrated client entitlement system
With Trade Reconciliation Hub fully implemented, my client’s
financial control teams now benefit from more streamlined
processes, with standardized tools that improve their ability to
comply with federal regulations.
“The Reconciliation Hub is one of our most important foundation
components. With this first implementation, our financial control
teams will now begin to benefit from more streamlined processes
with a standardized toolset. Congratulations to all users, project
team members and our technology partners.”
–Finance & Business Management Business Infrastructure
Lead at a large financial client
Accuracy: Matching rate is 98.5% or higher.
Speed: Processing time for 10 million records reconciliation
below 30 minutes.
Architecture: Flexible node-based architecture to easily scale
to increased volumes.
Integration: Seamless integration with other Line of
Businesses and strategic systems such as OTM.
Footnotes
1
http://www.aitegroup.com/Reports/ReportDetail.aspx?
recordItemID=816 )
41

“The mark of an artist is how much he throws away.”
– Johanees Brahms
42
Photo: Kumar, Jyothish - IT Infrastructure Management

20
12
Innovation
Journal
Rewire
Your Operations
Ubiquitous mobile devices, cloud computing, predictive
analytics, social networks and global commerce are
impacting virtually all levels of business and IT
architecture. Proactive leaders are finding new ways to
increase flexibility, lower costs and decrease time to
market. Tomorrow won't wait—listed below are the
innovations that help clients rewire their operations. In
this section:
1. A Better Business Intelligence (ABBI)
2. Dealer Tab
3. Fast and Agile Strategic Targeting and Planning with
regional variations (FASTr)
4. Descriptive RFT
5. iAssess
6. Platinum Delivery Platform
7. An extensible ERP for Service Industry
8. KIOSC – AVM Service Assurance Framework

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Article 06
A Better Business
Intelligence
A Better Business Intelligence (ABBI) Offers Better
Insights and Faster Time to Insight
ABBI is business intelligence as a service (BIaaS)
solution that accelerates “time to insight” in sales and
marketing for pharmaceuticals clients through a hosted
infrastructure and best-in-class software using
Cognizant’s CODE TM (Commercial DW Environment) and
iTrak TM (Cognizant’s pharma reporting application) suite.
“Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas
are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's
throats.”
44
- Howard Aiken

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Large number of data sources across five divisions of operations, necessitated significant investment efforts in information retrieval.
Information required for critical business decisions either not available at all or difficult to locate.
Poor data warehouse and analytics infrastructure was not scalable enough to support growing business needs.
Imminent need to supplement existing business knowledge with industry wide best analytical practices.
Business Intelligence as a Service (BIaaS) solution combines an industry standard sales & marketing process, hosted infrastructure and bestin-class
software.
A commercial analytics product for the pharma industry as a product-cum-service solution with a full-fledged platform, service model,
infrastructure and pricing model.
Prebuilt list of 200+ KPI/metrics across various subject areas of the pharma industry.
45

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Reduces the analyst’s time-to-insight from 2 weeks to 24 hours across all the 15+ brands of the client.
Reduces on-boarding efforts by 60-70% for new brand launches.
Reduces mundane efforts of going through a large amount of unstructured data.
Provides a single comprehensive view of all promotional and sales channels despite wide variety of sources.
Reduces the total cost of ownership.
I observed the scene, as excitement filled the room and e-mails flew across mailboxes, congratulating the team on their success. Everywhere, my name
was being mentioned, as news spread that I had just won the CIO 100 Award for 2011, in the category of “Innovative Use of Technology.”
I am ABBI (A Better Business Intelligence), Cognizant’s end-to-end, commercial business analytics product, delivered through a managed service model
for a large U.S. pharma client, and I am currently capable of supporting industry-standard pharmaceuticals sales and marketing processes.
As with many new ideas, I was born out of frustration, in this case, a client’s frustration with their long “time-to-insight.” Before I was available, the client
struggled with their existing BI tool set. There was too much data and too many reports with low-value insights and insufficient resources and skills to
deliver them.

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
It took 12 days to generate insights across 15 brands and more than
15,000 information assets. 80% of that time was spent ensuring data
quality, with an expensive infrastructure that cost over $10 million, and
spanned seven different reporting platforms and a multitude of
applications.
deployment times (nine to 12 months), with a high total cost of
ownership and a low predictability of expenditure.
The complex BI implementation and related infrastructure required a
huge investment, yet it lacked industry standards. In addition to the
There were days when my creators, the Cognizant BI team, would
drink gallons of coffee and spend hours debating, deliberating and
searching for the right answers. At times they made progress, and
sometime they had to scrap everything and start from scratch. Finally,
when I was born, I was a source of great pride; I was the first à-la-carte
BI as a service delivered as a “productized solution-as-a-service”
model.
Cognizant’s BI team extensively mined the available data, knowing that
the insights existed somewhere, using all the possible tools and
techniques to identify, extract and analyze business information from
different angles. It was like a complex puzzle of knowing what
happened in the past, understanding what is happening in the present
and predicting what will happen in the future.
There were many other issues that my creators had to keep in mind,
including:
ABBI Platform
Cost of ownership: Most companies are sorely challenged when
trying to develop a sales and marketing application like me, especially
when dealing with multiple vendors and the divide between IT and the
business. Competitive offerings tend to have unusually long
$10 million spent on infrastructure, software and application
development, an equal amount of money was required for annual
licensing costs and maintenance.
47

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Ease of use: Business users wanted simplicity, and simplicity
requires personalization and easy-to-extract data, so business analysts
usually suggest self-service reporting and analytics. But rampant
business changes also cause continuously shifting demands, so the
client often needed help with quick incremental reporting when a new
product was launched, in addition to training specialty sales forces and
changing their business processes.
Infrastructure: It isn’t kid’s play to extract insights from 15,000-
plus information assets spanning 15-plus brands. There were many
challenges to overcome, and business decisions depended on
information from the client’s internal analytics team. It was up to me to
look into the master data that spanned several hundred thousand
HCPs (Health Care Providers), which consumed up to 40% of the
analyst’s time in manual data preparation, with close to 75% in data
redundancy.
Accuracy of insights: I needed to ensure delivery of accurate
data and/or reports, delivered at the right time, at the right place and to
the right people. With 15+ different brands, there were 15 different KPI
sets to report, which is a big task, and the complexity kept increasing,
with quality assurance efforts.
To provide these insights, I had to depend on the right mix of the
optimal platform, service model, infrastructure and pricing. My platform
includes Cognizant’s Commercial DW Environment (CODE), which is a
pre-built data integration platform and industry-class pharma
commercial data model, as well as Cognizant’s pharma reporting
application (iTRAK), which is a pre-built, fully configurable self-service
reporting and analytics tool.
Service delivery: Today, business moves at “the speed of
thought,” and these thoughts must be backed by data. When
something is not working, end-users need a reliable and fast go-to
place. I provide 1-800-BI, which is a 24x7, SLA-based service delivery
model to support just that. My infrastructure is cloud-enabled, and I am
integrated with a complex ecosystem of external and internal partners
like SAVVIS, Teradata, Informatica, Cognos and Cognizant’s own
internal support team drawn from its Data Warehouse Practice,
Business Intelligence Practice, Enterprise Analytics Practice and IT
Infrastructure Services Practice for end-to-end response to delivery
lifecycle.
Leased model: My cost is favorable through lease-based pricing,
with “variabilization” options.
“Providing data on Wednesday instead of Friday enables our
team to get back on track. THANK YOU!!! This is tremendously
appreciated.”
Finance & Business Management Business Infrastructure Lead at a
large financial client
48

REWIRE - A BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Time to market: I offer faster time-to-market, with a pre-built list of
200 KPIs and metrics across various subject areas, such as sales and
finance, execution and effectiveness, managed care, institutional,
patient analysis, claims and co-pay, marketing and non-personal
promotions, and market research.
As a novel BI tool, I have helped our client lower their cost of marketing
operations by a couple of million dollars, amortized pricing schedules
with a smooth outflow during the engagement period and reduced
capital outlay by 80%, with 30% lower operating costs.
I exhibited a higher than expected strategic impact, as my “time-toinsight”
was 24 hours across all brands compared with the two weeks
required by my predecessors, and I have helped reduce on-boarding
effort on new brands up to 70%. Implementing me, clients can adopt a
true ”culture of analytics” and obtain a single comprehensive view of all
promotional and sales channels available, regardless of the source.
In terms of operational enablement, I perform at 99.5% uptime and
have reduced 50% of operational overhead. Being highly cost
predictable is an advantage, as clients can shift budget spending from
Cap-Ex to Op-Ex.
So far my services have been for a pharma client, but I am confident
that I could serve customers in consumer goods, banking & financial
services, retail, and travel and hospitality, as I would be able to support
them in making the right decisions by providing insights at a flexible
cost.
By: Selvaraj, Surest - Banking & Financial Services
49

“One must be something in order to do something.”
– Johan Wolfgang von Goethe
Photo: Mohandas, Suja - Advanced Solutions Practice Business Integration
50

REWIRE - DEALER TAB
Article 07
Dealer Tab
Rewire your last-mile connections and customer
experience
Dealer Tab is a mobile application that enables sales
personnel at the dealer-end to have a meaningful
conversation with clients and improve the conversion
ratio. This application is a mobile extension that
connects to a suite of back-end enterprise applications.
“Confusion is a word we’ve invented for an order that is not
yet understood.”
– Henry Miller
51

REWIRE - DEALER TAB
Non-availability of an interactive tool for sales personnel to have meaningful conversations and help close deals faster.
An interactive mobile application that enables customization of vehicles with a choice of accessories, color, and other specifications.
Enables sales personnel to answer queries of customers, track real-time data on shipments and provide exact time of arrival at the yard.
Increased probability of closing deals due to instant availability of information on the choices and queries of the customers.
Expected to increase sales up to 1% and save 720,000 person hours per year with close to $204 milion benefits.
52

REWIRE - DEALER TAB
They are the people who, day in and day out, have direct contact with
the customers, and that’s an area we need to look at.”
“Why aren’t they motivated?” asked one of Jason’s counterparts. “Our
Scenario 1: “The dealers are not motivated.”
This was the concern voiced by Jason, one of the vice presidents in
the marketing division of a global automobile major, at a high-level
meeting of senior management folks, discussing the company’s recent
sales figures. Just three years ago, this was “the company that could
incentives and commissions are some of the best in the industry. I
think the problem is the environment we are in, and that circumstances
beyond our control are the real culprits.”
Jason, however, was convinced he was on strong ground and decided
to take it upon himself to address the problem.
do no wrong.” Sales were hitting the roof, customer satisfaction was at
an all-time high, dealers were happy and in expansion mode, and the
competition was stuttering. How
long can one live, however, in
Scenario 2: “Do I need to come back next week to look at that color?”
the customer asked with a wry face.
“Yes sir, I’ll have that arranged, if
past glory, especially when the
you are sure that you want that
secular and cyclical trends in the
Dealer Tab is expected to increase sales up to 1% and save
color,” replied Luke, a salesman
auto industry demand that
720,000 person hours per year with close to $204M benefits.
working for the dealer.
companies be agile and innovative
to succeed in the new order?
The customer sighed. “No,
actually I’m not sure. Say I give
you my color preference - can you confirm when the car will be
The recent sales figures didn’t make anyone comfortable. Things had
changed. A spate of product recalls, challenges in production hubs
and labor strikes hit at the heart of the business. The competition had
caught up by launching popular models and selling more cars. Slowly,
panic and gloom was setting in, and the leaders were discussing
available at the latest?”
Luke explained he couldn’t do that, as he didn’t have real-time access
to data on cars in the lot.
Shaking his head disagreeably, the customer slowly walked out of the
showroom.
various options and solutions.
Present-day customers are very demanding. They want their cars
Jason spoke with conviction. “As much as we focus on improving the
quality of our cars and increase production, we also need to ensure
customized to their taste, as well as the ability to check on different
colors and accessories before making a choice. Meanwhile, Luke was
that our dealers are motivated and supported enough to sell them. starting to wonder whether his selling skills had vanished. He had
53

REWIRE - DEALER TAB
invested in the latest machines and mobile gadgets to impress his
customers, but still he had to rely on the dealer software provided by
the auto company, which was quite archaic. Business was getting bad,
his investments in the showroom were not paying off, and the
challenging economy put a big question mark on his future.
Scenario 3: “May I speak with Luke?” asked the caller, as Luke picked
up the phone. It was Jason on the line. He had randomly identified a
few dealers to speak with, in order to better understand their
perspective, and Luke was one of them. Luke detailed his issues. “The
customers’ mindset has changed. They want to see the car they will be
buying, but at the same time, they don’t want to wait. I know of a lot of
potential buyers who just don’t have time to visit my showroom. We
need to take it to them, somehow. We need to be able to update the
customers on the order confirmation and status of delivery swiftly.”
Scenario 4: “This is exactly what we want,” exclaimed Jason after
listening to the description of Cognizant’s Dealer Tab mobile
application. Dev Anand from Cognizant’s Manufacturing practice and
his team had developed a prototype after multiple internal discussions
and brainstorming sessions to proactively address the auto major’s
immediate challenges.
can run on multiple devices and connect the dealer to the auto major’s
main database. The team had to build a system that was easy to use,
flexible and really fast.
“But I want it before Cognizant’s next dealer’s conference,” Jason
immediately added. “I want to showcase this and roll it out as quickly
as possible.”
Dev Anand’s team took up the challenge and, well within the required
timeframe, delivered the mobile application, which can run on various
mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android, as well as Microsoft
Slate, through a Microsoft partnership. It was showcased at the dealer
conference to all the auto major’s dealers on June-2011.
Dealer’s Tab is an interactive application with a captivating front end
through which the customer can see the “to be” vehicle in a tablet or
mobile device and choose the color and accessories of his or her
choice. Customers can try any number of combinations and select the
car just as they want it, and the data is directly transferred to the auto
major’s database to customize, manufacture and deliver as they desire.
The application enables dealers to answer customer queries, track
real-time shipment data and provide information on time.
Our customer-first philosophy and consulting-led approach ensured
that Dev Anand’s team proactively considered their customers’
challenges and were working to offer solutions. From a list of over 25
ideas, the team narrowed down the top five and singled out one silverbullet
innovation to address customer issues: A mobile application that
Luke was thrilled to see the demo at the conference and immediately
took advantage of the development. Since he had already invested in a
tablet, he just had to install the app on his iPad, and he was ready to
roll. He ensured that all the sales personnel at the showroom also
installed the app on their tablets and were trained to use it.
54

RETHINK - DEALER TAB
costs for Luke. The mobile app rewired the dealer’s operations, helped
Scenario 5: “This is how your car will look.” Luke showed the customdesigned
car model on his iPad to his prospective customer in the
increase business effectiveness, transformed its business processes
and provided the edge over the competition.
hotel lobby. The customer had made an online inquiry for the newly
launched car but didn’t have any time to call or visit the showroom.
Luke had called the customer to check if he could give him a few
minutes to meet. With the Dealer’s Tab app, Luke just closed another
deal! This is the future of work, where a car dealer closes a customdesigned
car deal in a hotel lobby, with the order placed with the auto
major before he leaves the parking lot.
The Dealers Tab has improved sales, the conversion ratio, customer
satisfaction and operational efficiency, and it has reduced infrastructure
By: Selvaraj, Surest - Banking & Financial Services
55

“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will
be.”
– Bruce Lee
56
Photo: M, Sai Diktat - Data Warehousing

REWIRE - FASTr
Article 08
FASTr
Facing pharma challenges by improving the targeted
sales process.
FASTr (Fast and Agile Strategic Targeting and planning
with regional variations) is a targeted-selling and callplanning
solution for pharmaceutical firms that reduces
time to market and enables speedy implementation of
strategic decisions around targeted selling.
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best
to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other
innovations.”
- Steve Jobs
57

REWIRE - FASTr
Increasingly, physicians are refusing to meet sales representatives, thereby reducing revenues.
80% of pharma sales are driven by managed markets; however, companies are seeing lower conversion rates from promotional visits.
Strategic targeting and planning (STP) is an operational last-mile component in the pharma sales force deployment cycle thereby making it
hard to make changes in the targeting and planning cycle, which needs both proactive insights and alignment of business processes.
A key link is needed to help establish a realistic contract between the brand and sales organizations.
Allows clients to periodically review their contract, which spells out the personal sales channel effort allocated for a portfolio of brands.
Enables optimized call planning without compromising any variance on key performance indicators (KPIs) from an execution standpoint.
Provides the ability to respond to market conditions, via an optimized personal channel effort, on-the-fly and off-the-shelf.
Built on an agile and lean engagement model.
58

REWIRE - FASTr
Enables better adherence to “disciplined targeting” and focusing on high profile physicians based upon the latest predictive modeling.
Optimized targeting generates an additional ~$50K per representative per year compared with sub-optimal targeting solution.
Faster time to market helps field personnel build relationships with key opinion leaders, therefore setting the stage for future big event(s) and
helping to influence an additional ~$70M of revenue in the long run.
A comprehensive engagement helps maintain the right balance between strategic objectives and tactical field realities thereby reducing status
quo processes by approximately 50%, enabling savings of $500K.
“..wanted to let you know how incredibly pleased the brand sales team members were, with what your team has
achieved. The brand director made specific mention that she was impressed and pleased.”
Director, Targeting and Performance, Life Science Client

REWIRE - FASTr
”We have to be agile. We can’t keep losing these short-term market
opportunities because of process bottlenecks. It takes three months to
implement a change in promotional strategy, and this is costing us
severely, both at the top and bottom lines. While our field and contract
sales are critical to our success, we need a platform that will help us to
be agile and manage them effectively. We need to drastically reduce
our time-to-market from the current 12 weeks.”
Such were the thoughts of a brand leader at a leading pharmaceutical
company. After years of high margins and deep pockets, the pharma
and biotech industries are in an era of slower growth. In an
environment where 20% of physicians refuse to meet sales
representatives 1 , decreasing returns from each promotional visit are
etching deep lines on executives’ foreheads.
On top of that are the worrisome headlines that appear in industry
reports: ”The 10 biggest-selling drugs are about to lose their patent” or
”Global pharmaceutical R&D productivity declining, as sector relies
heavily on aging portfolio.” 2 3
The healthcare industry has become very volatile, and the need to
implement strategic decisions faster is the call of the day.
Nitin Choudhary, a Senior Engagement Manager and on-site project
lead from Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Practice, could very well
read the anxiety on the face of the brand manager. He thought his
strategic and account planning team should start working on the
multiple realities that his client was facing, which includes:
Shortened interaction times: Field sales representatives’
interaction time remains critical, even in agile targeting.
Channel of choice: Field sales representatives continue to be the
most effective resource for directly connecting with, and forming a
relationship with, prescribers.
High-cost channel: Personal promotion is an expensive channel,
accounting for about 30% of marketing spend and each rep visit
costing about $80.
System complexities: A multitude of system and ramp-up
constraints deter changes in targeting plans.
With Cognizant’s maturing understanding of pharma sales and
marketing solutions and client business, Nitin thought, the client
needed to accelerate “strategy-to-reality” planning and identify a way
to enable quick, on-the-go decisions to respond to dynamic market
conditions.
The time to market for a typical strategic decision in a product launch
took eight to 12 weeks, including identifying the business needs, how
the brand will be promoted, the amount of mandated effort, the target
locations, access issues, etc.
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REWIRE - FASTr
Deliver insights on physicians
Define optimal sales force structure and size
Identify the right product mix
Set business rules that improve targeting efficiency
The team at Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytical Practice applied
innovation tools such as brainstorming, interviews, questionnaires and
observation methodologies to collect insights and ideas. They
categorized all the information and ideas into two broad categories:
Generating a target plan is a very long process. Moreover, there are
location-specific tactical constraints and other business rules that the
client needs to adhere to while planing for promotion. It was important,
Nitin thought, to strike the right balance between the promotional
strategies and the operational mandates and try to bring out the
maximum ROI.
Finally, Nitin briefed his team on the challenges faced by this pharma
client and challenged them, “We need to help our customer make the
right decisions in the entire brand lifecycle. This entire process should
take less time than the current eight to 12 weeks.”
• “Make–to-stock” re-defines the way different data inputs from
existing systems and targeted business rules plug into a proposed
platform that will generate insights and relevant call plans for targeted
sales.
• “Make-to-order” solutions involve streamlining existing processes to
make them agile enough to take targeted sales requests with minimal
operational lag.
Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Team presented both approaches to
the client. Comparing both options, the client executives opted for the
make-to-stock option, with some make-to-order benefits integrated
into it.
The team decided to focus their efforts on creating a platform that
could do the following:
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RETHINK - FASTr
The final solution was to deliver Fast and Agile Strategic Targeting and
Planning with regional variations and Fast and Frequent Targeting
Refresh (FASTr-F&F).
Implementing the solution was not without challenges. Multiple
presentations, consultative discussions to get buy-in from various
stakeholders, complex audit trails and managing expectations were all
part of the journey.
The team built an agile analytical framework by creating a service
inventory of historical strategic events and enhancing the optimization
engine, iForce, TM to deliver solutions in an agile environment in
accordance with the client’s CRM processes and systems. The team
also used its proprietary business intelligence reporting framework,
iTrak, TM to implement an online Web-based reporting framework that
catalyzed the decision-making process and reduced the manual labor
of producing Excel-based reports.
depending on whether the product is a late lifecycle or new product
launch. The FASTr platform optimized nearly 10% of the total personal
channel effort, which reduced time-to-market by nearly two months.
During the implementation review, the team summarized its
accomplishments:
Quicker time to market helps sales personnel build relationships
with key opinion leaders, therefore setting the stage for future big
events and helping to generate an additional $70 million of
revenue in the long run.
Customer satisfaction has increased significantly in the wake of
50% faster targeting solutions. This has also helped increase the
client’s confidence in our ability to think beyond the horizon.
The solution is based on the concept of delivering services on the
fly, so it can be applied not only within the pharma domain but
even across industries like insurance, banking and financial
services, where “time to market” is a competitive differentiator.
Further, the team facilitated stronger governance and stakeholder
management via an online call plan facilitator that provided a virtual
environment to facilitate discussions, post business questions and
provide responses within defined SLAs.
With the solution in place, the entire targeting engagement lifecycle
was reduced to four weeks from the existing eight to 12 weeks. The
pharma client’s sales department manages a sales portfolio of
approximately $7 billion. Historical studies indicate that approximately
5% to 25% of that value is a result of personal promotion channels,
Banerjee, Subhra Kumar,Advanced Solution Practice, Interactive Learning
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Footnotes:
1
Pharma 2020: The Vision: Which Path Will You Take?
PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007, www.pwc.be/en/pharma/pdf/
Pharma-2020-vision-PwC-09.pdf .
2
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/27/top-selling-drugs-areabout-to-lose-patent-protection-ready/
3
http://www.thepharmaletter.com/file/96226/global-pharmaceuticalrd-productivity-declining-as-sector-relies-heavily-on-aging-portfolioreport.html
63

“The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can
change the world, are the ones who do.”
- Steve Jobs
64
Photo: Peri, Amaranth, Banking & Financial Services

REWIRE - iASSESS
Article 09
iAssess:
Anytime, Anywhere Learning and Assessment
By integrating multiple platforms and enabling mobile
access, iAssess delivers a social, collaborative and
engaging way to educate and learn, enabling the future of
learning.
iAssess is an iPad application for K-12 students that
enables interactive, results-driven learning and
assessment, thereby enabling teachers to prepare
personalized interventions for every student anytime,
anywhere.
“All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be
outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything
new.”
-Charles Kettering
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A leading educational publishing house recognized the potential opportunity of enabling teachers, students and parents to embark on
“collaborative learning,” through ubiquitous mobile technologies. The client already owned hundreds of educational platforms and assets for
learning management and assessment evaluation.
The challenge was to build a mobile assessment product that converged data and content from the client’s multiple back-end platforms to
enable students to take assessments and synchronize the results, thereby enabling teachers to prepare personalized interventions for each
and every student. The assessment product also needed to include key features for all stakeholders in the K-12 learning process, including
students, teachers, administrators and parents.
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An iOS-based mobile application for educational learning and assessments that seamlessly integrates with multiple assessment and content
platforms, spanning 120-plus learning management systems (LMS).
Features for Students
Full-fledged assessments.
Online and offline modes that can be synchronized anytime.
Instant access to additional resources, including study material based on the assessment.
Non-linear study materials, as well as interactive content, improving the student’s attention span and increasing learning effectiveness.
“With 20 million students using our learning management systems, the potential market value would be $20 million
based on a cost of $1 to download the app, thus making it commercially viable considering the potential audience.”
Director, Engineering, Information Media and Entertainment Client

REWIRE - iASSESS
Feature for Teachers
Collaborative platform for students, teachers and parents.
Powerful, personalized students performance-tracking to keep teachers informed.
Option to provide personalized feedback on each student assessment.
Ability to influence future teaching decisions, guidance and intervention for each student.
Additional benefits, such as access to teaching materials on the fly and instant access to student data, anytime, anywhere.
Features for Parents
Ability to monitor their child’s progress in real-time via a separate log-in.
“Impressive and totally unexpected. Took us by surprise. Really waiting to see this roll-out to make an impact on the educational
market.”
Director, Quality Assurance, Information Media and Entertainment Client

REWIRE - iASSESS
Provides client with a significant competitive edge in the K-12 segment.
Improves the user experience through a single delivery mechanism, connecting multiple back-end platforms and systems.
With 20 million students on various learning management systems, the potential market value is $20 million, at an app price of $1.
“Really exciting to see the iPad application integrating with our Learning
Management Systems platform in real-time and to see students and
teachers access it in tandem between the iPad and the desktop.”
Secure login
Engineering Lead, Information Media and Entertainment Client

REWIRE - iASSESS
President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” program is aimed at mobilizing the business community to improve the quality of STEM (Science
Technology-Engineering & Mathematics) education in the U.S. and better prepare students to lead in the 21st century. The iAssess application
complements this vision by “innovating to educate,” by providing a single, integrated assessment solution that can be accessed via multiple
platforms. This will change the way teachers, students and parents harness technology for better education.
By: Selvaraj, Surest - Banking & Financial Services

REWIRE - iASSESS
learning a social process, by leveraging technologies like the Internet,
cloud and tablet computers.
President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” program aims to mobilize
the business community to improve the quality of science-technologyengineering-math
(STEM) education in the U.S and better prepare
students to lead in the 21st century. Cognizant’s iAssess application
complements this vision by “innovating to educate,” by providing a
single, integrated assessment solution that can be accessed via
multiple platforms. This technology promises to be the new face of
modern education.
This is an interview with Santosh Pingalay Ramesh, Senior Manager at
Cognizant’s Information Media and Entertainment (IME) practice about
iAssess, and what the future has in store for teachers, students and
parents harnessing technology for better education.
Q: What is “smart education?”
Santosh: Just as land was the defining key for agrarian societies, and
capital investment was the key for growing economies, in education, a
crucial determinant of success for the students of this century will be
applying knowledge rather than gathering it. We call this “smarter
education,” and it is right around the corner.
Q: What is technology’s role in providing “smart education?”
Santosh: Six years ago, we could not have imagined that platforms
would exist for people to publicly express and share their thoughts.
But, today platforms like Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized the
way people perceive being social. We realized that we could make
Look at the U.S. education market; we are applying smarter and better
education methods using technology. Web-based solutions play a vital
role in learning management systems (LMS) catering to K-12 students.
And everyone, from kids to parents, is embracing the change.
Schedules, classes, reports, progress, extracurricular activities, and
parent networks -- everything is on the Web. Why? Because it’s not
just a change in the system but a whole new channel to educate
people smartly and connect parents, teachers and students.
Finally, we all need “everything on-the-go.” That is how the mind
works today, thanks to smartphones, tablets, high-speed 3G networks,
Wi-Fi hotspots. These are taken for granted. But nobody was
aggregating K-12 STEM learning opportunities onto a comprehensive
and integrated learning experience, available both online and offline for
students, teachers and parents.
One of our clients, a leading educational publishing house, recognized
the potential opportunities of enabling teachers, students and parents
through ubiquitous mobile technologies. Being in the education
business, this client already owned hundreds of educational assets,
including learning management and assessment evaluations available
as Web applications or standalone Windows applications. With these
building blocks already available, all they needed was a smart architect
to design a beautiful building.
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Q: So, your team’s job was to integrate all of the client’s
educational assets onto a mobile platform?
Santosh: Yes, the idea was to build a full-fledged assessment tool that
could pull data and content from the client’s platforms and leverage the
interactive, gesture-based features that mobile technology offers. We
decided to develop this on Apple’s iOS platform, targeting iPad
devices.
We were also focused on building an application that would enable
students to work in an online/offline mode, facilitate them to take
assessments and synchronize the results in a collaborative learning
environment. We focused on key features that would make a difference
to all the stakeholders in learning eco-systems - students, teachers
and parents.
This is the first mobile solution that provides supplemental support to
physical books, leading to a holistic education never imagined before.
Moreover, as the study material is non-linear as well as interactive in
nature, it sustains students’ attention and increases learning efficacy.
As an additional feature, parents will also be able to monitor progress
in real-time.
Q: How does this benefit the teachers?
Santosh: It will help teachers make accurate assessments and chart
out specific, personalized interventions for each and every student. For
example, they can access teaching materials on the fly and student
data, anytime, anywhere. Through a common network, it enables
powerful performance tracking, enabling teachers to make future
teaching decisions like which tools and techniques they’ll use, teaching
modes, etc. Teachers also have an option to provide feedback on each
assessment taken by student, simulating the exact environment of
school.
Q: How do you see this application being applied to
education in the 21st century?
Santosh: Many states in the US have already begun integrating
devices like iPad’s in their school initiatives. As a technology company,
Cognizant wanted to present future generations with state-of-the-art
education, and it is my strong belief that this will enhance the
education level to a new height, making it more interactive and
constructive.
Q: This is all very altruistic, but what is the revenue model,
and how will it generate enough income to support
developing new features and maintaining the current
platform?
Santosh: The revenue potential is $20 million, even if we launch the
application at a cost of $1. This makes it affordable for students as well
as commercially viable for our client, considering the target audience of
20 million students with access to an iPad.
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"It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas."
- Charles Peguy
Photo: Shroff, Sarvesh - Cognizant Business Consulting

REWIRE - PLATINUM DWBI
Article 10
Platinum DWBI
Delivery Platform
Platinum Helps to Plug the Delivery Gaps in DWBI Projects
An end-to-end information management delivery
ecosystem for data warehouse/business intelligence
projects that offers a blend of automation, process
orchestration and quality assurance at every stage of the
DWBI software development lifecycle. The platform
connects Cognizant and its clients on a single,
collaborative system, thereby enabling multi-country rollout.
"We've reached the end of incrementalism. Only those
companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will
prosper in the new economy.”
74
- Gary Hamel

REWIRE - PLATINUM DWBI
The complexity and high-cost of complex DWBI implementations, many of which are characterized by the following:
Compartmentalized knowledge sharing
Platinum Promise
Inaccurate monitoring of resource performance
Complexity in managing multi-vendor resources
Long development cycles and delivery times
Platinum Prelude - gaps across data lifecycle
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Common Challenges of Large DWBI
An end-to-end information management delivery ecosystem, with a
comprehensive set of 20-plus automation components and a
unified approach that supports over 15 DWBI vendor products.
Capabilities include:
Value creation, automation and process orchestration.
Quality assurance at every stage of the SDLC.
Connection forged between Cognizant and clients on a single,
collaborative platform.
Multi-country roll-out.
169+ client implementations, 240+ planned implementations.

REWIRE - PLATINUM DWBI
Reduced time and effort spent on the following processes:
Implementation time: 19% reduction over 1.5 years due to reusable
components
Information Management Excellence through best in
class delivery capabilities
• Data profiling: 70% reduction
• Data comparison: 90% reduction
• Test execution: Approximately 70% reduction
• Simple ETL map development: 70% reduction
• Code review: 80% reduction
Operational excellence through increased productivity, leading to
reduced operating costs.
Management through metrics, due to transparent reporting processes.
Reduced cost of quality through a high percent of automation.
Standardization and best practices across people, process and
platforms.

REWIRE - PLATINUM DWBI
approach, the client could not believe that a complex DWBI project
could be simplified to such an extent.
The business head of Cognizant’s Data Warehouse Practice was at the
JFK Airport lounge, sipping a cup of hot coffee and savoring his most
recent win. The deal he had just closed would provide his client with a
wealth of savings, as evidenced by the results of an existing
customer’s project: cost saving of 21% on its data warehousing
project, time and effort saving of 19% through reusable components,
70% in data profiling efforts, 90% in data comparison efforts, 70% in
test execution, 70% in simple ETL map development and 80% in code
review processes.
Such benefits were all due to the Platinum DWBI Delivery Platform, a
data warehouse/business intelligence platform that enables a high
degree of automation, tool integration, metadata exploitation,
configurability, scalability and end-to-end software development
lifecycle (SDLC) coverage.
Within a week’s time, the team was able to demonstrate a proof of
concept that combined the capabilities of its people and processes,
and filled the common lifecycle gaps in the areas of metrics,
collaboration, communication, schedule, quality and delivery of DWBI
implementations. The demonstration won the customer’s confidence –
and the deal.
Shortly thereafter, however, it became clear that the team needed more
people with Teradata expertise to fulfill the client’s requirements. In a
niche technology area like Teradata, it is always hard to get and retain
skilled people, and at Cognizant, most of those with this expertise were
already working on other projects. What the business head needed
Platinum Components – Automation Areas
It all started when his team was facing a prospective customer. They
needed to win the deal through attractive pricing that would not harm
profitability or require too many resources. That’s when he was called
in for a demo of a tool they had been working on automating the entire
lifecycle of Teradata migration
` SW
To him, this was just the tool they needed to delight the customer,
ensure profitability and satisfy his team. When he proposed this
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Soon after, another customer in the banking and financial services
industry needed to create reports for its business leaders. Their current
reports were not reaching decision-makers on-time because data
consolidation was taking too long. It was a manually intensive process,
involving lots of copy/pasting between different reports and
spreadsheets. The process of creating the final presentation took
almost 10 days -- the customer clearly needed help.
Platinum Architecture
The team brainstormed for right solutions, discussing various APIs to
consolidate data and another set of APIs to connect to the database
and create presentations on the fly. This exercise not only helped solve
the customer’s problem, but it also triggered a train of new ideas and
usage scenarios.
was some way to turn 100 people with ordinary SQL skills into
Teradata experts.
This was the genesis of the Platinum feature that enables people with
little or no Teradata background to use their common database skills in
complex data warehousing projects that involve Teradata migrations.
With this feature, Cognizant was able to develop a workbench for
developers that could ensure throughput, independent of skill levels
and project size.
This tool helped jumpstart the project, increase productivity and deliver
services at a lower price point.
All these efforts had been well worth it as these features have been
integrated into Platinum. With Platinum, the Data Warehouse Practice
now had a platform it could use to help more clients quickly complete
their complex DWBI projects, at a cost that worked for both the
customers and Cognizant. Since then, Platinum has received much
recognition:
• From Gartner as a “one-of-a-kind” DWBI platform.
• From Teradata for leadership in enterprise data warehousing as a
best-in-class, innovative solution.
• From TDWI in the category of Best Practices in Enterprise Data
Warehousing.
79

"Now that we have met with paradox we have some
hope of making progress."
- Niels Bohr
80
Photo:V, Seetha Bharathi - Advanced Solution Practice, Digital Security

REWIRE - EXTENSIBLE ERP
Article 11
Extensible ERP
Know the health of your business in just one click.
Extensible ERP is a business health platform that
provides a one-stop, single-window view of operational
information to help executive management and various
stakeholders make well-informed decisions in near realtime.
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the
expert's mind there are few."
- Shunryu Suzuki
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REWIRE - EXTENSIBLE ERP
Managing health of a complex business with multiple dimensions
A Business Health Platform that provides a single view of the
business by connecting to various systems of record.
Strategic areas - Customer Coverage, SG&A, Service Mix
Customer Focus areas - Project Pipeline, Delivery SLAs
Finance Measures - Billing Receivables, Revenue, Profitability,
Reserves
Ability to monitor broad categories like bottom-line, topline,
process and people related metrics.
Internal Measures - Resource Forecasting, Utilization, Billability
People Related metrics - Learning, Attrition and Career
Management
Ability to make informed decisions and to be in control of
business operations.
Ability to influence stakeholders and improve profitability.
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REWIRE - EXTENSIBLE ERP
particularly true in the IT services industry, where data exists in multiple
systems like time-sheets, vacation time, employee performance,
resource management, customer and company financials, invoices,
As I write this, CNN is broadcasting a heated debate. The contenders etc. What boggled me was the number of spreadsheets and
are vying for the post of “the most powerful person on Earth” - the PowerPoint slides one could end up with and how so much effort
President of the United States. One of the candidates quotes
was spent on going to the different sources, fetching the
former president John F. Kennedy, and it reminds me of
different data and consolidating all of it to make sensible
something I recently said to my teammates: “Folks, let’s not
decisions.
ask what delivery teams can do for smooth
operations but what the operations team can
At the account PMO level, the teams were
do to ease everyone’s work,” echoing
getting pelted with reports in varying
JFK’s famous quote, "My fellow
formats at the beginning and end
citizens of the world, ask not
of each month, quarterly and
what America will do for you,
in-between. Reports were
but what together we can do for
finance-, process- and peoplerelated,
while others were geared
the freedom of man."
toward executive and client
Having recently moved from delivery
leadership.
to operations, I was like the shoemaker
trying to wear his own shoes. I realized
With Cognizant’s goal to becoming a
that today’s information era has made us
“Tier1” IT services company by 2015, I
all data jugglers, with more to juggle every
thought, could we afford to spend our
passing day. However, it was becoming
efforts in doing business or measuring
clear that the biggest issue of the
business? Could we afford to spend time in
computer age was not data availability or
data consolidation or data analysis? That is
storage but getting the right information to
when the question struck me, “Wouldn’t it be
the right people at the right time, to enable
great if we had all the business operation’s
them to make the right decisions. This is Overview of Extensible ERP – A Holistic
parameters in a one-stop, single view?” Over
Business Health Management System
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REWIRE - EXTENSIBLE ERP
time, the question grew more refined: “What do people really need to
make a meaningful decision?”
With that in mind, my team of operations experts summarized this into
a five-point problem statement:
How might we enable stakeholders and program owners to make
informed decisions?
How might we make information available in real-time or, at best,
the very same day where every daily data flow is possible?
How might we introduce a self-help mechanism to manage the
vast amount of data?
How might we organize or drill down into the data to obtain
actionable insights?
How might we assess business health from a project, account,
SBU, vertical or even at organization level?
Insights through expansive Reports and Graphs
At that point, the team was ready to begin working toward a solution. I
reminded them that, in order to make a critical decisions, people need
data at their fingertips. Furthermore, the point wasn’t to change the
strategy of the business but to enable better decisions and improve the
lives thousands of our associates, who were on teams spanning
different hierarchies, working on various projects across hundreds of
clientele groups, across different geographies and varying business
models. We needed to relieve the pain of having to go to ‘n’ places for
‘x’ reports. This would enable everyone to spend more time focusing
on serving our customer by making faster and better decisions.
Off-the-shelf solutions would have been the easy but expensive
answer; however, we wanted a simpler, more economical and organic
solution. The current data was accurate data but it was siloed, and the
need of the hour was to stitch the data together and make it pivotable,
with the ability to drill down and slice and dice it, depending upon what
one wants to see.
To make sense of the data flow and visualize what users wanted, we
turned to a number of people, including operations heads of the
account teams, data architects and various people from the on-site,
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RETHINK - EXTENSIBLE ERP
offshore and PMO office. We grouped the reports into five categories --
customer, internal, people, finance and strategic -- and designed an
integrated application that would gather data from the existing systems
through an automated feed, with manual input where ever necessary.
The technical and functional challenges in the design and build phases
were overcome by a small task force that was able to quickly craft an
elegant solution. On-time data availability and accuracy were enabled
by mandating workflow criteria that validated the data prior to its entry
and exit at defined times.
The dashboard helps me get everyone in my team to be
on the same page and discuss many aspects of delivering
business value to our clients. This is an important lifeline
for any strategic business unit.”
Vilas Patil, AVP and Strategic Business Unit Head, Cognizant.
In a matter of days, our team developed a single, consolidated
spreadsheet view of reports from various portals and systems. The
greatest advantage of Extensible ERP is not the technology or the
system but the single window that provides actionable insights from
analyzing data and making informed decisions. Since the data is
refreshed on a daily basis from the different ERP systems (and as soon
as possible from the monthly or fortnightly reports) Extensible ERP
always has near-real-time data from the right reports, for the right
stakeholders. This is the much-sought-after “one source of truth.”
When we tested the application, we were presented with a new
challenge: Gordon Coburn, President at Cognizant, asked our practice
to present, in just a few days’ time, a scenario plan for the next year,
showing what it would take to increase profitability by a specific
percentage. The plan needed to present a realistic forecast in five
dimensions: customer, internal, people, finance and strategic. This
exercise turned out to be an exciting litmus test for us, as the
Extensible ERP’s single window system was made to address these
exact requirements.
Today, the PMO is better able to manage the business at both the
“micro” and “macro” levels. The micro level, where the tool is used to
monitor and control all operations metrics, is applicable to the IT
services industry but also affects broader categories such as the
bottom line, top line and people factors. At the macro level, all serviceindustry-specific
resources and assets are available in a single window,
with past, present and future forecast information, in near-real-time
using spot data, which can be drilled down to make key decisions. Its
proactive indicators help managers plan ahead and take a corrective
course of action when necessary.
We no longer question how to get the data but how to create insights
with the data we have on hand. All it took was to rewire our operations.
Since the rollout, the best compliment we’ve received is when one of
our practice heads said to a new manager, “If you want to know more
85

about the business, go to the account dashboard portal. There’s no
need to go to anyone else.”
As the televised debate comes to an end, I snap back to reality. The
anchor was wrapping up the network’s coverage with a point about the
candidates’ ongoing duels, waged through negative advertising slots.
“Do unto others,” he says, quoting from biblical text, “as you would
have others do unto you. Thanks for joining us, and stay tuned for
news highlights at 9:00, the one place for all your news updates.” I
couldn’t help but smile as the Extensible ERP tool, “the one space, for
all data updates.”
“If you want to manage your customer delivery based on
just data, then, this is the tool.”
Vilas Patil, AVP and Strategic Business Unit Head, Cognizant.
Photo: Vincent FENG
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Photo: Vincent FENG, Cognizant Life Science Practice

"There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of
the world: and that is an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo
87
Photo: Vincent FENG, Cognizant Life Science Practice

REWIRE - KIOSC AVM
Article 12
KIOSC - AVM
Service Assurance
Framework
KIOSC adds service assurance to application value
management engagements
KIOSC is an application value management (AVM)
service assurance framework that is applicable to all
AVM engagements across Cognizant. Its key focus
areas include knowledge management, integrated
service management, operation through infrastructure,
scope management and change management.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants."
- Isaac Newton
88

REWIRE - KIOSC AVM
Challenges of AVM projects include:
SLA slippages
Non-compliance
Communication gap between IT and business
Lack of coordination with third parties and partners
Ineffective knowledge management
Challenges in Application Value Management
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REWIRE - KIOSC AVM
Proactive identification of potential failure points through early
warning signals to provide reliable and consistent service
delivery.
KIOSC is an AVM service assurance framework that focuses on:
Knowledge management through knowledge acquisition and training.
Benchmarking with “best-in-class” service delivery through
comprehensive coverage of five vital areas of AVM.
Integrated service management through resource planning, proper
communication, service level management and continuous service
improvement.
Workshop-driven certification model for building an AVM
practitioners community and institutionalizing it across business
units.
Operations through infrastructure readiness and preventive maintenance
effectiveness.
Scope management through scope definition and understanding, as well as
scope execution.
Change management in coding, testing and reviewing.

REWIRE - KIOSC AVM
involved in developing such a framework. To start with, they
summarized areas where service delivery gaps could exist:
Cognizant’s delivery director for a large life sciences vertical answered
an insistent call on his mobile phone. It was his boss, the business unit
head of life science. He shared an interesting challenge from a
customer that he had just met.
While the client was satisfied with the deliverables of the latest project,
the BU head explained, there was a concern that not all of the client’s
portfolios were speaking the same language. Everyone’s scorecard
was green, but since each portfolio had its own way of doing things, it
was hard to compare the value-adds being delivered across projects.
The client engagement included improving operations, business
processes, business continuity, enterprise efficiency and risk/security,
as well as reducing enterprise costs. The client’s CXOs felt that since
Cognizant was known for its innovation and proactive best practices,
maybe it could establish a rigorous service assurance framework
across all of these areas.
The application portfolio
Documentation and knowledge
Processes and tools
People
Then, they analyzed all the aspects that could lead to service failure:
People-dependent activities lacking rigorous processes
Delivery team’s confidence level in responding to issues
Delivery team’s knowledge of customer processes
SLA adherence
Penalty clauses for SLA slippage
Proper infrastructure support
Such a systematic approach would be a great opportunity, the
business unit head reasoned, since it would be applicable to all large
AVM projects and could even be a new service offering. The framework
should enable a proactive response to alerts and incorporate best
practices that existed within Cognizant’s individual practice areas.
The delivery director was inspired but also a bit overwhelmed. He
called his team together to discuss the multitude of challenges
Using the Toyota Model of innovation, the team then proceeded to
seek more understanding of the situation by sending out surveys,
interviewing stakeholders and observing team members working in
their development centers. The team sought input from project
managers, project leads, business analysts and users community.
There was a multitude of meetings, full of food and, of course, Excel
spreadsheets, and presentations.
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The team summarized the most important findings:
Business users reported reliance on experts to resolve data
issues. This led to the need for a robust knowledge management
foundation for knowledge assets and training.
Managers at the client end reported slipping deadlines, resulting in
business escalations. This signaled a need for integrated service
management to ensure proactive planning and periodic reviews.
Global incident managers said there were too many high-severity
L1 tickets with no structured root cause analysis. This led to the
formation of operational blocks, which focus on operational
execution through proactive prevention and coordination with the
customer ecosystem.
innovation should provide a holistic view and a proactive approach and
also that it should be technology/portfolio/business unit agnostic and
allow every portfolio team to execute excellence every day.
“KIOSC is very detailed and ensures that all the aspects of
the managed services model have been covered.“
– AVM Service Engagement Manager
New members of the team felt there was a lack of structured and
formal knowledge transfer processes and, as a result, risked
missing SLAs. This led to a need for scope management to
address gaps in scope and ensure service delivery.
Application managers said they were unhappy with the quality of
the updates provided by the support team. This led to the
formation of change management, which ensures improved
schedule, quality and cost adherence.
These insights gave the team a fair idea of the causes of service
failures, as well as the must-haves vs. good-to-haves. They had
identified the core components of a service delivery framework that
would highly satisfy customers. It was clear that the service assurance
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REWIRE - KIOSC AVM
When the team grouped the activities into five building blocks –
knowledge management, integrated service management,
operations blocks, scope management and change management --
the name of the new framework emerged: KIOSC.
The team worked out the final details, implemented the framework
as a pilot and presented the outcomes to the leadership team. With
a few tweaks and recommendations, they were ready to present the
findings to the client’s CIO. The delivery director explained to the
CIO that KIOSC works as an assessment tool for project health, and
he highlighted how best practices from various flagship accounts
were incorporated into the KIOSC framework. KIOSC, he said,
would help build a strong foundation for AVM projects, which would
improve confidence in the uniformity and consistency of Cognizant’s
service delivery and minimize the risk of service failures.
enterprise social media like blogs and portals and using every tool
under the umbrella of change management.
In the end, everyone including the client CIO was thrilled. The KIOSC
service assurance framework, he said, had brought structure to their
large engagement.
The next few months were spent implementing the framework,
training people to use it, conducting workshops, leveraging
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"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
-- Mark Twain
94
Photo: Peri, Amaranth - Cognizant Banking & Financial Services

REWIRE - DESCRIPTIVE RFT
Article 13
Descriptive RFT
Simplify your testing model by leveraging manual testers
instead of specialists with scripting expertise.
Test automation plug-in for IBM Rational Functional Tester
enables functional test engineers to develop scripts
without scripting expertise.
“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by
going off the main road, by trying the untried.”
- Frank Tyger
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REWIRE - DESCRIPTIVE RFT
Photo: Shroff, Sarvesh - Cognizant Business Consulting
A typical Rational Functional Testing effort poses the following
challenges:
A plug-in tool for IBM Rational Function Tester
Object-oriented automated testing tool
Requires extensive scripting knowledge
Support for many languages and application models
Needs a lot of code to create a functional test
Takes considerable effort and time to make changes and fixes
Script recording and playback validates builds of the
application under test
Poses memory issues like Spy Heap and Java Heap:
“Creative thinking is not a talent; it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which
improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits.”
- Edward de Bono
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REWIRE - DESCRIPTIVE RFT
Eliminates the need to maintain a separate object repository and test object maps.
Enables a non-functional tester to create test cases effortlessly.
Saves time and eliminates memory issues.
Enables time savings of 50% for Web-based test automation.
Winner of the Annual Rational Software RSC U-Innovate 2010 Award from IBM.
Top five in Cognizant Innovation Awards 2011.
Nominated for the NASSCOM Innovation 2012 Awards.
:

REWIRE - DESCRIPTIVE RFT
manager also knew that he could not afford to have a large automation
team for the regression testing.
Cognizant’s test delivery manager for one of the world’s leading global
automotive manufacturers was worried as he listened to his client
during their monthly call. “We are moving from a quarterly release to a
monthly release schedule very soon,” said the client executive.
Cognizant’s testing team had taken over testing for the dealer
application recently, and had inherited manual test cases and a set of
automated test scripts for regression testing.
His worry was understandable. The IBM Rational Functional Tester
(RFT) automation test scripts were being run for every release but failed
frequently due to an ineffective framework, and the presence of hardcoded
test data values. These scripts could not be trusted to run
unattended, and investigating/fixing the automation script took
considerable time. Maintenance was even more time-consuming when
test scenarios changed. Therefore, the testing effort took close to three
weeks for every release. As management wanted the release to go
through quickly, there was always a tug-of-war between the testing
and delivery teams. They sometimes resorted to shortened testing
cycles even though they knew it was risky.
Despite these concerns, everyone agreed that moving to a monthly
release cycle was the right thing to do. Many of the changes to the
dealer application were small but critical for the business, and the
dealers could not wait three months for these feature changes, as it
could mean lost business in an economy that was none too
encouraging. Considering the budget constraints, the test delivery
That’s when he turned to Cognizant’s Automation Center of Excellence
(ACoE). This center of excellence has been set up to solve just such
problems innovatively. The CoE has extensive knowledge and
expertise on different tools, both commercial and open source.
The test delivery manager described the challenge to a test automation
professional at the CoE, explaining his budget restrictions and that he
needed to automate test cases for both new and used dealer
applications.
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The CoE’s test automation experts gave this challenge some thought.
While IBM RFT was a flexible tool compared with QTP, testers still had
to know Java in order to carry out test automation. Over the next week,
the CoE came back with their idea: Instead of automating the test
cases, they suggested creating a visual interface around IBM RFT that
would allow manual testers to automate test cases by themselves. In
other words, to repeat an old saying, give a man a fish and you feed
him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
The end result was the Descriptive RFT (Rational Functional Tester)
utility, an add-on to IBM RFT that allows non-technical users to learn
quickly, and automate test cases intuitively without having extensive
knowledge of Java.
When the client’s manual testing team used this utility, they completed
their testing in 50% of the time they would have normally taken, with
execution time for test scripts dropping by 63% and maintenance
effort decreasing by at least 33%. Further, it took the testing team just
one week to finish regression testing.
The test delivery manager was pleased with the results – he could now
support his client’s move to monthly release cycles without having to
resort to risk-based testing. Thanks to Cognizant’s Descriptive RFT
tool, the dealers would have critical monthly updates on-time to
support their business.
Descriptive RFT is an excellent example of how a challenging client
demand, coupled with out-of-the-box thinking and employee
empowerment, can result in a simple, innovative solution for a critical
business need.
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"The man with a new idea is a crank -- until the idea
succeeds."
- Mark Twain
100
Photo: G,Kumudha - Cognizant Innovation Group

20
12
Innovation
Journal
Reinvent
Your Workforce
The millennial mindset with its open, flexible and
inclusive way of working can be your business edge
—if you provide the tools that improve knowledge
sharing and productivity. The best way to prepare for
tomorrow is to empower people to shape it today.
Cognizant helps identify and reinvent key areas of
operations to increase everything from output to
innovation. The following innovations enable
reinvention of your workforce.
1. Concierge Services
2. Topics Curator
3. Bottom-up approach to seeding innovation
4. Build 24x2
5. Into the Novel Nation
6. The Real Deal

REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
Article 14
Concierge Services
Reinvent the user engagement, experience and
expectations of your employees.
A concierge is someone who takes care of customer
needs comprehensively. OneCognizant Concierge
Services encompasses five core applications that our
associates (employees) use the most. The underlying
principles enabled by this platform include associate
experience, social design, gamification and optimal
performance of critical functions.
"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
- Frank Capra
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Services enabled by One Cognizant include the following:
Meeting Concierge
Capital Asset Requisition Concierge
End-to-end process automation through a built-in workflow system.
Intelligent system that thinks on behalf of the user.
Significant improvement in productivity gains.
Interface with Tandberg TM video conferencing system.
Easy tracking and faster processing for end users.
Centralized tracking and managing of all meeting related
assets by moving away from e-mail-based transactions.
Intelligent features such as User-shout 1 , Intelligent tooltip 2.
Enables a global process for booking video and non-video
meeting rooms.
Productivity improvement features like E-Approval, 3 NPOI, 4 contextsensitive
help.
Requires no new user interfaces/training to book meetings.
Improved cost management and consolidated view of procurement for
better vendor deals.
Integrates data from existing systems of record to create true
systems of engagement.
Transparent view across departments.
Footnotes
1
User Shout provides an in built link in all applica6ons to enable launch of GSD (Global Service Desk) and raise a 6cket with minimum effort.
2
Intelligent Tool6p endows you with related informa6on or clarity when you hover the mouse over a tab or word.
3
E-­‐Approval facilitates approval of any transac6on by e-­‐mail (MS Outlook) without the approver having to log into an separate applica6on to authorize.
4
NPOI is a MicrosoO.NETversion of an open source component that allows expor6ng the asset request data to excel. The advantage is the non-­‐ requirement of MS Office instal-­la6on
on the applica6on server, leading to beTer performance and faster genera6on of the Excel output. Added benefits are great flexibility while formaWng the sheets dynami-­cally
with charts, pivots and op6ons to create Excel templates.
REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
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REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
On boarding Concierge
CRM Concierge
Intelligent system that guides new-hires on on-boarding process.
Mobile system that works anywhere, anytime.
Digital signing of forms, reducing paperwork from Day 1.
Eliminates need for network connection.
With the reduction in the on-boarding process, it makes new hires
productive and happy from Day 1.
Intuitive design that reduces or eliminates user training.
Social design-enabled features, such as a buddy program, help
desk support, etc.
Global portal that modifies the process based on new hire’s
location.
Enables collaboration on deals while on the move.
Social design features, such as expense approvals, business
intelligence, etc.
Seamless synchronization for improved CRM data quality.
Process tour through which new hire is guided through the
progress and next steps.
Consolidated view of pipeline and managed accounts.
True systems of engagement that takes candidate data and
passes it to multiple system of record.
True systems of engagement that eases complex navigation of the
ERP system.

REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
Expense Concierge
Seamless expense report submissions.
Ease of use, leading to higher employee adoption.
Reduced risk exposure owing to dependence on third-party
solution.
Alignment with organizational environmental commitments.
Reduced IT cost of ownership.
Leverages storage infrastructure.
Native document upload with Cognizant PeopleSoft environment.
Mark Coleman, an account manager at a large vertical in
Cognizant, had just received good news from his client partner.
He was elated that the client had agreed to sign a multi-milliondollar
contract with Cognizant that required an immediate ramp up
of 500 resources.
It was his first major account win after joining Cognizant. But just
as he was basking in the glory of this deal, he began anticipating
his new to-do list of the next steps. Based on his experience at
his previous employer, he thought this could be a turbulent
transition, full of mishaps and battles with logistics arrangements,
on-boarding, setting up client calls and procuring hardware.
As Mark was driving back to the office, he wondered how his team
would manage this. Understandably, there could be many lateral
hires and he imagined that on-boarding them could be a
strenuous affair, with multiple form-filling exercises, photocopying
and submitting of documents, getting temporary access cards,
applying for permanent identification and access cards,
completing bank account forms and so on. He knew all these
lengthy processes could delay in kick-starting the project.
Another scene flashed before him, as he remembered his former
employer’s operations director complaining about the elaborate
process of expense claims. He remembered the rigmarole of
filling out expense forms and submitting them in the ERP
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REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
application. The payment receipts needed to be photocopied and
faxed manually to a central payment processing department. When he
did not get an e-mail confirmation that the fax receipts were received,
he had to repeat the faxing procedure all over again. Much to his
disdain, credit card payments were well past the due date by the time
the expense claim was reimbursed.
As Mark waited for the traffic light to change from red to green, he
contemplated the task of getting the sign-offs for the current contract.
Based on his experience with the previous employer, he figured he
would need to research past sales deals signed with the client, review
past contract values and seek appropriate approvals. The senior folks
performing contract reviews were always on the move, making it
difficult when they had limited connectivity.
He understood more than anyone how frustrating it was to be stranded
with no data or status availability just before you meet an important
client to finalize next steps. “It’s going to be a bumpy road ahead,”
Mark thought.
He thought knowledge transition and client calls could be another
issue, as they required setting up meeting rooms and videoconference
capabilities. Request forms with names of locations and facilities would
need to be filled out every time he wanted to schedule a video call, and
with his team spread across geographies and the client on the other
• One Cognizant is a bouquet of technology services that transforms the way systems-of-engagement work.
• Hosts specialized applications, such as Meeting Concierge, Capital Appropriation Request Concierge, Onboarding Concierge, CRM Concierge
and Expense Concierge.
• Built on the principles of user experience, social design, gamification and sub-500-millisecond performance.
• Social engineering principles eliminate the need for training, marketing and other change management strategies for adoption.
• Top-5 winner of prestigious NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2012.
• 500% productivity gain over previous systems for Cognizant associates.
• Productivity gains of 21,000 person hours.
• Cumulative cost savings of USD $2.9 million.
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REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
side of the world, finding out everyone’s availability would be an
excruciating process.
And then there was the painstaking chore of raising requests for
laptops and other hardware/software required for the project,
especially in a secluded offshore development center with firewall
restrictions. There would be delays in request status, data on the cost
for all hardware/software requested and information on discount details
with vendors and final payments. Cumbersome and not easy at all, he
thought, as he came to a halt in the parking lot. Mark wished he had a
magic wand to address all these challenges.
With all these thoughts running through his mind, he advised his
offshore project director to schedule a meeting with key stakeholders
who could make this happen without a hitch.
Just a few days later, Mark had a video call with stakeholders from
recruitment, administration, network/systems and procurement. He
communicated the importance and urgency of getting things right the
first time to ensure seamless ramping up of the new business. He
listed the elaborate tasks that lay ahead and highlighted the probable
issues one-by-one. He paused and took a breath, anticipating a
barrage of responses stating limitations, constraints and probable
delays.
On the contrary, the entire team was thoroughly excited at the prospect
of setting up a 500-strong workforce, adding to the existing 140,000
associates at Cognizant. A member of the Talent Acquisition Group
enlightened him that the era of manually filling out forms was a thing of
the past. A new-age on-boarding process had emerged, and systems
were already in place. Next, members of the administrative, network
and procurement teams also brushed aside all of his concerns.
When Mark wondered aloud how these challenging tasks seemed so
easy, the team gave due credit to OneCognizant Concierge Services, a
technology platform from Cognizant’s Application Services team. A
concierge is someone who takes care of customer needs
comprehensively. Likewise, Concierge Services delivers a collection of
technology innovations, built on the OneCognizant platform, with its
underlying key principles of employee experience, social design,
gamification and performance of critical functions in under 500-
milliseconds.
The key aspects of the OneCognizant Concierge Services include:
• On-boarding of new Cognizant associates. On-boarding re-defines
employee assimilation into Cognizant using digitized forms, facilitating
online entry and auto-filling most values that are required in multiple
applications. Although on-boarding is a complex business process
that involves integration of multiple departments and innumerable
underlying systems, it is now as simple as child’s play. The platform
ensures new hires are informed on due dates and expected timelines
to complete on-boarding activities. It also enables new employees to
get support by asking questions in relevant forums, thereby seamlessly
transitioning pre-hires into new hires.
• Meeting Concierge simplifies booking of videoconference rooms
across the globe, keeping in mind participants’ location and availability,
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REINVENT - CONCIERGE SERVICES
as well as the venue’s availability. If a meeting room is unavailable,
Meeting Concierge suggests another room in a nearby facility and
helps with the best route and distance to get there.
• The Capital Asset Requisition Application simplifies IT and non-IT
asset requests. Given that Cognizant has 140,000-plus employees,
and each one has a different set of hardware/software requirements,
this application tracks requests and status online in a single
repository and generates reports. CAR has become a central point
for tracking and monitoring capitalized asset requests for network
systems and services and procurement teams.
• The EASy Upload application simplifies the complex process of
photocopying and faxing expense reports and receipts. With many
employees now owning a smartphone with a camera, EASy Upload
enables image uploads, thereby making the entire process simple
and millennial-friendly.
• The CRM on Blackberry application enables account managers and
client partners to access their CRM accounts and deal information
from just about anywhere. They can view and add or update critical
deal information, such as estimated close date, contract value, firstyear
value and sales stages, all in real-time.
After hearing all this, Mark was once again excited about his first
client deal. Further, he could only imagine the benefits it would have
for customers, as well, as they too could enjoy the benefit of starting
a project earlier.
“The Capital Asset Requisition Application enhances the procurement
team’s function in a more effective way to manage our day-to-day operations.
In fact, this new process has improved our team’s productive time
by avoiding the verification of the manual mail process and bringing in
more control and transparency in the entire procurement value chain.”
Biswajit Gosh, Director, Procurement, Cognizant
“I did my first booking using the app. Needless to say, it was much easier
and hassle-free. The option to look for other available meeting rooms is
cool in case meeting rooms aren’t available in the same location. It knows
that I have a Tandberg and allocates my personal Tandberg to me. It will
definitely be a big productivity boost.”
Rajesh Ramachandran Balaji, VP, Manufacturing & Logistics,
Cognizant
“I am happy to be able to contribute to our Go Green initiative by not printing
so many pages for expense reports. I submitted an expense report last
week that took less than 15 minutes, including the time for scanning.
Also, the approval process will speed up if we upload the documents in
.Tif format as one document/file instead of having multiple files.”
Mulabagal Shamarao, Srikanth – IT Infrastructure Services, Cognizant
“Wanted to take this opportunity to thank your team for delivering the 1C
onboarding application to us. We have been using the tool and are very
happy with the application and functional features. Thanks once again.”
Satish Jeyaraman – India Recruitment Head, Cognizant
108

"Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it
takes a live one to swim upstream."
- W.C. Fields Photo: M, Sandy - IT Infrastructure Services
109

REINVENT - TOPICS CURATOR
Article 14
Topics Curator
A curation tool that maximizes information exploration
and assimilation
A platform that delivers customized content to
information consumers within the enterprise, curated
from internal and external sources
"To stimulate creativity one must develop childlike inclination
for play and the childlike desire for recognition."
- Albert Einstein
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REINVENT - TOPICS CURATOR
Enable every knowledge worker within the enterprise to obtain information relevant to their role, aspirations and interests.
Aggregate content from various enterprise content sources such as enterprise portals, internal video-sharing sites, e-libraries,
e-learning portals, e-books, RSS feeds, EBSCO and various Internet news sites and newsletters.
Use text mining to extract content from internal and external sources and categorize into various topics.
Break down the minded words into bags of words called features and used attribute selector to pick the features for the model.
Use a regression-based analysis tool to rank the content, based on timeliness, and apply user preferences to deliver the most
relevant content to the knowledge worker.
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REINVENT - TOPICS CURATOR
Helps associates learn about new trends in their interest areas and manage information overload.
Streamlines the search process.
Allows readers to share content and see what their peers are reading.
Balances content personalization and generalization.
Topics Curator has more than 19,000 registered users since its launch in January 2012.
Achieved 86% accuracy with zero over fitting errors which tends to exaggerate minor noise in the data.

REINVENT - TOPICS CURATOR
Topic curation process
We live in a time of information overload, and this is particularly true in
knowledge industries such as IT services. Added to this the
astronomical amount of information on the Internet, and the problem of
seeking, retrieving and assimilating information at the right time
becomes a major challenge.
What is needed is “curation,” a term derived from Latin roots that
means “to care for.” A curator takes the role of the subject matter
expert, providing context and organization to the delivered information.
As social media expert Linda Ziskind says, "Wouldn't it be cool if
someone aggregated the information you needed, curated it into
categories and handed you brief summaries?" ¹
Topics Curator is a specialized tool that was developed through the
collaborative effort of Concept Lab, our internal technology research
and incubation center, and Cognizant Application Services (CAS), our
internal IT department. It is a system that sifts through all available
High-level architecture of Topic Curator
enterprise content, like videos from an internal video-sharing site,
subscription-based content sources like EBSCO, internal newsletters,
departmental and executive e-mails, e-learning content, e-books and
RSS feeds of all kinds.
The system takes care of mining, categorizing, organizing and
summarizing information before delivering the best information to the
knowledge worker. Simply put, it gives consumers exactly what they
need to be updated and informed.
While enterprise systems often tag content for meaningful search and
retrieval, it has been a distant dream to get the right information. To
obtain meaningful information, searches need to be capable of both
breadth and depth. It is about finding specific content and not just
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REINVENT - TOPICS CURATOR
sifting through tags and titles. As author and NYU Professor Clay
Shirky says, “Curation comes in handy when search stops working.” ²
So how does Topics Curator solve a problem? It enables content to be
available to users as per their configured preferences and selected
topics of interest, making it a more personalized search experience.
For example, let’s say you need to take an e-learning course. Rather
than manually sifting through all the e-learning offerings, you can select
the required topic according to your learning plan and interests.
Algorithmic view of curation process
Behind the scenes, the curator tool’s algorithm helps
to:
Identify relevant enterprise content through different filters, which
help to discover high-quality and highly relevant content that
otherwise would have been lost in information overload.
Understand the reading habits of peers, friends and colleagues.
Such knowledge sharing happens as users get to see what their
communities relate to and are interested in.
Provide highly relevant content that has been curated by people
with expertise.
Content is scanned from configured sources, and extracted
information is moved to a relational database, where the document
categorization process begins. This process encompasses two stages:
Preprocessing: String attributes of the content are converted into a
set of attributes representing word occurrence information from the
text contained in the strings. Text is converted to Term Frequency
Inverse Document Frequency (tf.idf) and normalized to document
length. N-gram tokenizer and POS tagging are applied, and a vector is
formed.
Feature selection: The AttributeSelectedClassifier Algorithm is used
for running an arbitrary classifier on data that has been reduced
through attribute selection. Dimensionality of training and test data are
reduced by attribute selection before being passed on to a classifier.
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This stage uses an attribute evaluator, a search method and a base
classifier.
A key differentiator of Topics Curator is “Feedback Loop.” Typically in a
curation algorithm, a set of documents are categorized and ranked,
based on user preference. However, users do not always know what
they want, so an algorithm is needed which can learn preferences over
time. In Topics Curator, a ranking feature enables users to rate and
rank the content, thereby improving the ranking algorithm.
As the technologies and application of knowledge improve, curation
will surely change the way we get information. In the near future, it
may be possible for enterprise knowledge workers to select a
preference as complex as “2012 trends in the North American banking
industry,” and thanks to advancements in text mining and curation,
they will get exactly the information they want.
Footnotes
¹ Linda Ziskind, “Curation is the New Creation,” blog post, April 23,
2011, http://lindaziskind.com/curation-is-the-new-creation.
² Steven Rosenbaum, “Why Content Curation is Here it Stay,” Fast
Company blog, May 10, 2010, http://www.fastcompany.com/1643280/
why-content-curation-is-here-to-stay.
³ “Curation is Boring,” stdout.be blog, July 16, 2010, http://stdout.be/
2010/07/16/trends-are-boring/.
115

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people
together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks
and work, but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
116
Photo: Kumar, Jyothish-
IT Infrastructure Management

REINVENT - SEEDING INNOVATION
Article 16
Bottom-Up Approach
to Seeding
Innovation
“Managed Innovation” Ignites a Culture of Idea-Sharing
for a Healthcare Giant
“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign
you're not doing anything very innovative.”
- Woody Allen
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REINVENT - SEEDING INNOVATION
Cognizant’s Innovation Group helped set up a “managed innovation”
process for a healthcare giant that sparked a culture of innovation for
the organization. We used a three-pronged approach:
A strategy workshop geared toward innovation and idea
“champions.” The innovation champions led innovation initiatives for
the different lines of business and functional units, while the idea
champions drove the initiatives at the ground level.
A set of “igniter” workshops for specific enthusiasts. These people
became innovation evangelists, who propagated the innovation
culture inside the organization, while the wave effect carried the
initiative forward.
An Innovation Leadership Summit. This included a set of workshops
for setting the leadership vision and strategies for the future.
In our work with a global healthcare payer, a senior executive who heads an
IT team of over 500 people posed a fascinating question: “How can I
encourage my team to share their thoughts, ideas and concerns with me?
They are all smart - technically, socially and business knowledge-wise - so
I’m sure they’ve got great ideas. But they are so busy with their day-to-day
work that no one ever raises their head to speak to me about opportunities or
issues they see. I need a way to hear their ideas and bring them to fruition.” It
was clear to us that he was looking for a context-based approach to
innovation, leveraging the wisdom of crowd rather than waiting for innovation
to “just happen.”
This company is a Fortune 100 corporation that ranks in the Top 5 of the
global healthcare industry, with revenues of $45 billion. The executive heads
an IT team of over 500 people who support the company’s global business. It
was clear to us that he was looking for a context-based approach to
innovation, leveraging the wisdom of the crowd rather than waiting for
innovation to “just happen.”
While this question was unexpected, it reflected a common concern of
corporate leaders in organizations throughout the world across all industries.
In today’s dynamic and competitive business environment, leaders need to
leverage the innate capabilities of their large and diverse teams to generate
ideas and then funnel these ideas into realities that lead to corporate success,
whether in the form of continuous improvement, new products, solutions and
services, or a radically improved customer experience.
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Innovation, in today’s socially networked world, is no longer the
preserve of the few; companies are increasingly interested in creating a
participative and collaborative environment to generate ideas, with the
hope of achieving not just a return on investment but also a “return on
imagination.” Such goals are particularly relevant for technology teams,
which are at the forefront of delivering on a global scale, meeting
compliance requirements and speeding time to market for the
business.
In order to foster innovation, however, companies need an approach
that liberates employees’ imaginations in a structured way, something
we call “managed innovation.” The underlying philosophy is to employ
well-researched methods to identify and prioritize transformational
opportunities, within a cost-effective, risk-mitigated framework. This
makes it easier for business to embrace and execute the innovations.
We had a series of follow-up discussions with this executive’s team to
see how our experience in managing innovation could be brought to
bear. We decided to have a series of workshops facilitated by the
Cognizant Innovation Group, aimed at introducing them to Cognizant’s
Managed Innovation Framework. We custom designed sessions for
team members to identify, rate and rank the top 10 innovation
opportunities, and we opened these specific challenges to diverse
team members, seeking their ideas through a set of collaborative
workshops. The sessions included:
Igniter: This session was geared toward encouraging the team to
believe they have ideas worthy of sharing and building their creative
confidence. Sessions included creative games to break down
inhibitions and guidance on how to apply that creativity in an
organizational context. These sessions reinforced three points:
“The series of workshops you conducted last week got very
positive feedback from the participants. They came out with great
energy, enthusiasm and passion to adopt Cognizant’s Framework
for us. I also listened to their idea proposals, generated using the
tools and methodologies you taught them, for some of our key
problem statements. The outcomes are very impressive.
During the full-day Leadership Summit, 70-plus of my leadership
team and I learned “managed innovation” by applying hands-on
techniques to some of our key “how might we?” questions, as you
put it. We closed the day with important idea proposals to pursue.
I am focused on making this a sustainable movement; I look
forward to working with the Cognizant leadership team to
collaborate with us in sharing their experience and creating an
innovation culture.”
Innovation Leader of a Healthcare Payer
All of us are creative, to varying levels.
Thinking tools (such as brain-writing) help improve ideagenerating
efficiency.
By prioritizing and selecting contexts (what matters most), ideas
can become more effective.
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Team members summarized their learning in these sessions as,
“Innovation is a journey, not an event. We need to nurture an
environment for teams to embark with confidence and enjoy this
journey.”
Thinking inside the box: Leaders have a responsibility for challenging
their teams with the right problems for generating ideas. These
challenges can be aimed at continuous improvement or creating new
products, solutions, services or a radically better customer experience.
These sessions were designed to identify, rate and rank top 10
innovation opportunities. Specific challenges were opened up to team
members, inviting their viewpoints and ideas.
Innovation, in this networked world, is no longer the preserve of the
few; we emphasized the need for leaders to leverage the innate
capabilities of their teams and draw upon their collective creative
confidence to solve challenges.
Horizons: The executive manager and his direct reports reviewed the
top 10 list and divided it into two parts:
The Horizon 1 list aligned with operational priorities that impact
efficiency and effectiveness.
The Horizon 2 list targeted new action items that the team needed
to embark on and experiment with. Team members came up with
a wide variety of ideas – some radical and others seeking to
fundamentally alter what they had been doing all along.
The executive manager and his peer leaders were excited to see the
passion of their team members in accepting these challenges and
creating concrete, actionable idea proposals. When asked how he
could motivate and reward the team to continue with the managed
innovation initiative, all the team asked for was, simply, 15 minutes of
face time with the executive to pitch their top emerging ideas.
The underlying philosophy for these workshops included:
Well-researched methods to identify and prioritize transformational
opportunities.
A cost-effective, risk-mitigated framework to execute ideas,
making it easier for the business to embrace innovation.
Do all this in an effective, engaging and entertaining way that
liberates the mind and appeals to the heart.
Following the workshops, a large number of useful ideas surfaced,
along with a few powerful ones that gathered strength and were
shaped into a shared vision in short period of time. These ideas were
pitched to the executive leadership, seeking funding and a green signal
for implementation. Ultimately, a managed innovation initiative,
branded as “No Boundaries,” was launched organization-wide.
By asking a simple question, this healthcare leader generated some
powerful ideas that were shaped into a shared vision for new avenues
of opportunity. It took courage to experiment in this way, as well as the
senior executive’s own willingness to invest significant time into the
initiative.
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That never stopped there; their leadership team had already envisioned a
long term initiative called No Boundaries which focused on making
innovation as part of their work culture and a few learning’s from the
managed innovation framework are being incorporated as part of it.
This is not the beginning or the end, but a stepping stone in their innovation
journey...
Recommended top-10 action points
Set innovation expectation and priorities
Generate ideas with context centric approach
Leverage the wisdom of the crowd
Nurture innovation culture
Celebrate small success and small failures alike
Address the perceived barriers of innovation
Allocate resources to promising new ideas, and stage the
effort and investment
What gets measured gets done, so measure innovation
efforts
Design rewards and recognition for participation and
contribution, not merely for winning
Keep it enjoyable
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“Don't confuse the art of the possible with the art of
the profitable.”
- David Tansley
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Photo: Mohandas, Suja - Advanced Solution Practice, Business Integration

REINVENT - BUILD 24x2
Article 17
Build 24x2
Build 24X2 was conceptualized by the Cognizant
Innovation Group to provide a sand-box environment for
employees with brilliant ideas to come together to ideate,
define, and build their ideas into prototypes over a
weekend. This initiative was inspired by the popular
Hackathon and Start up weekends. The Build 24X2 was
fine-tuned to Cognizant’s business model of delivering IT
enabled services, encouraging innovation from the
bottom-up, and aligning to business, technology and
industry trends. Some of the concepts adopted by
participants at the end of the program are:
• Identifying the right problem to solve
• Ideating various solutions applying design thinking
• Choosing the right idea
• Defining Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Rapid prototyping
• Collaboration and team work
“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.”
- Milton Berle
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“The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as
everyone else and produces the best result.”
- Edward de Bono
Photo: Pangasa, Puente Cognizant Enterprise Practice
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Article 18
IN to the
NOVel nATION
An alphabetical interpretation of Innovation
This article is a winning entry from Cognizant’s internal
blog contest on innovation, written by Subramanian, an
associate working in our Information, Media and
Entertainment Practice. When asked what inspired this
individual to write this article, he answered, “Three years
of my IT experience and the innovative practices that we
follow in our projects.”
“The most effective way to cope with change is to help
create it.”
-I W Lynett
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the mounting real-time collaboration requirements of today’s millennial
workforce.
What is innovation?
Entire essays, books and treatises have been written on this topic; here
is a lighter take on the question.
I: Indigenous
Companies that promise to deliver innovation to their clients should
also live and breathe innovation, internally. An innovation that has
become part of the fabric of our processes is Cognizant 2.0, the
delivery excellence platform that acts as our global knowledge
repository, enterprise social platform, and project management
environment which has helped us stay ahead of the competition. With
140,000-plus associates and growing, the more prolific C2.0 becomes
and the more efficiency we show in our business, the better able we
are to deliver services that meet our clients’ top- and bottom-line
expectations. C2 (think Facebook meets Twitter) can be continuously
leveraged with more virtual and social computing features to address
Motivation is also very important for creativity and innovation,
because any new idea is raw and must be proved.
This may involve much iteration; again, as Edison said, “I
have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t
work.”
N: Natural
Creativity is as natural as breathing. Human beings are said to be born
creative, even though their thinking becomes more conditioned and
structured as they grow older. Think of a model getting ready to walk
on the ramp, and suddenly her heel breaks, so she fixes it with tape. If
there is problem, then solve it or work around it until it is solved -- that
is how the human mind works. Experience also plays a role; experts,
for instance, become so adept at certain tasks that they can become
highly innovative about how they ply their trade. An example is a cook,
who can make many dishes using the same ingredients.
N: Nurtured
Successful innovators focus on implementing their ideas, nurturing
them from the “hunch” stage to completion. Every great achievement
progresses in stages, from gliders to Boeing jets, from steam engines
to bullet trains, from analytical engines to supercomputers. In all these
cases, the ideas were cultivated, thought about deeply and reinvented
after failures. Thoughts flow when we rethink an existing idea or
problem, making it ground-breaking.
O: Optimistic
When it comes to innovation, it is not a sin to commit a mistake, only
to fail to learn from the mistake. As Albert Einstein said, “Anyone who
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has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Optimism is
at the heart of this effort, as it is the sense of hope for any
advancement in any society. The invention of penicillin and various
other vaccines for dreaded diseases like smallpox brought about a
drastic change in the lives of people. If not for the optimism shown by
the people who invented it during the toughest of times, these
diseases might still be prevalent.
V: Valuable
Innovations are always precious. The value they add to our daily lives
makes them the most prized ideas. We have information at our
fingertips, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee for establishing the World Wide
Web, one of the most powerful information tools of the modern world.
At Cognizant, we have exploited the advancements of the Internet and
allied technologies to implement next-generation solutions that help
our clients prepare for the future by bringing in flexible and global
solutions for their business challenges.
A: Articulate
Effective communication of ideas is essential for an idea to get further
refined. These conversations open up the space for rethinking and
improving the scope of research, which forms the basis for further
innovation. Articulating the essence of an innovation through a simple,
uncomplicated but powerful message is important for garnering
support for your innovation.
T: Tangible
Rather than being visionary, an innovation’s impact should be
measurable so that its value can be fully appreciated. One of the
greatest hypotheses in science, the theory of relativity, has
measurement as its basis. Similarly, the suggestions or thoughts that
we introduce should also be measurable, so we can translate their
actual value.
I: Influential
Any innovation should benefit a wide audience, making it influential.
Many of the items that we use in our day-to-day life were once ideas in
someone’s brain, the prime examples being the telephone and
television. An idea that changes people’s lives dramatically has a
higher influencing power. The more reusable the idea is, the more
people benefit from it. It need not be complex; it can even be a simple
innovation that addresses the most frustrating pain points.
O: Omnipresent
Great innovations are often sprung from companies that have fostered
a culture of innovation, in which people are constantly working in the
realm of change. For ideas to be powerful, we need thorough
knowledge and a good understanding of what we are working on (the
tools and processes) and what we are working toward (targets and
goals), and everyone working on it should share the same vision and
passion. Innovation is not a single note of a melody but a wellorchestrated
handshake between the visionaries, thinkers and doers.
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This can be achieved by cultivating knowledge-sharing to create
thought leadership among potential future talents.
N: Novelty
The term “innovation” is closely related to the word “novelty,” since the
ideas generated should introduce a sense of freshness. At Apple, the
late Steve Jobs made this happen with the creation of the first
handheld touch devices with single-button functionality. Apple was not
the first to make a touch-based handheld device, but it added novelty
through its iTunes business model and single-button operation.
In yet another instance, the smartphone caused a paradigm shift in the
way mobile communications (both interpersonal conversations and
commerce) ensued. Innovators preserved the unique features of a
telephone, while combining it with other personal and professional
features.
Type to enter text
By: Selvaraj, Surest - Banking & Financial Services
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“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and
thinking what nobody has thought.”
— Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
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Photo: Rajendran nair, Ramesh, IT Infrastructure Services

REINVENT - THE REAL DEAL
Article 19
The Real Deal:
Sukumar Rajagopal
on a CIO’s Pursuit of
Employee Delight
“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.”
- Walter Lippman
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3. Some applications were slow, especially when accessed from
locations far away from our data centers.
“Sometime in 2010, June to be precise, I became CIO of Cognizant
(Nasdaq:CTSH). Soon after starting on the new job, I checked with our
top management (CEO, President, Group Chief Executive) on the
primary goal of IT at Cognizant. They unanimously said, IT should
strive to produce “associate delight” (we call our employees
associates). On behalf of the team, I accepted this goal as a key
element of the IT charter – blame it on my newbie naïveté :)
When I checked with other CIOs on this, they were highly skeptical.
They said it is impossible for a corporate IT department within a
Fortune 500 firm to produce associate delight through software
applications. It seemed impossible indeed, but we were not deterred.
My team and I began our odds-against journey by discussing with
associates across the globe about the state of Cognizant’s IT systems
and identified five major problems:
1. Confusing navigation. There were just too many steps to reach the
target screen. Developed by different groups, each application had
its own multi-level menu structure. Lack of a common taxonomy
further complicated usability.
4. Each application had its own URL and required a separate login.
Sometimes, one application had many URLs. Bookmarking could
never keep up with this. Most importantly, new associates could
never easily figure out which application was available at which URL.
5. All applications were generating huge volumes of email alerts to
keep the workflow going. This resulted in tremendous e-mail overload.
Our timesheet application is a good example that illustrates the set of
problems we identified. Every fortnight, associates have to fill out their
timesheets.
In order to do that, they had to:
1. First log in to a URL that housed timesheet functionality.
2. Select a timesheet option from 25 alternatives listed on the landing
page.
3. Then, on the next page, click on the “Create Timesheet” button,
which is the only field on that screen.
2. Each screen had too many fields, which frustrated users. Users had
to go through several hours of training to use the key applications.
4. In the next page, use a calendar control to select the period end
date for the timesheet and then click “Add.”
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5. Then, navigate to the “Timesheet” screen, select the projects to
which they are allocated and then enter the time logged into the
fields for each day of the week.
6. Hit “Submit.”
Obviously we were in a pickle, big time. Around the same time, thought
leaders Malcolm Frank (EVP Strategy & Marketing, Cognizant) and
Geoffrey Moore (IT industry/innovation guru) were asking some
provocative questions regarding the Future of Work, and the systems
that power it.
It is easy to see why associates were frustrated. Unfortunately,
cumbersome usage like this was at one time common across almost
all applications used by our associates.
We were really intrigued when we heard Malcolm Frank and Geoffrey
Moore discuss the enterprise/consumer IT divide. They liked it to the
Sunday night vs. Monday morning experience.
The problems seemed insurmountable and really made us question
whether associate delight was something worth chasing. When we
analyzed usability challenges more deeply, a surprising pattern started
to emerge - obstacles like these were consistent across third-party onpremise
enterprise software and third-party SaaS-based enterprise
software, as well as home-grown applications.
We realized that the root cause is the fact that most IT systems were
“systems of record” - carry-overs from the era of paper forms. What
was originally a paper-based form became a software form with the
same set of fields. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but you get
my drift.
Our application rollout experience showed that change management
costs (training, e-learning, meetings, roadshows, etc.) far outweighed
development expense, due to the fact that we are an organization of
140,000 people. This seriously affected our ROI forecasts, which were
based on near 100% effective adoption of the software we rolled out.
It goes something like this … on a typical Sunday night, we use our
iPhones/iPads and interact with our friends via Facebook/Twitter etc. It
is a delightful experience. Malcolm and Geoff call these environments
“systems of engagement.” Then Monday morning arrives, and we
show up in the office and are subjected to applications like the
timesheet I described earlier. Adding to the misery is the landline
phone, a gadget clearly from the previous millennium (and alien to
most millennials who came of age with mobile phones).
We then asked ourselves this additional question – did any of us attend
a training program, seminar or e-learning program to use the iPhone,
iPad, Facebook, Twitter, etc? The answer, obviously, is NO. Why then,
we concluded, do users need training to use corporate IT applications?
We researched the systems of engagement concept further. Here are a
couple of useful papers on the topic:
1. Future of Work [PDF] by Malcolm Frank & Geoffrey Moore.
2. A Sea Change in Enterprise IT by Geoffrey Moore [PDF]
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Clearly, the systems of engagement concept as described by Malcolm
and Geoff revealed a ray of hope that it is indeed possible to achieve
associate delight. But it meant that we had to completely overhaul how
we developed and deployed corporate IT applications.
Before we did anything, we needed to prove the concept to ourselves.
That meant we needed to demonstrate that we could tinker with
existing systems of record without major new investments and make
them behave like systems of engagement.
Given that we already had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in
our systems of record over the last 18 years of existence, we couldn’t
really make the case to reengineer all production applications without
massive new IT investments. In today’s cost-conscious world, that
approach is a non-starter.
To dramatically reduce the scale of the investment needed for such a
project, we decided that we would build a systems of engagement
layer on top of our existing systems of record.
We decided to tackle the timesheet app for the proof of concept. The
task: Convert the entire timesheet scenario (a 6-step process as
outlined in my previous post) into a OneClick timesheet.
Our goal: When the user clicks on the link to launch the app, s/he
should be taken directly to the timesheet screen (Step #5 in the 6 step
process mentioned in the previous post). Moreover, the app should
copy over the associate’s assigned projects from the previous
timesheet.
Based on the additional research we did on systems of engagement,
we realized that we needed a new method to design software, which
we internally call Social Design. Social Design leverages the idea that
we all work “socially” today, thanks to the advent of Facebook, Twitter,
Linkedin, Cweets (internal Twitter). It goes further by weaving “social”
deeper into the design of the application as opposed to “social” being
a separate layer. We also adopted Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup” method as
a way to reduce the risk of rolling out an entirely new class of software
that had few precedents in the enterprise IT arena in which we operate.
“Lean Startup” was also a great fit for the extremely quick turn-around
we were looking for – 6 months, instead of the usual multi-million-dollar
IT program with a 3 year schedule.
Given that the timesheet software was part of a third-party ERP
package, this would not be easy. Our thinking: If a OneClick timesheet
could be accomplished, why didn’t the third-party developer design it
as such to begin with?
Several internal experts said it wasn’t doable. Oops. What do we do
now?
Producing a OneClick timesheet proved to be a tough challenge
because the foundational software was a third-party application. But
our team persisted. We brought in experts from various parts of
Cognizant and solved the problem.
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Now we had the germ of the idea proven. But where do we begin?
There were so many application systems on myriad technology
platforms. One of our teammates suggested that we do an
ethnographic (or anthropological) study to understand our users
better. That was a great idea. We pursued it.
We conducted this study by identifying the top 25 tasks that
associates perform using corporate IT applications. We decided that
the minimum viable product should be to OneClick-enable the top 25
tasks.
I am sure you see that all five constraints are “seemingly impossible.”
When we first mentioned the 500% productivity gain, the response
was eye-rolling skepticism. Though the OneClick timesheet proof-ofconcept
did improve productivity significantly, the team found it hard
to accept that a 500% gain was feasible or even attainable.
We needed some inspiration. We scoured the history of software
development, history being one of our favorite sources of inspiration.
We struck pay dirt with CDDB. Understanding CDDB’s brilliant solution
is key to understanding how to produce a 500%-plus productivity
gain, and it was a very simple idea. CDDB’s designers figured out:
Is this sufficient to produce associate delight? We went over the five
major problems, which we outlined in the first post, again and decided
that we needed to a few constraints to guide our designers. We came
up with five that would enable us to produce delightful designs:
1. 500 millisec response time for the applications.
1. A unique signature for a CD can be created by concatenating the
track number and track length of all the tracks on the CD.
2. When a CD is ripped for the first time, the ripper enters the title,
composer and singer information, which is stored in CDDB with the
CD’s unique signature.
2. 500% productivity gain from the previous way of performing tasks.
3. No change management effort – no mail blasts, no marketing
campaigns, no training/elearning, etc.
4. No e-mail alerts from the platform.
5. Apps should be rolled out in a few weeks instead of the typical
several months or years.
3. The next time someone else rips the same CD, CDDB furnishes the
title and composer info, which means the second and Nth ripper of
the same CD need not key in the information.
4. Combine this with the fact that the music industry is hits-driven, so
the CD collections of people have remarkable similarity.
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5. Since title and composer information is stored in the database after
the first instance is supplied, the productivity gain, for mp3 music
listeners, is incalculably high.
as 40-50 seconds. Due to this, we had to introduce an intermediate
screen called “Waiting for backend”. This became a big concern for
early adopters because it completely violated the 500 msec promise.
This design of CDDB, we believe, is the essence of social design. In
case you are not impressed by CDDB, consider the fact that it was
sold for $260MM to Sony in 2008.
CDDB inspired us sufficiently to build apps that delivered similarly
significant productivity gains.
Over the next few months, the team built out the MVP for
OneCognizant and we rolled it out to a few thousand select associates.
We were in stealth mode, another lean startup technique. Since there
was no launch mailer or any marketing communication, only those few
thousand associates knew of the existence of OneCognizant.
Feedback was slowly trickling in, and it was quite positive overall.
However, we hit a major roadblock that threatened our 500msec goal.
“Early adopters really liked the key features of the MVP – Web apps in
an app store, “Like” buttons, game mechanics, the Oneclick timesheet,
etc. Approval by e-mail for key transactions was a big hit with senior
management. But we had hit a big roadblock.
One of the core promises was the 500 msec response time. We were
able to approximate that target after a lot of struggle. However, when
the SoE (system of engagement) layer handed control to the back-end
SoR (system of record), a delay was introduced. This delay was as high
If we didn’t solve this problem, our core promise of a speedy
application was out the window.
Again, the team rose to the challenge. We engaged experts from our
Oracle Solutions Practice, Microsoft CoE (our CTO’s team),
Performance Engineering CoE (Testing Practice) and Data Architecture
CoE (Advanced Solutions Practice). We also engaged architects from
Microsoft. The cross-functional collaboration worked. We completely
eliminated the “Waiting for backend” screen by bringing the handoff
delay to a few msecs.
After much back and forth within the team, we launched the platform
to a global audience on April 30, 2011, just nine months after we
started the program. As per our self-imposed constraints, we didn’t
send any blast e-mails or any marketing communication.
We were all feverishly tracking the usage statistics with bated breath.
On Aug 10th, the 100th day after the global launch, we reached
100,000 unique users. That was a significant milestone in our journey
and confirmed our faith in the overall strategy.
So far, we have only covered the platform aspects and not the Web
apps. I want to highlight one app that is the exemplar for the 500%
productivity gain strategy. At Cognizant, we have been rolling out the
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Tandberg Telepresence system (now part of Cisco) over the last two
years. It has had a significant impact on how we collaborate as a
globally distributed organization. The popularity of the system
introduced a new problem for us – a typical Tandberg meeting is a
multi-site meeting cutting across sites distributed around the globe.
Video conference call organizers had to talk to the conference room
admin in the respective locations (only a few have Tandberg facility)
and then talk to the Tandberg admin and schedule a bridge for the call.
This whole process required numerous calls, e-mails and back/forth if
rooms were not available, making the process of booking a Tandberg
meeting a frustrating chore. Our pain point surveys showed that on an
average it took two to three hours of a person’s time to book a multisite
Tandberg meeting.
We decided to tackle this problem…
We started envisioning the Meeting Concierge app to streamline the
process of booking a multi-site Tandberg meeting. It would have been
quite straightforward to create a conventional app with scheduling
screens to solve the problem. But that wouldn’t meet the 500%
productivity gain constraint as well as the no change management
constraint.
The team brainstormed a breakthrough idea – the user who is
scheduling a meeting using Microsoft Outlook will continue to use the
same method with a small change. The meeting organizer will add
Meeting Concierge as an additional participant into the meeting. Once
this is done, the Meeting Concierge uses the associate’s current
location from the Global Seat Management system of record and finds
the nearest Tandberg room automatically from the conference room
inventory database. And by using the Tandberg APIs, it also schedules
a bridge for the duration of the meeting, automatically.
Wait, it gets better. Meeting Concierge also automatically updates all
participants’ Outlook calendars with the conference room details.
Boom. This whole process now takes a few minutes instead of the
previous few hours. Massive productivity gain and delight for users
was achieved.
As you can see, the Meeting Concierge is a great example of the social
design techniques we use to create new kinds of apps. With such
apps, the OneCognizant platform was gathering momentum rapidly. In
Feb. 2012, we hit 85% employee coverage on Oneclick tasks.
Accolades started coming in.
In March 2012, OneCognizant was recognized as a “Top 5 Innovations
of the Year” by the prestigious NASSCOM Innovation Awards program.
We were a tad disappointed that we didn’t make the final Top 2 list.
We requested Geoffrey Moore, the innovation guru who coined the
term “systems of engagement” to provide his impressions on
OneCognizant for the CIO 100 Awards nomination. He had this to say
about One Cognizant:
“What is impressive is how deeply an enterprise IT initiative has
embraced the design rules of user experience design and social
design. The ideas around systems of engagement have been
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circulating for some time, but few CIOs have been able to enact them,
most still being held back by the pull of the past."
We are very pleased to see that OneCognizant has been chosen as a
CIO 100 honoree.
like to place on record a special mention of the Microsoft Consulting
Services team that worked with us closely on this program. Last, but
not least, our gratitude goes to every member of my team who toiled
long and hard to make this happen.
On May 7, 2012, just 372 days since global availability, we hit the 5
million app launches milestone. We now have 251 Web apps in the app
store, releasing 10 new apps every month on an average. The “Like”
count on the platform has reached 50,000.
Acknowledgments:
Clearly, these kinds of stats tell us that the program is headed in the
right direction and has gathered significant momentum, though it is still
early days.
But given that we are an organization of 140,000-plus people, these
stats could be called vanity metrics (as Eric Ries calls them). We need
a more direct measure of the platform’s value creation benefit.
Fortunately, we were able to add a question on the OneCognizant
experience in our annual internal satisfaction survey. We were very
pleased when 75%-plus associates gave OneCognizant a rating of 4 or
better on a scale of 5.
Obviously, this sort of accomplishment doesn’t come without a
massive team effort. We are indebted to all our internal customers
(process owners) who collaborated with us closely to make this
happen, our executive team that is fully behind this program and our
partner teams to whom a lot of the work was insourced. I would also
Our sincere thanks to Vinnie Mirchandani for allowing us, with a
few minor edits, to re-purpose content that originally appeared on
his Deal Architect Blog:
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/
138

“..I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost
Photo: Kumar, Jyothish -
139
IT Infrastructure Management

20
12
Innovation
Journal
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a global leader in business
and technology services that helps clients bring the future of
work to life – today – in a business environment that is being
transformed by accelerating globalization, virtualization, and
the shift toward cloud technologies. Cognizant is a leading
provider of information technology, consulting, and business
process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the
world’s leading companies build stronger businesses.
Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S), Cognizant
combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology
innovation, deep industry and business process expertise,
and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the
future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and
approximately 140,500 employees as of March 2012,
Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500,
the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked
amongst the top-performing and fastest growing companies
of the world.

Market Position & Mission
We are a leading provider of information technology, consulting, IT infrastructure and
business process outsourcing services. Cognizant’s single-minded mission is to
dedicate our business process and technology innovation know-how, deep industry
expertise and worldwide resources to working together with clients to make their
business stronger.
Value Proposition
As a customer-centric, relationship-driven partner, we are redefining the way companies
experience and benefit from global services. Our unique delivery model is infused with a
distinct culture of high customer satisfaction. Cognizant delivers a trusted partnership,
cost reduction and business results.
Cultural Value Drivers
Open, Transparent, Driven, Empowered, Opportunity-filled, Flexible, and Collaborative.
For more information, visit us online at www.cognizant.com.
World Headquarters
500 Frank W. Burr Blvd.
Teaneck, NJ 07666, USA
Phone: +1 201 801 0233
Fax: +1 201 801 0243
Toll free: +1 888 937 3277
Email: inquiry@cognizant.com
Indian Operations Headquarters
#5/535, Old Mahabalipuram Road
Okkiyam Pettai, Thoraipakkam
Chennai 600 096, India
Phone: +91 (0) 44 4209 6000
Fax: +91 (0) 44 4209 6060
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Email: inquiryindia@cognizant.com
European Headquarters
Haymarket House
28-29 Haymarket
London SW1Y 4SP, UK
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7321 4888
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7321 4890
EmailL infouk@cognizant.com
China Operations Headquarters
Cognizant Technology Solutions (Shanghai) Co.,
Ltd.
8F, Building 5
Zhangjiang Semiconductor Industrial Park
3000 Long Dong Boulevard
Shanghai, Pudong, China 201 203
Phone: +86 21 6100 6466
Fax: +86 21 6100 6457
Email:inquirychina@cognizant.com
Global Delivery Centers
Budapest (Hungary); Buenos Aires (Argentina);
Canary Wharf (UK); Shanghai (China); Toronto
(Canada); Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore,
Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai,
New Delhi, Pune (India); Bentonville, Boston,
Bridgewater, Chicago, Phoenix (US)
Regional Offices
Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles,
Minneapolis, Norwalk, Phoenix, San Ramon,
Teaneck (US); Toronto (Canada); London (UK);
Frankfurt (Germany); Paris (France); Zurich,
Geneva (Switzerland); Amsterdam (The
Netherlands); Shanghai (China); Tokyo (Japan);
Melbourne (Australia); Singapore (Singapore);
Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Buenos Aires
(Argentina); Hong Kong (China); Manila
(Philippines).
Cognizant Innovation Journal 2012
Issue 4, Aug 2012
Copyright 2012, Cognizant
All rights reserved. No part of this document
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording and otherwise, without the
express written permission from Cognizant. The
information contained here is subject to change
without notice. All other trademarks mentioned
herein are the property of their respective
owners. This publication can be downloaded
through Apple iTunes.
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. The information contained
herein as been obtained from data collected
and received by the Cognizant Innovation
G ro u p d u r i n g t h e p ro c e s s o f s t u d y,
development and execution of the Cognizant
Innovation Journal. Readers should note that
Cognizant Innovation Group is not liable for
errors, omissions or inadequacies in the
information shared.
The use in this publication of trade names,
trademarks, service marks and similar terms,
even if they are not identified as such, is not to
be taken as an expression of opinion as to
whether or not they are subject to proprietary
rights. All other trademarks mentioned herein
are the property of the respective owners. Any
use of third-party marks, etc. is purely
informational and does not imply any
sponsorship, affiliation, or approval by the
owners of the marks.
The material in this publication is copyrighted.
No part of this can be reproduced or distributed
either on paper or transmitted in any form, by
electronic or mechanical means, to include
photocopying, or by any storage or retrieval
system without permission in writing from
Cognizant Innovation Group. Request for
permission to reproduce any part of the material
may be sent to Cognizant Innovation Group.
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Cast
The Actors
Intellipeak
Mustang.NET
Cognizant Intelligent
Infrastructure (CII)
Kaliamoorthi, Savanna
Meenakshi Sundaram, Sivakumar
Parameswaran, Hari
Subramanian, Kannan
Retail Practice
Balakandane, Singaravelu
Balaji,Mahesh
Global Technology Office
Diwanji, Vivek
Engg. & Manufacturing
Solution
Rao, Subrahmanya VRK
Global Technology Office -
Research and Development
CUPID Joshi, Ravindra
Palit, Amitabha
Oracle Solutions Practice
Trade Reconciliation Hub Badhe, Samir
Kar, Tanuja
Ramanan, Suresh
Sethi, Anubhav
Data Warehousing and
Business Intelligence &
Performance Management
ABBI J., Mohammed Anees
Krishnan, Sivaramasubramanian
Ramanan, Surest
Rastogi, Asheesh
Sahoo, Binary
Srinivasan, Rajaraman
Data Warehousing and
Business Intelligence &
Performance Management
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Cast
The Actors
Dealer Daily Sabapathy, Senthil Kumar
Venkatesh, Prasanna
Manufacturing and Logistics
Practice
FASTr Choudhary, Nitin
Gupta, Rachit
Verma, Sanjay
Enterprise Application
Practice
iAssess
Janakiraman, Kannan
Mayaperumal, Rajesh
Ramesh, Santosh Pingalay
Information, Media &
Entertainment Practice
Platinum Delivery Platform Natarajan, Chandrasekaran
Ramanan, Suresh
Ramaswamy, Poornima
Sampathkumaran, Ramkumar
Data Warehousing and
Business Intelligence &
Performance Management
An extensible ERP for
Service Industry
KIOSC – AVM Service
Assurance Framework
Beekam, Poorna Singh
N S, Kiran
Vijay Rajagopalan
Technology Practice
Marthandan, Rajesh
Nagarajan, Karthikeyan
Ramachandran, Srinivasan
Sivaprakasam Kanagasabapathy
Life Sciences Practice
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Cast
Descriptive RFT Utility
Concierge Services (1C)
One Curator
Balasubramanian, Vaidhyanathan
Meenakshi Sundaram, Giripriya
Testing Services Practice
Achalla, Ravi
Deshmukh, Anup
Korah, Joseph
Panduranga, Ashok
Rambhatla, Vijay
Sekhar, Usha
Cognizant Application
Services
Iyer, Vijayalakshmi
Ramachandran, Ramaseshan
Concept Lab, Cognizant
Innovation Group
Reinventing the Wheel with
Clients
IN to the NO-vel nATION
The Actors
Rajaraman, Krishna Kumar
Venkatasubramanian,
Bhaskar
Managed Innovation,
Cognizant Innovation
Group
Build 24X2 Subramanian, Hari
Managed Innovation,
Cognizant Innovation
Group
Kameswaran, Subramanian
Advanced Solutions Group
cxlv

Screenplay
Cast
Acharya, Auyon
Bose, Ashutosh
Das, Piya
Hameed, Shahul
Inamdar, Nimish
Kauser, Shaista
Mahendran, Ramya
Mobile Services Practice
Customer Solutions Practice
Advanced Solutions Practice - Interactive Content
Corporate Marketing
Customer Relationship Management
Cognizant Application Services
Cognizant Innovation Group
P, Powrna Insurance Practice
Raghunathan, Vijay
Rajaram, Bhuvana
Rajaraman, Krishna Kumar
Rajendran, Rajani
Rajkumar, Praveen Kumar
Rao, Sudhir
Ray, Shuddhashil
Sachidanandam, Kumar
Sengupta, Lolita
Sivaprakasam, Srinivasan
Tharoor, Gopalakrishna
Ukhalkar, Janhavi
Cognizant Innovation Group
Academy
Cognizant Innovation Group
Advanced Solutions Practice - Interactive Learning
Process and Tools Group
Testing Services Practice
Global Technology Organization, Advanced Web CoE
Cognizant Innovation Group
Academy
Testing Services Practice
Delivery Assurance Group
Academy
Venkatasubramanian, Bhaskar
Cognizant Innovation Group
cxlvi

Directors & Executive Producers
Cast
Alper, Alan
Brandel, Mary
Feuilly, Jason
Jasuja, Nikhilesh
Kappoth, Prakasan
Mahendran, Ramya
Sachidanandam, Kumar
Corporate Marketing
Freelance Contributor
Corporate Marketing
Corporate Marketing
Cognizant Innovation Group
Cognizant Innovation Group
Cognizant Innovation Group
cxlvii

Art & Design Directors
Cast
Dhakankar, Vibhav
Duvvru, Vishnu Priya
Jothy, Devanand
Wagh, Dhananjay
Kappoth, Prakasan
Mahendran, Ramya
Mobile Services Practice
Mobile Services Practice
Advanced Solutions Practice - Interactive Design
Mobile Services Practice
Cognizant Innovation Group
Cognizant Innovation Group
cxlviii

The Journal Production Executives - Behind the Scenes
Cast
Bhardwaj, Shubham
Cognizant Innovation Group
G, Kumudha Cognizant Innovation Group
Iyer, Vijayalakshmi
Natarajan, Porselvi
Raghunathan, Vijay
Cognizant Innovation Group
Cognizant Innovation Group
Cognizant Innovation Group
Sathyanarayanan, Pavithra Lakshmi Cognizant Innovation Group
Subramanian, Hari
Cognizant Innovation Group
Special Appearance
Rajagopal, Sukumar - SVP, CIO & Head of Innovation
Raghuram, Archana - Director, Cognizant Outreach
Ramamoorthy, Ramkumar - SVP, Corporate Communication
&
Special thanks to Innovation Group Leadership and the
entire Cognizant Innovation Group team for their constant
support and encouragement
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