(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live,
from Orlando, Florida,
it's theCUBE.
Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge17.
Brought to you by ServiceNow.
>> We're back.
I'm Dave Vellante, this is Jeff Frick.
Raja Renganathan is here.
He's the Vice President of Cloud Services
at Cognizant Technology Solutions.
Welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you, Dave.
>> So,
tell us about Cognizant
and what you're doing to sort of
support your client's digital transformations.
Let's start there.
>> Yeah.
So Cognizant is, you know, a leading
digital technology outsourcing, you know, provider.
We help our clients to lead the digital.
Okay, so basically customers are going through disruption,
that digital disruption,
and everybody is going through the digital transformation.
So, we help our clients to navigate the digital shift.
So, how we do that is via three-pillar, right.
We have, you know,
imagine a front office, a middle office and a back office.
The front office is digital business.
Our digital business unit helps our customers
to innovate new products and solutions, you know,
using data as a new oil, new ad,
whatever you want to call it as.
Then, the middle office, that is where,
getting into the enterprise,
we're touching the business processes.
How do we create platforms to simplify
and modernize those processes.
And how do we create business process as a service?
That's what we call it, as a middle office.
That's our digital operations, you know, pillar.
The third one is,
how do I modernize the legacy technologies, you know,
into the latest turning-towards-digital,
thereby providing agile and you know,
extensible, you know, things like that.
So, that's our digital systems and technology.
So, we introduce these three core pillars,
and the underlying platform for everything is Cloud.
That's where we see, you know, products like,
such as ServiceNow.
It plays a very critical role towards, you know,
fulfilling our customers' value.
>> So, what's your strategy with respect to ServiceNow
and the partnership?
>> If you look at our partnership, you know, back in 2008,
this is a small history to that.
See, we introduced the Fortune, you know, 1000 enterprises.
At the time, you know, The BMC and the HP,
you know, those are all providing,
it was pervasive those days. >> Sure.
>> Then we started hearing from the customers,
"Hey, do you guys know a company called ServiceNow?"
You know, that is where I think,
hey, everybody's talking ServiceNow.
So, what is it all about?
That is where we started our journey, back in 2008.
At the time, we put together,
we took some, you know, the BMC and the HP guys,
we reskilled them, trained them on ServiceNow.
Right?
Started with about a 10-people practice.
Today we are 700-plus people practice,
spread across four
delivery centers.
And the beauty is all of the 700, 675-plus,
are certified in ServiceNow.
So, that is what the value people see.
That the certification skillset, the implementation,
you know, the knowledge that we take to the customer,
they see that as a value.
>> Then, how are you seeing the implementations evolve
inside the customers,
once you go in and do an initial project?
How is it evolving?
We keep hearing about all these different application stacks
and kind of service areas.
What are you seeing in the field?
>> If you look at our customers, I think,
you know, we also,
the place is valued, we have ServiceNow.
Most of them are, you know, they are Cognizant customers.
You know, because we know that application.
Because we bring the domain knowledge and the application.
Everyone starts with the basic thing, ITSM.
IT Service Management Model.
But, because of the digital shift,
they are going beyond ITSM.
So, they want to move from systems of records
to systems of intelligence.
Now, we are going one level above.
How do we create a system of action with ServiceNow,
workflows and automation and things like that.
So, today, if you look at
ITSM, yes, it's becoming a commodity.
That is where, I think, ServiceNow has really helped us.
But, customers want to use the power of the platform.
How do I add customer service on top of it?
How do I create, you know, HR module and Finance module
and Legal and facilities,
and use the power of the platform.
So, this is how we see the implementation approach.
They start with ITSM and then go through, you know,
module by module.
But there are some customers where they say,
"Hey, you know what?
"I have so many tools in the ecosystem,
"but I want ServiceNow to be the fulcrum
"or manager of managers."
So that is where we use
the ServiceNow platform to integrate.
ServiceNow has got a lot of API integretation, you know,
mechanics.
We use the integration, API integration methodology
and then integrate various tools into it.
Provide a common, single-pane window.
>> Is this allowing your customers to gain
a competitive advantage?
Or is it cutting costs for them?
I mean, what is there,
what is your customers' sort of, business case,
and the business value?
Is there differentiation that's inherent?
>> So, traditional ideas sim,
they, if you take the legacy, the tools that used to exist,
compared to a ServiceNow-based idea sim.
We have seen customers who are already reducing
call volumes by 30 per cent.
Okay?
Just an average, incident, call-incident reduction,
call reduction, et cetera.
However, we are in the AI era,
artificial intelligence, you know.
We have moved from mobile firsts
to artificial intelligence first.
Artificial intelligence is no longer in the labs.
It is on the street.
Customers are looking for,
how do we, you know, use artificial intelligence
and mission learning to increase the service levels?
So, that is why we call it as, modernizing ideas sim.
That's what even ServiceNow says,
that one of the customer conversations.
In the modernization ideas sim,
how do we bring the artificial intelligence
and mission learning?
Your 30 per cent can go up to 40 to 50 per cent.
Right, and in the process, with conversational analytics,
it makes, you know, again a superior end-user experience.
>> And how does Cognizant differentiate in the marketplace?
>> That's a great question.
The key thing is the people.
I would say, I would start with the people
because any new technology, okay,
whatever, the robots are there.
You need the human intellectual capital to implement that.
So that is where we realize this problem earlier
and we started investing on the people.
So we have something called a ServiceNow Academy
where we constantly recruit people
and reskill our own people
to meet the needs of the ServiceNow.
So, the ServiceNow Academy, that is where,
constantly produces, you know, people, number one.
Number two, we have ServiceNow Labs.
This is an investment from Cognizant.
We call it a center of excellence,
whatever the name you want to call.
The ServiceNow Labs is the biggest differentiator
for our customers,
where we constantly, you know, produce
you know, the best practices
and we take those best practices,
you know, to the customer.
The third one is, we constantly innovate.
Innovation is very critical.
So, we used to do something called Hackathon.
For the past three years, we have been doing Hackathon.
A team from ServiceNow, they go all the way
to our delivery centers, in offshore.
4000 people will be part of the Hackathon,
across different locations,
while we're video conferencing, webex and things like that.
Recently we did, about three months back,
For 4000 people participating,
80-plus innovation ideas came out.
All these 80-plus innovation ideas,
we go back to our customer.
"Hey, you're in healthcare.
"This is something, you know, to track your ambulance.
"You know, for 911, et cetera.
"These are the things, ideas, you can do that."
So, I would say, constantly reskilling the people
via our ServiceNow Academy.
The second thing is constantly producing
best practices via our ServiceNow Labs.
And the third one is, you know,
powering the innovation by our Hackathon.
These three things really help us to, you know,
take the value of ServiceNow to our customers.
>> Excellent, all right, we've got to wrap
before the music starts.
Raja, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE.
Really appreciate it.
>> And thank you,
and it's a pleasure in talking to you,
guys, thank you. >> Ah, you're welcome.
>> Thanks. >> All right,
>> keep right there, everybody.
We'll be back to wrap, right after this short break.
(upbeat music)