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Cognetik acquisition is part of Brillio’s vision of becoming the leading digital technology service provider: Shailen Salvi

Brillio says that Cognetik’s expertise further enhances the company’s analytics business, which has been growing at a CAGR of 30% over the last three years

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Supriya Rai
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Cognetik

Recently, Brillio, a leading digital technology consulting and solutions company, announced the acquisition of Cognetik. Being a data and insights company involved in ameliorating digital experiences for its customers such as Facebook and McDonald’s, Cognetik implements analytics solutions to optimize customer experience and drive revenue for its clientele.

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In an interview with Thomas George, managing editor and president, CyberMedia, Shailen Salvi, chief solutions officer, Brillio spoke how the Cognetik acquisition furthers the company’s plans to become the leading digital technology service provider in the world.

Thomas George: Why did Brillio decide to invest in Cognetik?

Shailen Salvi: We are all very excited about this acquisition as it is a part of our vision to becoming the leading pure-play digital transformation partner at scale around the world. There are a lot of reasons why the Cognetik acquisition is the right step to take for us at the moment. If I could frame it up for you, primarily we were very attracted to a number of intrinsic elements of the firm. First and foremost, the customers of the company are very recognizable global firms including Facebook, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s. These brands are at the front of center for consumer segments, particularly CPG and retail. Hence, Cognetik will help Brillio navigate and expand rapidly into the consumer-centric sector of digital transformation.

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Apart from that, while Cognetik adds to our capabilities, the company also compliments Brillio’s analytics business, which has already scaled rapidly and has been growing at a CAGR of 30% over the last three years. We at Brillio, put our customers at the forefront of everything that we do, and Cognetik shares that passion.

Thomas George: How about technology fitment and what are the solutions of the companies that complement each other?

Shailen Salvi: Cognetik focuses on usage and platform analytics. So, it’s not just about using data analytics and insights to drive decision making. The company also believes in curating compelling interactions between customers and brands in a multi-channel environment across the value chain.

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Cognetik’s capabilities in customer and marketing analytics, customer experience, multi-channel experience optimization and experience within the Adobe ecosystem strengthens Brillio’s ability to provide clients with industry solutions for personalization and omni-channel experiences. This acquisition enables in a very fundamental way our ability to help our customers build world-class digital products.

Thomas George: What is the roadmap of these combined entities?

Shailen Salvi: The roadmap can be articulated through multiple dimensions. From a go-to-market perspective for the rest of this year, there will be no foreseeable change to the way either of us goes to market. We are interested in Cognetik for its intrinsic value and services that it provides its customers. The last thing we want to do is disrupt that. As the roadmap evolves, we will begin to find cross-sell opportunities within our customers.

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For example, to one of America’s leading food distribution companies where we have a significant analytics footprint around their e-commerce distribution platform, we have introduced Cognetik, and it has been very well received. We have also introduced Cognetik to a software-as-a-service provider and a real estate listing firm who are clients of ours.

Thomas George: What edge does Brillio offer over its competitors?

Shailen Salvi: The acquisition is not fundamentally going to change our view of the competitive landscape. We go to market as a full-service digital transformation player, and rarely offer products on silo. One of the distinguishing factors about how we grow our customers is by orchestrating multi-practice solutions. We compete holistically and we do not plan to change that.

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Thomas George: You mentioned how you are joining hands with large digital transformation companies. Have you looked into using telco routes considering the amount of data they have access to?

Shailen Salvi: Absolutely. Telecom is one of the primary verticals we are focused on at present. In fact, some of the largest wireless and wireLAN telecom providers in the US are among our clients. What’s interesting in telecom is, some of the players own even content. So they own the entire value chain, right from content to distribution to the actual network. In some instances, telecom involves getting a physical device into the hands of end-users. Nevertheless, it does not mean we are only focusing on telecom at the moment.

Thomas George: Apart from telecom and healthcare, which other verticals are you focusing on?

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Shailen Salvi: Some of the other verticals we are focusing on are financial services, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and so on. One of our European customers is into consumer debt management. We have been helping them improve the speed at which they build their predictive models to manage portfolio risks. We helped them run these models from four to six weeks to less than a week. What it means to them is that they can optimize the decisions that they make based on a more near real-time view of what their risk exposure is in the overall portfolio. We look forward to replicating that across different verticals.

Thomas George: How do you plan to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Shailen Salvi: While nobody can predict the challenges that we may face, in the past four months, we are very pleased with the way our teams across the globe have stepped up and answered the call. Within the first week of the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we transformed from a business-as-usual to a 100 percent work-from-home model. Every single employee of ours around the world was working from home in less than a week. COVID-19 has also shown us the resiliency of customer relationships. Almost all of our customer relationships have either stayed the same or strengthened. While we cannot predict what the challenges will be, we will be prepared to take every action that is needed to face whatever challenge we may come across.

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