Rewiring consulting: Publicis Sapient’s bet on continuous transformation and value creation

The IT industry is defined by relentless change. In this hyper-competitive marketplace, finding a niche and standing out requires carefully crafted positioning. It's like a marathon, not a sprint. One such long runner is Publicis Sapient, which has chosen to play the long game: not by chasing trends, but by staying rooted in one existential question — where and how can we create real value?

As consulting and IT services undergo radical shifts, impacted by the rise of generative AI and the evolution of Global Capability Centers (GCCs), Publicis Sapient is doubling down on its continuous transformation playbook. At the heart of this strategy is a philosophy that transformation is not a milestone but a mindset, and rooted in the inherent value every transformation ushers in. That’s the overarching outcome.

In this wide-ranging virtual conversation with Dataquest, Sanjay reflects on the company’s 35-year journey, how legacy thinking and tech are being rewired, why agility matters more than scale, and how India is fast becoming a global hub for innovation, not just efficiency. With clarity and candour, he lays out what it takes to be a modern-day transformation tech partner, and why value, not volume, will define the future of the services landscape. Excerpts.

The IT services space has changed dramatically, disrupting companies of all sizes. Given your experience, and having seen the industry evolve from its humble beginnings to where it is today, how do you view the current state of the industry? How is Publicis Sapient aligning with major trends and differentiating itself in this landscape?

Publicis Sapient has been around for 35 years, born at the dawn of the digital era. We are a digital business transformation company. Our founding philosophy was simple: bring the smartest people together to solve the toughest problems, and you’ll create outsized value for clients. That focus on real value creation has guided us since the start. That’s our guiding light.

Right from the beginning, the question has always been: where can we create real value? For instance, in the client-server era, that value came from things like predictable delivery. In fact, when Sapient was founded, Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore, the founders, had an interaction with Cambridge Technology Partners. What they sensed was that there was widespread disappointment in the services space. Projects were often delivered late, cost more than expected, and the final outcomes were less capable than what was originally promised.

So their idea essentially revolved around this: can we do a fixed-price, fixed-time model to ensure we have skin in the game, and deliver predictable value at a predictable time and cost? That was the thinking back then.

And IT evolved. As the web took off, consumers began interacting with brands through browsers. Just by closing a window, they could end the interaction. This put the power in their hands, which meant user experience had to be compelling and central to the work.

So once again, the value shifted. Now the question we asked was: how do you bring design and experience into technology, while still ensuring strong program management? The goal became to integrate experience into what was earlier a world of pure tech.

With these industry shifts and evolutions, we have continually expanded our capabilities as technology and client needs evolved, from early innovations in delivery models to integrating design and tapping global talent as digital matured. Today, change is faster than ever. Transformation can’t be one-and-done. It has to be continuous. But our goal remains the same: help clients create value.

Last year you released a tech-debt survey with HFS Research that highlighted the legacy “baggage” many firms carry. In industries like BFSI that were early digital adopters, legacy modernization has been a talking point for years. What has actually changed in how we modernize legacy systems today? And what differentiates your approach?

Two big things have changed. First, with modern cloud platforms and AI-powered tools, we can modernize legacy systems much faster and with far less manual effort than before. That’s a huge leap in speed and cost efficiency.

Second, we’ve changed how we modernize. Instead of just lifting and shifting an entire legacy estate to new tech, we ask: what’s actually needed going forward? Many old systems have decades of features bolted on, and not all of them are relevant now. We start by mapping out what the legacy system really does, then we rebuild only the necessary parts on modern platforms. The result is a leaner, cleaner core that delivers what the business needs without decades of cruft. That’s very different from the old “move everything over” approach, and it’s enabled by today’s smarter tools.

Publicis Sapient sits between traditional IT services and high-end consulting, and you also collaborate closely with GCCs in India. In effect, you’re up against both big IT outsourcers and large consulting firms. How do you navigate that space, and what’s your edge when leading transformation programs?

Our edge is that we combine vision and execution in one team. A client might get a great strategy from a big consultancy or quality coding from a tech vendor, but rarely both together. We fill that gap by delivering end-to-end transformation.

We’ve also built our model for today’s fast-cycle environment. In the past, companies launched a few large transformation projects over years. Now they need to execute many smaller initiatives in rapid succession. Our approach is very agile and integrated.

We use our SPEED framework: Strategy, Product, Engineering, Experience, and Data, to keep all elements moving in sync. We make sure strategy, customer experience, technology, and data stay aligned.

The SPEED framework helps us answer key questions:

• What are we transforming?
• Who are we transforming it for?
• How do we build it?
• And how do we know it’s working?

We act as one team with our clients from planning through execution. That shared ownership of outcomes is a big differentiator versus traditional players.

If I can give an example: during COVID, a leading hospitality player saw a shift in consumer preference. We helped them launch a new service, which is now one of their fastest-growing businesses. It met a timely need, aligned with their strategy, and showed how fast, focused transformation can deliver short-term wins and long-term gains.

You gave an example from hospitality. Could you share other examples of engagements you lead in different industries, and where you’re seeing the most traction globally?

Certainly. We work across sectors like finance, retail, telecom, and energy, and our clients span the globe. The engagements vary, but all focus on high-impact opportunities.

For example, we helped a global retailer unify fragmented digital platforms across regions, eliminating duplicate efforts and providing a consistent customer experience worldwide. We’re also very active with companies setting up innovation hubs in India via their GCCs.

When it comes to the nature of our engagements, it really depends on where we can create the most value. One client might ask us to shape an entirely new digital strategy from the ground up. Another may want to consolidate their global digital marketing platforms to eliminate duplication and inefficiencies — like when brand teams across regions are spending separately on the same assets and campaigns. In such cases, we’ve helped clients build integrated platforms that enable reusability of assets and standardization of toolkits across markets.

In the energy sector, we’ve worked with clients to reimagine the experience and intelligence layer at fuel retail outlets. This includes defining new monetization models and enhancing consumer engagement on the ground. We’re also helping clients scale their GCCs — not just as cost centers, but as innovation hubs.

Do you think GenAI will fundamentally recalibrate the consulting-business and IT services industry, changing how value is delivered? What major disruptions are you preparing for, and how do you ensure value creation remains your core focus?

Generative AI and automation are certainly disruptive — in a positive way. We’re already using them to deliver better outcomes, faster. We have AI assisting in coding, testing, content generation, data analysis, and more. If something that took a big team two months can now be done by a smaller team with AI in a few weeks, we’ll leverage it. It lets our human talent focus on higher-value work and gets results to clients sooner.

This shift is pushing the industry toward outcome-based engagement models. Clients care about the result achieved, not the hours spent. We welcome that, because we’ve always tried to tie our work to business outcomes. Whether delivered by a large team, a small team with AI, or a mix, what matters is the impact on the client’s business.

We’re also continuously upskilling our teams — especially in AI — so we can lead this change rather than react to it. Through all of this, our guiding principle remains the same: focus on delivering tangible value. As long as we do that, we’ll stay on the right track.

On that note, let’s talk about talent — especially in India, which is a huge part of your delivery engine. How are you enabling continuous upskilling for your teams to keep them relevant? Do you have specific programs or Centers of Excellence driving this?

We’ve built a culture of continuous learning. It starts with hiring people who are curious and adaptable, then giving them the tools and opportunities to grow. We run structured training in areas like cloud, AI, and experience design, but we also ensure that people apply new skills on real projects. That way, learning sticks and clients benefit immediately.

India is central to this strategy. Many of our internal expert groups — our Centers of Excellence in AI, design, engineering best practices, and more — are led out of India. These serve as hubs to develop new techniques and spread that knowledge globally.

The key is fostering a mindset where employees aren’t afraid to admit what they don’t know-yet. We want our teams to be constantly learning. As long as our people have that mindset, and we support them with training and opportunities, we’ll keep our workforce future-ready.

Finally, despite some macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds causing uncertainty in tech spending, what do you see as the key tailwinds driving momentum for your business?

One major tailwind is the shift in how global companies leverage India’s talent through their GCCs. India isn’t just a place to cut costs — it’s a source of innovation. Many clients now expect their India centers to lead on product development and customer experience, not just support work. That plays to our strengths. We’re helping several organizations turn their India teams into true extensions of the business that deliver value, not just efficiency.

The GCC space is now entering what we call the innovation arbitrage era. Earlier, GCCs were largely built for operational efficiency or cost arbitrage. But what we’re witnessing now is a shift in ambition: clients want these centers to become engines of innovation.

Another tailwind is the drive for modernization and automation. Even in a cautious economy, companies are investing in upgrading legacy systems and automating processes to become more efficient and agile.

Of course, we operate in a global context, so headwinds such as geopolitical uncertainty or macroeconomic volatility are part of the terrain. But the longer-term direction of travel is clear. Value creation remains our unwavering North Star.