Making His Own Mark

Started in 1994, Cognizant Technology Solutions has come a long way. Over the

years manpower has soared, client base has multiplied by many times, and the

company operates from development centers across the world. Keeping in tune with

the IT revolution Cognizant has embraced various technologies over the years,

and today stands as an IT solutions major catering to various verticals. The

company enjoyed the industry's leading performance during 2004-05 by growing

its Indian revenues to 80%, compared to the previous year. Cognizant employs

17,050 professionals, with 13,046 people working in India alone.

Greenlaw is responsible for setting the strategic direction for IT at

Cognizant and overseeing all of Cognizant's IT infrastructure and internal

business applications. He is also responsible for the company's

process improvement initiatives and leveraging Six Sigma. Says Greenlaw,

"Our view is that we need to tightly integrate our business processes,

applications and infrastructure. Our IT organization structure reflects this

and, at Cognizant, we focus on business-driven initiatives and IT process

improvements."

Cognizant's largest business-driven initiative at present is the

Compass Program, which is a global effort to implement scalable business,

processes across the board. "We have also undertaken a major project to

upgrade our wide area network to an MPLS architecture, which supports both

internal systems as well as client project delivery. In addition, we are

implementing a globally managed voice solution. My team is also extensively

involved in our expansion within India, and plays a significant role in bringing

new development centers online," says Greenlaw.

How IT works



With respect to internal IT process improvements, Cognizant is working

to better align its IT and business. Specifically, it has implemented a new

governance model as well as a portfolio management process to ensure that its

investments are focused on the right areas. It is also restructuring the IT

organization to stay better aligned with its internal customers, and has added a

new role-that of an IT relationship manager-called the IT Client

Partner. "We are enhancing the processes within the Project Management

Office to ensure that we consistently exceed the expectations of internal

clients," adds Greenlaw.

Cognizant has a global IT function with four major groups reporting to

the CIO:  Process Improvement, Applications, Infrastructure, and

Architecture and Project Management. With the leaders within these

areas spread across the globe, it is truly a virtual team. Most of its

development and infrastructure resources are based in India, where Cognizant has

development teams in Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.

Says Greenlaw, "The primary challenge with every company that I have

worked for lies in building strong, trusting, relationships with

the executive management team and the functional heads.  I am a firm

believer in the concept of "running IT like a business" and try

to be extremely customer-oriented in building these relationships. There

are several keys to overcoming this challenge. Firstly, you need to take

time to get out and meet your key internal customers and stakeholders, find out

what their issues are, and identify solutions. You have to build your

credibility by delivering value to them. You have to build the relationship

first, but the relationship would not last if you do not deliver.

Secondly, you need to align your team to these internal customers, and be

explicit in terms of who is managing each significant relationship. And

finally, you need to be open and honest with your internal customers. I am

a firm believer in Jim Collins' view (in "Good to Great") that we

need to "Confront the Brutal Facts" regarding the health of our

systems and various projects, while having a positive outlook that we will be

successful."

IT is critical at Cognizant for two

primary reasons. First, much of its customer delivery

is enabled by IT, particularly on the infrastructure

side. The delivery teams rely on the global networks to communicate

and share information between its customers in the US, Europe and other parts of

the world, and the development centers in India, the Netherlands, Phoenix,

Canada, and now China. "My team is responsible for our global voice

and data network as well as for provisioning all hardware up to the OS layer,

which is used on our client projects," says Greenlaw.

Meanwhile, Cognizant has undergone tremendous growth as a company, and

Greenlaw believes that in order to continue to grow profitably, the company

needs scalable processes and systems. For instance in its Compass Program,

it is examining



every major business process across the enterprise, driving process improvements
and enabling these new processes with enterprise solutions. "One of

the reasons I joined Cognizant was that I was deeply impressed with how the top

management team was so highly committed to improving both the processes and

systems within the organization."

The CIO's changing resume



Lately, the discussion in the media has shifted from "IT

alignment" to "IT convergence", indicating that it is no longer

sufficient to be simply aligned with the business, and that IT and the

business are instead becoming one. Reflecting on that Greenlaw says,

"We see more examples of movement of business executives into the role of

CIO, and CIOs moving into major roles in the business. The expectation that

CIOs must be strong business-people continues to increase, yet, the need to stay

in touch with technology has not diminished. So it has become harder for one

person to fill the role. Which is why many companies are experimenting with

splitting the CIOs role into two or creating an "Office of the CIO,"

reflecting the fact that the job may be too big for any one person to

handle.  So you need to surround yourself with people strong in business

and in technology."

Planning ahead



Much of Cognizant's focus over the next two years will remain on the

Compass Program. Says Greenlaw, "As we lay in the redesigned core processes

and systems, we will also be launching initiatives to build better business

intelligence tools so that our management team can leverage the power of the new

platform. Additionally, we will focus on identifying those areas where we

can use technology to provide further differentiation in the

marketplace. In the IT services industry, I believe that we need to exploit

collaborative technologies that help us overcome distance and time zone

differences and bring us closer to our customers across the globe."

Cognizant is also using Linux in several areas within its core

infrastructure. " We also have a few open source applications running

in select and focused areas. We have pilot programs where we are evaluating

the use of Linux on the desktop. We are excited about some of the

opportunities that Linux may provide, but will move cautiously as we understand

the unique challenges and skill sets required to manage the Linux

environment", avers Greenlaw.

Shrikanth G in

Chennai