Cognizant creates an AI Studio in Australia as part of its AI strategy

Global IT service provider Cognizant has launched an AI Studio in Australia to bring the opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI) to its customers as part of its strategy with the technology.

Tools within the studio will allow Cognizant partners to bring their early-stage AI ideas and capabilities to be tested in real-time and potentially made into a prototype.

The studio is part of Cognizant’s larger strategy around AI, which also includes strengthening and growing its relationships with major cloud providers.

“The AI studio here in Australia is really about creating relationships and bridge what [hyperscalers] are bringing to the market in terms with their products, to getting the most value out of it for our clients,” said Cognizant president Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) Jane Livesey.

“From an AI services standpoint, a lot of what Cognizant is doing is what we call helping our clients with the last mile, whether it’s Google, AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow [and] all of the major partners.

“For our clients, we are helping them with the last mile by bridging the tooling of the product to drive how they can deliver productivity and efficiency.”

As part of its strategy, Cognizant recently appointed Ian Hume as head of strategic partnerships and hyperscalers for APAC, including China and Japan.

In a previous interview with ARN Livesey said, “if you think about the hyperscalers … they’re driving a lot of innovation at the moment, whether it’s across infrastructure, cloud, or AI tooling”.

“Our partnerships [have become] really pivotal,” she said. “We’re all experiencing huge business change and disruption,” she said.

“The way that we bring our services, [especially] the value of AI, to our clients, will shift and change quite rapidly [over the] next period of time.”

New consumers

With these shifts in technology comes the emergence of new younger consumers who are very comfortable with technology and AI.

They are transforming the market and looking for “different products, services and creation”, Livesey noted

“Whether you’re very large enterprise or a small or medium enterprise, it is important to think about, how to use what [technology] is available to them,” she said.

Consumers who embrace AI could drive up to 55 per cent of spending by 2030. Businesses can stay ahead of the adoption curve by understanding the new AI-powered customer and the wants, needs and expectations that will shape tomorrow’s markets, according to the provider’s Cognizant New Minds, New Markets report.

The report noted “that a more powerful and potentially multitrillion-dollar force has been gaining momentum: consumers experimenting with AI, with huge implications for business”.

“People are searching for products using conversational AI and even placing orders with their voice assistants,” the report said. “Based on our newest research study, which is focused on consumer use of AI, these seemingly inconsequential activities will soon transform the consumer journey: how people discover, purchase and engage with products and experiences after the sale.”

Meanwhile, Livesey said the business is seeing an increase in new customers who are comfortable interacting with AI and expect it in the products and services they use.

“Organisations must rethink product design with AI in mind, catering to a new generation that demands AI-driven experiences,” she said.

Livesey observed that it will be important for businesses “actually expand their knowledge” and start to think about and what their AI journey and transformation is going to look like.

She likened the disruption to the advent of Airbnb or Uber, which set off very different partnerships and relationships started to form, as well as creating new business models.

“AI amplifies that again because it’s accessing data and various sources,” she said. “We’re now seeing identification happening and AI agents operating in a broader ecosystem.

“Those boundaries are becoming much wider and this presents opportunities for organisations, but trusted partnerships will be critical to delivering products and services.”

Changing partnerships

Investing in those partnerships and alliances will be a critical part of what every organisation will need to amplify over this next period, she said.

“When you talk about partnerships and alliances, there are the traditional partnerships with vendors and distributors, but I’m also seeing partnerships between service providers as well,” she said.

“Some of the bigger players are working with medium and smaller companies to help with their AI or their customers’ AI journeys because it is such a complex situation.”

Livesey said while AI is not a new technology and has been around for decades, “the acceleration and pace of adoption of AI has been quite incredible, particularly in the last 18 months”.

One of the most critical things is to really understand how AI is used across products, services, and business operations, which is essential to unlocking its value, she said.

Livesey noted that there was “so much AI with every product embedded with it and the value will be to make sure how Cognizant can help clients. This will not only help to derive value, but also to make sure customers are using the right tooling for specific situations and purposes.

There’s an overwhelming amount of AI available, which means a lot of work goes into thinking about the right application for business cases, evaluating every stage from prototype to pilot, she said.

“I think the word trust is really important in this,” noted Livesey. “Where does trust come from, and how do we actually [become] trusted … not only as a supplier to our customers but also in the supply of products and services to their customers?

“We can see already, whether you’re a large enterprise or a small enterprise, AI is disrupting business today.”

Livesey observed there was a noticeable surge in productivity and a growing confidence in using AI for things like coding, content generation and gathering insights.

That’s why there is an acceleration in the way AI is being used to evolve and grow products and services, while also creating fresh, impactful experiences for customers.

“We can see the access to information and the boundaries are blurring for traditional business models,” she said.

That’s why strong collaborations will be essential especially with the complex layers involved in working across reseller and partner ecosystems, Livesey explained.

Those trusted partnerships will not only deliver services but also shore up the way business operates.

“This will be more critical in an AI world … [more] than they have ever been,” she said.

Livesey’s concept of partnerships flips the idea of traditional alliance relationships or reseller relationships. It focuses on bringing together partners to innovate, collaborate,and drive transformation with value.

These flipped partnerships will become essential for businesses to stay competitive and meet the challenges of a “rapid rise of new consumers”, she added.