Cognizant drives investments in alliances

Professional services and IT consulting firm Cognizant has been aggressively expanding its team and services in Australia and New Zealand, as well as across the broader region and globally over the past five years.

The business has been evolving “really rapidly,” Cognizant president of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) Jane Livesey told ARN.

As part of this, the IT service provider has hired former Quest Software APJ director Ian Hume as Cognizant head of strategic partnerships and hyperscalers across APAC including China and Japan.

Hume’s role is specifically focused on leading its alliances with hyperscale partners like Google, AWS and Microsoft.

The hire “has really been about expanding and amplifying our partnerships, because this is now becoming really pivotal,” said Livesey. “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, etc.”

Cognizant will also invest in “additional resources right across the region, underneath and really to amplify its investment in partnerships not only hyperscalers, but also ServiceNow and Workday.

According to Livesey, this commitment was pivotal as the industry is experiencing huge business change and disruption.

“Professional services is one of those areas with AI that has been disrupted very early,” she explained. “That’s really giving us the opportunity not only to rethink the way that we deliver our services the way that we embed new platforms and tooling and intelligence … [but also] most importantly, the ecosystems and partners and the way that we bring that to life for our clients.”

Cognizant’s strategy began when it brought Sandra Notardonato on board as senior vice president alliances and partnerships 18 months ago, said Livesey.  

“She joined us from Gartner and immediately set to work building a new strategy focused on how we continue to elevate our alliances, especially in an increasingly AI-driven world,” she said. “Her appointment really marked the beginning of this journey for us.

“Since then, we’ve expanded our alliances teams across the globe in North America, Europe Middle East and Africa, and now APJ, which is the third major phase of that growth.

For Cognizant, this expansion has been about more than just scale, but also prioritising alliances and deepening the trusted partnerships, particularly as it brings new products and services to market, noted Livesey.

Its clients are looking at their own business growth and performance while examining how AI, services and tooling can be used to drive productivity, she said.

“A lot of this is driven by the need for efficiency and cost reduction,” Livesey explained. “For us, a key part of that lies in the ecosystem of teams and partners we collaborate with for each client.”

A key example of a trusted partnership is Cognizant’s “three-way” collaboration with Ipswich City Council and Workday. According to Livesey, work began at the local government authority for Ipswich, Queensland, on 7 April and forms part of a five-year technology transformation to modernise the city’s “people systems.”

The Council delivers a wide range of services for its community of more than 256,000 residents such as waste collection, parks and open spaces, community centres and libraries. It employs almost 1,500 administrative, technical, operational and professional employees and manages over $4.1 billion worth of infrastructure assets, including roads, drains, and facilities.

To support these extensive services, Cognizant was engaged to implement Workday Human Capital Management to adapt to the community’s evolving needs. It will automate people processes while also giving Ipswich City Council access to Workday’s embedded AI capabilities.

 “There’s usually a lot of collaboration and co-design that’s actually happening in those processes now,” said Livesey. “That’s not only testing [but about] how do you bring this idea to life.”

Livesey said any project involving AI innovation requires a step-by-step process, with partners working closely and staying fully aligned.

“From an AI services perspective, much of what Cognizant focuses on is what we call supporting our clients through the last mile, helping them turn AI potential into real, operational outcomes,” she said.

These services were needed because the moment an enterprise starts to deploy AI, IT service providers like Cognizant must follow a responsibility matrix.

“There’s relatively low risk with AI content generation using public source information for knowledge gathering because other than curating the quality of that source of information, you’re not really putting your business at significant risk,” said Livesey. “The moment you start to deploy AI within your enterprise, it becomes about ethics, values and data quality.

“It’s no different than building a house with no foundations. If you don’t have the right foundation to be enhanced, you’re introducing significant risk.”

For Cognizant, those foundations revolve around making sure the correct frameworks around data are in place, while the way AI is governed and used within the organisation is thought out before implementation, Livesey explained.

This approach must align with the reviewing of Cognizant’s network of partners, she added.

“We can see the boundaries blurring for traditional business models, and those trusted partnerships will be critical not only to deliver services but to shore up the way businesses operate,” Livesey said.

It also requires commitment in “driving to the outcomes that the clients are looking to achieve” and ensuring the “right combination of team and capability to work on the project”.

Empathy critical to leadership

These are the realities IT service provider leaders like Livesey face today.

Livesey assumed her current role in July 2024, following four years at Cognizant. She started as CEO of Australia and New Zealand in September 2020 and advanced to APAC CEO two years later.

While she has always been “very passionate about technology”, it wasn’t where Livesey started her career.

“I originally grew up in New Zealand and I started in healthcare and human services,” she explained. “At the time we were trying to achieve better health outcomes for individuals, and the use of data and analysis and technology became a really critical part of that.”

Livesey then entered technology through coding and progressed to implementing technology across various organisations. She also worked with major consultancies such as Accenture and PwC.

Five years ago, when she first joined Cognizant, the IT service provider focused on strengthening the leadership of the Australian organisation to elevate its presence in the market.

“We elevated the work that we had been doing in this market, and helping, [to] not only expand the role that we play within our clients,” said Livesey. “But also bring a broader set of services to the market here.” said Livesey.

Cognizant recognised the need for a larger, more diverse service portfolio by acquiring Servian, in January 2021, which was Livesey’s initial initiative in Australia.

In her leadership role, Livesey was also appointed to Cognizant’s global executive committee where she worked directly with global CEO Ravi Kumar S.

“[It’s an] absolute privilege to be able to be on a global executive team actually operating out of Australia,” she said. “It’s not a very common piece to have the opportunity to help shape what Cognizant achieves in this region and globally.”

As a “constant learner”, Livesey has had the opportunity to build and apply many of her skills and feels “blessed to have an absolutely incredible team”.

“The thing that I’m really blessed with is I have a team that technically know how to achieve them,” she said. “I am a very blessed leader, because they have a wonderful set of capabilities that are incredibly relevant and what most organisations are trying to achieve today.”

Livesey believes empathy will be a “critical attribute” of leadership. Workplaces have changed, with the new generation of workers looking to develop knowledge.

“We have to think about the roles of the future,” she said. “We also need to really cater to the need to achieve results, live their purpose and foster collaboration and community within our organisations as well.

As leaders, Livesey emphasised the need to be “custodians of businesses, and to leave the organisation they work at in a better place than how they found it.

“Inherently, that relies on talent and capability and building incredible teams, and it relies on innovation,” she said. “It’s creating trust in others, letting people make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.

“You have to be quite conscious about doing it and if I’m honest, it’s something that you have to wake up every day and think about, because it’s how your teams flourish.”

Her mindset and dedication to leadership helped Livesey win the ARN Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) Achievement (Partner) award in 2021, which she sees as a “real privilege”.

“Every year we’re nominating incredible female talent for the WIICTA awards,” Livesey acknowledged. “That opportunity really creates the ability to apply knowledge, to create, to innovate and to lead.

“I think [this] is really important and something that’s been really critical for me to create environments where people can thrive.”