(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> We're back. I'm Dave Vellante, this is Jeff Frick. Raja Renganathan is here. He's the Vice President of Cloud Services at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave. >> So, tell us about Cognizant and what you're doing to sort of support your client's digital transformations. Let's start there. >> Yeah. So Cognizant is, you know, a leading digital technology outsourcing, you know, provider. We help our clients to lead the digital. Okay, so basically customers are going through disruption, that digital disruption, and everybody is going through the digital transformation. So, we help our clients to navigate the digital shift. So, how we do that is via three-pillar, right. We have, you know, imagine a front office, a middle office and a back office. The front office is digital business. Our digital business unit helps our customers to innovate new products and solutions, you know, using data as a new oil, new ad, whatever you want to call it as. Then, the middle office, that is where, getting into the enterprise, we're touching the business processes. How do we create platforms to simplify and modernize those processes. And how do we create business process as a service? That's what we call it, as a middle office. That's our digital operations, you know, pillar. The third one is, how do I modernize the legacy technologies, you know, into the latest turning-towards-digital, thereby providing agile and you know, extensible, you know, things like that. So, that's our digital systems and technology. So, we introduce these three core pillars, and the underlying platform for everything is Cloud. That's where we see, you know, products like, such as ServiceNow. It plays a very critical role towards, you know, fulfilling our customers' value. >> So, what's your strategy with respect to ServiceNow and the partnership? >> If you look at our partnership, you know, back in 2008, this is a small history to that. See, we introduced the Fortune, you know, 1000 enterprises. At the time, you know, The BMC and the HP, you know, those are all providing, it was pervasive those days. >> Sure. >> Then we started hearing from the customers, "Hey, do you guys know a company called ServiceNow?" You know, that is where I think, hey, everybody's talking ServiceNow. So, what is it all about? That is where we started our journey, back in 2008. At the time, we put together, we took some, you know, the BMC and the HP guys, we reskilled them, trained them on ServiceNow. Right? Started with about a 10-people practice. Today we are 700-plus people practice, spread across four delivery centers. And the beauty is all of the 700, 675-plus, are certified in ServiceNow. So, that is what the value people see. That the certification skillset, the implementation, you know, the knowledge that we take to the customer, they see that as a value. >> Then, how are you seeing the implementations evolve inside the customers, once you go in and do an initial project? How is it evolving? We keep hearing about all these different application stacks and kind of service areas. What are you seeing in the field? >> If you look at our customers, I think, you know, we also, the place is valued, we have ServiceNow. Most of them are, you know, they are Cognizant customers. You know, because we know that application. Because we bring the domain knowledge and the application. Everyone starts with the basic thing, ITSM. IT Service Management Model. But, because of the digital shift, they are going beyond ITSM. So, they want to move from systems of records to systems of intelligence. Now, we are going one level above. How do we create a system of action with ServiceNow, workflows and automation and things like that. So, today, if you look at ITSM, yes, it's becoming a commodity. That is where, I think, ServiceNow has really helped us. But, customers want to use the power of the platform. How do I add customer service on top of it? How do I create, you know, HR module and Finance module and Legal and facilities, and use the power of the platform. So, this is how we see the implementation approach. They start with ITSM and then go through, you know, module by module. But there are some customers where they say, "Hey, you know what? "I have so many tools in the ecosystem, "but I want ServiceNow to be the fulcrum "or manager of managers." So that is where we use the ServiceNow platform to integrate. ServiceNow has got a lot of API integretation, you know, mechanics. We use the integration, API integration methodology and then integrate various tools into it. Provide a common, single-pane window. >> Is this allowing your customers to gain a competitive advantage? Or is it cutting costs for them? I mean, what is there, what is your customers' sort of, business case, and the business value? Is there differentiation that's inherent? >> So, traditional ideas sim, they, if you take the legacy, the tools that used to exist, compared to a ServiceNow-based idea sim. We have seen customers who are already reducing call volumes by 30 per cent. Okay? Just an average, incident, call-incident reduction, call reduction, et cetera. However, we are in the AI era, artificial intelligence, you know. We have moved from mobile firsts to artificial intelligence first. Artificial intelligence is no longer in the labs. It is on the street. Customers are looking for, how do we, you know, use artificial intelligence and mission learning to increase the service levels? So, that is why we call it as, modernizing ideas sim. That's what even ServiceNow says, that one of the customer conversations. In the modernization ideas sim, how do we bring the artificial intelligence and mission learning? Your 30 per cent can go up to 40 to 50 per cent. Right, and in the process, with conversational analytics, it makes, you know, again a superior end-user experience. >> And how does Cognizant differentiate in the marketplace? >> That's a great question. The key thing is the people. I would say, I would start with the people because any new technology, okay, whatever, the robots are there. You need the human intellectual capital to implement that. So that is where we realize this problem earlier and we started investing on the people. So we have something called a ServiceNow Academy where we constantly recruit people and reskill our own people to meet the needs of the ServiceNow. So, the ServiceNow Academy, that is where, constantly produces, you know, people, number one. Number two, we have ServiceNow Labs. This is an investment from Cognizant. We call it a center of excellence, whatever the name you want to call. The ServiceNow Labs is the biggest differentiator for our customers, where we constantly, you know, produce you know, the best practices and we take those best practices, you know, to the customer. The third one is, we constantly innovate. Innovation is very critical. So, we used to do something called Hackathon. For the past three years, we have been doing Hackathon. A team from ServiceNow, they go all the way to our delivery centers, in offshore. 4000 people will be part of the Hackathon, across different locations, while we're video conferencing, webex and things like that. Recently we did, about three months back, For 4000 people participating, 80-plus innovation ideas came out. All these 80-plus innovation ideas, we go back to our customer. "Hey, you're in healthcare. "This is something, you know, to track your ambulance. "You know, for 911, et cetera. "These are the things, ideas, you can do that." So, I would say, constantly reskilling the people via our ServiceNow Academy. The second thing is constantly producing best practices via our ServiceNow Labs. And the third one is, you know, powering the innovation by our Hackathon. These three things really help us to, you know, take the value of ServiceNow to our customers. >> Excellent, all right, we've got to wrap before the music starts. Raja, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. >> And thank you, and it's a pleasure in talking to you, guys, thank you. >> Ah, you're welcome. >> Thanks. >> All right, >> keep right there, everybody. We'll be back to wrap, right after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18 live from Las Vegas. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Raja Renganathan, he is the Vice President of Cloud Services at Cognizant Technology Solutions. I should say welcome back, it's not just welcome, it's welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you Rebecca. >> So tell our viewers a little bit about Cognizant Technology. What does your company do and what do you do there? >> I head the cloud services for Cognizant in the capacity of a vice president. Cognizant is a world-leading professional services company. Our objective is to help our clients to navigate the shift to digital. We have three pillars: go to market, we have Cognizant Digital Business which focuses on the user experience, data related, and we have the Cognizant Digital Operations which is predominantly a middle-office, back-end processing in an enterprise, and the third pillar is Cognizant Digital Systems and Technology which is basically modernizing the platform systems that is required to create the digital foundation. >> And you're also just this week been called a Certified Global Partner of ServiceNow so explain how that works. >> Our relationship with ServiceNow goes back six years. Today I think the ServiceNow line of business, which is under the cloud services, is one of the fastest-growing business unit for us. The key thing in any platform such as ServiceNow is the human intellectual capital. That is where we give a lot of importance. While technology is created by ServiceNow, someone has to go execute and implement the technology. So that's where we spent time and started hiring people, re-skilling the people, and then getting certified across different facets of what ServiceNow recommends as a part of their education system. So today we have about 850 plus certified people across the globe and we also do the delivery across our global operation centers, we also call it as RDCs, Regional Delivery Centers, we have one in Budapest, one in Phoenix, and one in Buenos Aires. So all these three centers caters to different service areas of ServiceNow. As a part of this RDC we're also adding, creating an experience zone, a ServiceNow experience zone, so when client walks in they not only see our associates working on projects, but they also get the panoramic view or the panoramic experience of how ServiceNow orchestration happens, how automation happens, how HR module works, and things like that. Because of the people we have, in terms of re-skilling and certification, we are being measured as the best overall global partner award yesterday in Knowledge18. >> Well congratulations. When you were searching for these people, as you said you had to so a lot of hiring, what were the kind of skills you were looking for when you were trying to find the top talent? >> If you look at Cognizant as a 265,000 plus organization we know the art of hiring people. >> And it is an art, it absolutely is an art. >> So our approach is, one we go to the campus, hire the fresh grads in all of the campus. If you look at of late the kids that are coming out of the campus, they are pretty smart in the sense of they come with the latest digital technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing understanding, and things like that. So we take them and then we, within 30 days, we completely format them for ServiceNow. This is one approach. The second approach is we go to the lateral market and we hire and we bring them up to speed on the ServiceNow-related technologies. The third option is, with 265,000 people we have, the raw material is inside Cognizant, so we take people from other business units, other domain and then try to format them and to do that. But of late what we have started, especially within the U.S. footprint, is we go to all the community colleges and also we go to all the veteran's associations, those type of organizations and we hire them. So if you look at our Phoenix RDC, I'm proud to say that it is a woman-powered delivery center, when it comes to ServiceNow, with a pretty good mix of veterans. So these are the different approaches we use to hire people towards the ServiceNow practice. >> And they've been successful. >> They have been successful and if you look at how long can they continue in ServiceNow 'til they retire? No, so we do job rotation, every three years we give them opportunity. I have a unique advantage since I run the cloud services. I always rotate my people from ServiceNow to go to Amazon or to Microsoft as you're in different technologies every 24 to 36 months we do the job rotation. In that way I think I'm managing my retention well. >> So we know that the role of IT is really changing in so many organizations around the world. What are you hearing from customers, what are their pain points? What are the challenges that you're trying to solve? >> I think that's a great question now, Rebecca. We are in a very interesting time. The customers have a tremendous problem in their hand because they need to stay relevant in their business because business models are changing and if you look at for a retailer, the competition is not from the same industry. Similar for a pharmaceutical company, the competition is not from the same pharma industry. Everybody wanted to know, a pharma company wanted to know why Google is hiring 100 physicians. So the disruption is going to happen not in your industry, outside your industry. So that is the biggest challenge. The second thing is they need to continue to reinvent their business model. They cannot operate. We are hearing many stories like a lot of regional stores are closing because they didn't stay relevant to the business, to the customers. The third thing if you look at, let's take healthcare industry. Typically patients expect, historically, they were asked to maintain their prescription and medical records, but today in the new age patients are expecting the hospitals to manage everything because keep the data and intelligently apply the data because data is the new fuel or new oxygen, whatever you want to call it. >> Fuel, oxygen, one of those analogies. >> Data is going to play a critical role for any business. So every business is looking for how do I take the data and apply it intelligently? In the process how do I elevate experience? When I say experience it's both customer experience and also employee experience. So that's why if we look at, going back to the purpose of ServiceNow when John Donahoe was presenting in the keynote, he said, "We are in the world to make people's work better." The work is basically the experience. So we know about all the digital, every client is adopting the digital because of the advent of the cloud and the technologies around the AI, machine learning, et cetera, everybody is having a clear chatter of the digital transformation chatter as a part of their enterprises. So that is where we, companies like Cognizant, we go to them and then help them in truly being digital, how do you get there. That is where technologies like ServiceNow plays a critical role. >> And so it is the mission of ServiceNow, and it sounds like also the mission of Cognizant, to make the world of work work better for people. So give me some examples of ways that you are creatively solving employee headaches. How are you making the world of work better? >> I'll give a couple of examples. To start with, for a leading manufacturing company there are a lot of equipment dispersed across the field so we use IOT technology, sensors, and we collect the data, and the data gets analyzed and then we give a dashboard to our customers. When I say customers, the chief customer support officer, he or she can look at the dashboard and send the technician for evaluate it Imagine if the cloud was not there and moreover we use ServiceNow as a platform to do all the orchestration. If the cloud was not there, if products like ServiceNow was not there, this could have been a humongous task, but we are helping the problem for the customer. Today, with one click, the chief customer support officer can know which machine is giving which problem, accordingly dispatch a technician. This is one example. The second example is we are helping some agricultural companies where, in fact this came out during our hackathon, which I'll talk about you a little bit later, all this agricultural farms, the lands are there. When you wanted to grow something, you also need to know everyday what is the moisture of the soil, what is the temperature, et cetera. So we apply IOT technology and then collect the data and use ServiceNow dashboard to give it back to the customer. These are all real-time problems the customers are facing. There are so many examples, but if you look at most of the solutions and the outcomes what we give to the customer, it's all triggered by our innovation. So we are the only company, I can proudly say, conducted three hackathons with ServiceNow. When I say hackathon, all the people are put under one room and ideas were given and end of the day you'll get 100 plus ideas. Recently we did, about a month back, we did a global hackathon. First time we wanted to try India, three continents, seven cities, India, Budapest, Phoenix, 20 hours of continuous time. We generated about 115 ideas. Out of the 115 ideas, I think we are going to come with certain ideas and then put that back into ServiceNow app store. We have close to six plus apps already running on the ServiceNow store, now our plan for the next six months is to add another about 10 plus apps onto the ServiceNow store. >> That is the other questions that that begs. Are hackathons the best way in your mind to spark energy and innovation and creativity? >> Especially with the millennials. The millennials, yes definitely because they don't want to very mundane, routine work. They want a challenge, they are asking for challenge. So this hackathon is one of the ways to keep them happy. Because the future of workforce is changing with millennials coming in. And the jobs, they're also expecting, even in my team people wanted a change every 12 months. While we need to address our customers, we also need to take care of their expectations also. >> Let's think about the future a little bit now. What do you see your customers' future demands and where do you see Cognizant and ServiceNow being able to provide solutions to the problems they don't even know they're having. >> Right, right. So digital is the heartbeat. When I say digital is the heartbeat, the outcome is all about experience because if someone asks me, digital is not technology. Digital is all about experience so in order to give that experience, customers wanted multiple technologies, they wanted to reinvent, rewire, rethink their business models. So that is where we wanted to go as a Cognizant. For example, if you take ServiceNow, if you're taking that platform to them, how can I digitize your enterprise process, digitize your entire workflow and create automation, et cetera and then bring a collaborative work environment within your ecosystem. So this is what they are expecting. Nobody wants non-value add, mundane task, everything they want to get operated in an automation manner. That is where we are helping, basically anything that changes the experience, or pave a new way to the experience, that is where we at Cognizant we are constantly reinvesting on people, process, technology, and then taking that back to our customers. >> That's a great note to end on. Raja, we'll look forward to seeing you again at Knowledge19 next year. >> Thank you, definitely. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18 in just a little bit.