Swathi Moorthy
Moneycontrol News
Come April 2019, the Vodafone Executive Brian Humphries will take up the reins from Francisco D'Souza, the outgoing CEO of top IT firm Cognizant. By then, D'Souza would have completed over 12 years at the helm, during which period the company registered exponential growth.
For one, the company’s revenue grew from $2.1 billion in 2007 when he took over to $16.13 billion in 2018. It was under his leadership that the company overtook Infosys and Wipro in terms of revenue. The company also entered the Fortune 500 league, where it is now ranked 195.
But all these achievements are hardly surprising given that the 50-year-old was one of the founding members of CTS, right from the time the company began as the in-house project of Dun & Bradstreet Corporation in 1994. The company was later christened Cognizant, where D'Souza held various leadership positions till he became the CEO in 2007.
The growth in part could be attributed to period itself, which was ideal for growth of IT outsourcing services. In an interaction with CNBC-TV18, D'Souza's colleagues described him as a data-driven decision-maker. That probably explains the success of strategic decisions and investments D'Souza made during his tenure.
D'Souza seems to have been a believer in inorganic growth as evident from the pipeline of acquisitions the company saw since 2007. The company saw small and large scale acquisitions from business consulting to digital products and services amounting to over 40 between 2007 and now. The pace has only stepped up as digitisation wave set in over the last 2-3 years.
The company acquired healthcare IT services provider TriZetto Corp for $2.7 billion in 2014. It made series of acquisitions since 2016 till now including Idea Couture, Mirabeau and most recently Finnish company Oy Samlink.
Apart from growing inorganically, D'Souza was keen on nurturing in-house digital capability as the IT landscape witnessed a huge transformation.
"Last year, we reorganised the business ― we took all our capabilities and grouped them into three big practice areas: digital business, digital operations, digital systems and technology," D’ Souza said in a statement in 2017.
This includes digital marketing, developing connected products and digital collaboration and innovation.
"During my 25 years at Cognizant, including the last 12 as CEO, and the last seven months as Vice-Chairman, I've had a bird's-eye view of the world-changing technology revolution that is reshaping how we work, live and play. While I have enjoyed serving as CEO, I believe this is the right time for me to step aside and for the company to name a new leader to build on the strong foundations we've created and take Cognizant into the future," D'Souza said.
Humphries has his work cut out for him. It could be growing the new digital model and staying ahead in the wake of burgeoning digitisation ecosystem and new models resulting from that. Low operating margins compared to its competitors such as TCS is a concern for investors as evident from a letter Elliott Management wrote to the CTS management in 2016. Though they seem to have improved in recent times, the company needs to step up in this aspect.
However, the CTS management seems to be confident as seen from D’ Souza's interviews with different media outlets where he had mentioned that Humphries's experience of working across various industries, geographies, roles and transformational technology will help CTS grow further.
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