Jan 26, 2011
QUOTE
“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”
- Mother Teresa
Human Life
When someone can dare to burn another human being to safeguard him(her)self – Humanity is really in deep *****
Jan 21, 2011
Good day...
Today’s quote:
“Two thoughts decide the Progress in life.
The way you interact when you have nothing in hand.
The way you manage when you have everything in hand.”
- Unknown
Today’s Picture:
Thinking of all those sweet childhood days!!
Today’s bonus: Award ~ Reward
Award: It is a prize that you receive for having done something noteworthy. It is always associated with something positive; you have done something which people approve of. It is a sign of appreciation. You could be awarded a medal, a prize, or a certificate by an organization for an outstanding achievement.
Reward: It is usually associated with something valuable — money, for instance. The police may offer a reward for information about an escaped convict. For example, if you have worked really hard to write a novel, and later you receive an award for it, you may feel that it is a recompense for all the work you put in, that it is a reward for your effort.
While the word "award" is associated with only positive things, "reward", on the other hand, can be associated with both good and bad. One can be rewarded for the evil one does as well.
Jan 12, 2011
Go India Go
The news about Indigo making the record breaking deal with Airbus is really one, which sure raises eye brows… Seems like all recession time is over.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/indigo-airlines-makes-aviation-history-78772
Criticism
Australia’s downfall is because of IPL – Heights of criticism
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/iplarticleshow/7259246.cms
Jan 10, 2011
Jan 6, 2011
Swarg Ke dwar par
Swarg ke dwar pe 3 log khade the.
God : Sirf 1 hi andar ja sakta hai....
1st : Main Brahmin hu, sari umar aapki seva ki hai. Swarg pe mera hak hai....
2nd : Main Doctor hu, sari umar logo ki seva ki hai. Swarg pe mera haq hai....
3rd : Maine IT MEIN JOB KI HAI.... ......
God : aage kuch mat bol.... Rulaayega kya pagle..? Andar aa ja......... Tera forwarded mails, follow-ups, bench pe 2years, night shifts, PM se panga, CTC se zaada deductions, pick-up drop ka lafda , Ladki na milne ki frustrations, client meetings, delivery dates, week ends mein kaam, kam umar mein baalon ka zhadna - safed hona, motape ka problem, etc etc…. mere ko senti kar diya yaar…..aja jaldi andar aja…..
Parental Advice
Beautiful letter written by a father to his son and daughter.
Use this in your teachings to your children - you too can learn something out of it for sure. Following is a letter to his son and daughter from a renown Hong Kong TV broadcaster cum Child Psychologist. The words are actually applicable to all of us, young or old, children or parents.!
“I am writing this to you because of 3 reasons:
Life, fortune and mishaps are unpredictable; nobody knows how long he lives. Some words are better said early. I am your father, and if I don't tell you these, no one else will. What are written are my own personal bitter experiences that perhaps could save you a lot of unnecessary heartaches. Remember the following as you go through life
Do not bear grudge towards those who are not good to you. No one has the responsibility of treating you well, except your mother and me. To those who are good to you, you have to treasure it and be thankful, and ALSO you have to be cautious, because, everyone has a motive for every move. When a person is good to you, it does not mean he really likes you. You have to be careful; don't hastily regard him as a real friend.
No one is indispensable, nothing in the world that you must possess. Once you understand this idea, it would be easier for you to go through life when people around you don't want you anymore, or when you lose what/whom you love most. Life is short. When you waste your life today, tomorrow you would find that life is leaving you. The earlier you treasure your life, the better you enjoy life.
Love is but a transient feeling, and this feeling would fade with time and with one's mood. If your so called loved one leaves you, be patient, time will wash away your aches and sadness. Don't over exaggerate the beauty and sweetness of love, and don't over exaggerate the sadness of falling out of love.
A lot of successful people did not receive a good education that does not mean that you can be successful by not studying hard! Whatever knowledge you gain is your weapon in life. One can go from rags to riches, but one has to start from some rags!
I do not expect you to financially support me when I am old, either would I financially support your whole life. My responsibility as a supporter ends when you are grown up. After that, you decide whether you want to travel in a public transport or in your limousine, whether rich or poor.
You honor your words, but don't expect others to be so. You can be good to people, but don't expect people to be good to you. If you don't understand this, you would end up with unnecessary troubles.
I have bought lotteries for umpteen years, but I never strike any prize. That shows if you want to be rich, you have to work hard! There is no free lunch!
No matter how much time I have with you, let’s treasure the time we have together. We do not know if we would meet again in our next life.
Your Dad and Mum”
Jan 5, 2011
Just Five Minutes
“Decide what your priorities are and how much time you'll spend on them. If you don't, someone else will”.~ Harvey Mackay
Just Five Minutes
While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground.
“That’s my son over there,” she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide. “He’s a fine looking boy” the man said. “That’s my daughter on the bike in the white dress.” Then, looking at his watch, he called to his daughter. “What do you say we go, Melissa?”
Melissa pleaded, “Just five more minutes, Dad. Please? Just five more minutes.” The man nodded and Melissa continued to ride her bike to her heart’s content. Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his daughter. “Time to go now?” Again Melissa pleaded, “Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes.” The man smiled and said, “OK.”
“My, you certainly are a patient father,” the woman responded. The man smiled and then said, “Her older brother Tommy was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I’d give anything for just five more minutes with him. I’ve vowed not to make the same mistake with Melissa. She thinks she has five more minutes to ride her bike. The truth is, I get five more minutes to watch her play.”
Life is all about making priorities, where you would be able to give time to things that matter to you.
Know your English
1. Sea change- A large change
Example: "Globalization has brought about a sea change. Those who don't change will end up sinking!"
2. Flying by the seat of your pants- Intuitively (flying an airplane with no instruments)
Example: "Who knows if they will succeed or not? Without a clear business plan, they are just flying by the seat of their pants."
Jan 4, 2011
Good day...
Today’s quote:
“Management is doing things right;
Leadership is doing the right things.”
- Peter F Drucker
Today’s Picture:
Today’s Bonus:
I request you to grant me leave for Thursday.
When you say "grant me leave for Thursday", what you mean is that you would like to have Thursday off.
In other words, you would like your boss to tell you that you needn't come to work on Thursday.
I request you to grant me leave on Thursday.
This sentence is rather ambiguous. It could mean that you want your boss to inform you on Thursday that you have been granted leave. You don't want him to tell you today itself as to whether you have been given leave or not. You want him to give you the good news on Thursday.
Jan 3, 2011
Rob me?
People should be very much aware of their privacy & security when it comes to online & especially those like social websites. If you are not aware, check out http://pleaserobme.com/. This is one such site which tells us, how much the information we share online all the time, is vulnerable to be misused.
Jan 2, 2011
Cognizant Shares
Seems like too many Cognizant shares are being sold in the last quarter
Anything cooking?
JPC - PAC
Ohhh! It's so ridiculous & the whole set of lawmakers are making fun of the same with all corruption & a probe on the same.
Sugar
One of my close relatives advised just to completely eliminate any intake of sugar if you are thinking of doing a weight reduction.
Jan 1, 2011
Business World article - The Rise and Rise of Cognizant...
The Rise And Rise Of Cognizant
The IT company has set a scorching pace. Can it sustain the momentum?
Sunny Sen
THE DRIVERS: Vice-chairman Lakshmi Narayanan, and (below) CEO Francisco D’Souza lead Cognizant’s success saga (BW pic by R.A. Chandroo)
In the quarter of April-June 2008, Cognizant Technology Solutions trailed India’s third largest IT company Wipro’s IT services business by $383 million in revenues. Exactly two years later, in April-June 2010, the difference had narrowed to just $99 million. In the following quarter ending September, it was just $56 million. And that performance triggers a question: are we on the verge of seeing the first major upset in nearly two decades from among the triumvirate — Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys Technologies and Wipro — that has dominated Indian IT business all these years?
At least, the market has begun to speculate over this. “Cognizant is giving a head-on to Wipro and Infosys. Also, after TCS, Wipro and Infosys, Cognizant is the fourth company to cross the 100,000-employee mark,” says Vijay Gautam, senior equity research analyst at Jaypee Capital. Though Wipro closed fiscal 2010 with a lead of $898 million over Cognizant, in fiscal 2011, the lead in the first two quarters is just $155 million (in IT services).
Sixteen-year-old Cognizant’s rise through the ranks vis-à-vis 40-year-old TCS, 29-year-old Infosys and 30-year-old Wipro is causing a fairly disruptive phenomenon in the industry today, as Cognizant has made significant gains even against the top two. In more than two years since the April-June quarter of 2008, Cognizant has narrowed the revenue gap with Infosys from 1.69 times to 1.23 times. And from 2.23 times to 1.64 times with TCS.
Francisco D’Souza
In the past year, Cognizant has overtaken Infosys to become the second-largest player in the US in financial services behind TCS, according to an industry source. This area has been the forte of its competitors. The growth story is not lost on the stockmarket, where it is valued at a 30-40 per cent premium on EBITDA over TCS and Wipro, says Gaurav Gupta, managing partner (India) of Everest Group, an international outsourcing research firm.
Rivals, though, are quick to point out that Cognizant is not strictly an Indian company. Even though its inception was in Chennai in 1994 when Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, a US-based consultancy, opened a captive centre in India. But after it was spun off as a separate company in 1996, Cognizant got listed on Nasdaq, in the US. Its global headquarters was at Teaneck in New Jersey. Further, the company is 95 per cent owned by international institutional investors and mutual funds.
However, with 75 per cent of the Cognizant workforce operating from India and the global delivery head and the vice-chairman now making Chennai the base of their operations, like it or not, Cognizant will continue to be compared with India’s biggest IT companies. More so because it competes for a share of the same global IT outsourcing pie. Analysts say the key to Cognizant’s growth lies in its ability to mine clients. But the real kick may be coming from the very genesis of the organisation.
Straddling Both Ends
Before Cognizant was founded in 1994, there were two kinds of IT companies. India-based IT companies were conceptualised as offshore, trans-continental, software-development and support organisations to leverage the cost advantage, while large foreign IT companies operated onshore from the US or Europe.
Cognizant’s founders — including current vice-chairman Lakshmi Narayanan, CEO Francisco D’Souza and president and managing director of global delivery R. Chandrasekaran — saw an opportunity in straddling both the onshore (US and Europe) and offshore businesses.
“There existed an opportunity to create a company with a business model that was fairly positioned in between the Big 8 consulting companies and the India-centric players, and create a different value proposition for our clients,” says the 42-year-old D’Souza, who is based in the US. Though it was spun off as an independent IT company with a staff of 500, Cognizant continued to be US-heavy on employee strength.
Click here to view enlarged image
While most of the top management of Indian IT companies (except, perhaps, the marketing head) operated out of India, Cognizant’s current CEO has always been based in the US. “No one from the leadership (of other Indian IT companies) lived and worked in the US. Cognizant’s CEO lives and operates out of the US. They have localised faster,” says Mukesh Aghi, chairman and CEO of Steria (India), a Europe-based IT services company.
And now, even though Cognizant employs over 100,000 people, 25 per cent of them are its international employees as against 6-8 per cent for TCS, Infosys and Wipro. TCS, for instance, now plans to prop up its US headcount by 1,000, while Cognizant has 25,000 employees on its US and Europe payroll.
Such large presence at the customer’s end continues to give Cognizant a client-mining advantage. D’Souza explains how mining delivers results. Cognizant’s relationship with US pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca began in 2004 when Cognizant provided IT support in discovery, clinical functions, manufacturing and commercial operations.
In March 2008, it entered into a five-year contract for clinical management services. In October 2008, Cognizant entered into another five-year agreement to provide application maintenance services to AstraZeneca’s global enterprise. “Companies such as TCS and Wipro have sustained on big deals, but Cognizant has sustained on relationships,” says Gupta of Everest Group.
Jeff Smith, group chief technology officer at US insurance company Torus, explains why he prefers Cognizant. “We had high geographic growth plan and we needed a partner who is agile and flexible. In the past, I worked with Infosys and Wipro. The others were not as agile, cost effective and flexible.” Smith says Cognizant has increased and decreased its staff as per the project requirement.
While over 90 per cent of its revenues come from existing clients, for rivals TCS, Infosys and Wipro, the figure stands at 98 per cent, 97.3 per cent and 95 per cent respectively, according to an analyst. “Cognizant is very customer centric; an Accenture model at low cost,” says Sean Narayanan, chief delivery officer at IT services company iGate.
Up until today, Cognizant continues to leverage its consultancy lineage in what its clients consider a deep understanding of sectors. “They are customer centric, and at the same time very domain centric,” says Rohit Kapoor, CEO of India’s third largest BPO company EXL Services, which has provided BPO services to several of Cognizant’s clients.
According to Kolkata-based B2B e-commerce company mjunction, Cognizant has been able to look at their business not as an IT provider, but more from the eyes of a strategic partner who understands business. Says its managing director Viresh Oberoi: “When we took Cognizant on board for our B2C business, we did not even know which software to use. They suggested (that to) us. The company has the ability to sit on your seat and see the business,” says Oberoi.
In-And-Out Philosophy
As much as Cognizant was outward looking for new business, it has been inward looking when it came to investing in its own business. One of its guiding principles, according to Narayanan, has been that the management would keep operating margins lower than the industry, at 18-19 per cent, while cash is reinvested into the business in the form of employees, sales and marketing, and building domain capabilities.
Cognizant claims it hires more MBAs than any of the top three IT companies. This has helped the company understand the business model better. “The MBAs become part and parcel of any engagement — how do you understand the customer’s problem and convert it into a project definition or an electronic definition,” says Chandrasekaran.
Gordon Coburn, chief financial and operating officer at Cognizant, explains: “Our competitors look at maximising margins. Our focus has always been on the top line, though looking at a stable but lower (operating) margin.”
While Infosys operates at operating margins of more than 30 per cent, TCS operates at 25-30 per cent and Wipro at about 25 per cent. Coburn says Cognizant’s mantra has been to grow faster than the competition. Key to that has been what Cognizant calls its two-in-a-box model, where it has two business heads — one at the delivery end and one at the sale and customer end.
“This model is something many have, but they (Cognizant) have over-invested in sales,” says Everest’s Gupta. “During the downturn, they never stopped the pitch while others did. They never stopped the dialogue,” says Ashwin Shirvaikar, chartered financial analyst and director at Citi Investment Research.
In terms of net margins, Cognizant operates at 14-15 per cent, while that of TCS and Infosys are 24-26 per cent. Wipro’s IT services business is estimated to have net margins of 20 per cent by analysts (as the companies do not give net profits separately for their services business).
Integrating Delivery
But an area the company obsesses over is integrating its BPO with its IT services. Chandrasekaran feels it is important to have a parallel go-to-market strategy where BPO forms an integral part. Cognizant, for instance, did not have BPO delivery capabilities until it bought UBS’s India service centre in 2009. But even UBS’s 2,000-seat centre does not provide the company the scale it needs. It is widely believed that Cognizant has been in discussions to buy India’s largest BPO company Genpact for the past 6-7 months.
So, what will BPO bring to its stable? “It was a different service line. People were looking at it — voice or data entry. But as IT and business operations are coming together, it opens a lot of business opportunities in the adjacent areas. Now, we are able to look at complex business processes,” says Chandrasekaran.
But integrated delivery is not the most unique strategy. And the company might find it tough to bring in the differentiator as both IT companies and BPO companies are looking at integrated models. Wipro, for instance, is integrating its IT services with BPO.
Ashutosh Vaidya, president of Wipro BPO, says though 95 per cent of the business is still independent from each other, “the trick is to do IT services and BPO for the same business outcome. One must understand the process to make services and understand BPO to make the process work better”.
The Chinks In The Armour
Analysts wonder whether Cognizant can continue to grow at this pace if it cannot address two of its weakest points at the earliest. Especially, whether its biggest strength —the US — is also its biggest weakness. Cognizant earns 78 per cent of its revenues from the US, against 52.8 per cent for TCS, 65.8 per cent for Infosys and 58 per cent for Wipro.
Europe contributes just 12.2 per cent of Cognizant’s revenues. Indian companies have learnt the lessons of US dependence the hard way in the dotcom bust of 1999-2000 and during the telecom meltdown soon after.
Dependence on the US, though, is a necessity as the country accounts for 42 per cent of the world IT market. “It is not necessarily that we have missed these markets (outside of US). We will expand them slowly. We have expanded in Continental Europe and Asia,” says Coburn.
Cognizant recently expanded presence in Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), Germany, Switzerland and France. Asia is the next focus of the company’s investments and is growing at above-average rates (72 per cent y-o-y in CY09), according to JP Morgan analysts Tien-tsin Huang and Puneet Jain.
Second, while the consulting background and client mining may have given Cognizant a huge uptick in financial services (42.9 per cent of revenues) and healthcare (26.3 per cent), the two verticals together contribute nearly three-fourths to its revenues.
Manufacturing, logistics and retail represents the other big segment with 17.2 per cent. “The revenue is concentrated in financial services and healthcare, but this is not a threat in near time as BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) will continue to be one of the largest revenue generators for the (IT) industry,” says Jaypee Capital’s Gautam.
Analysts say the company was lucky that during the downturn it was not affected even though the banking sector in the US crashed. “Their bank and the financial services clients were better than the competition,” says Citi’s Shirvaikar. “The two verticals where we are making investments are energy and utilities, and the hospital (provider) segment within the healthcare vertical,” says Chandrasekaran.
It may be in the long term interest of the rising star of global outsourcing to plug the strategic gaps in its portfolio so that it can ride the next phase of growth without any hiccups. And if it does that, whether or not it is considered an Indian company, Cognizant may continue to give nightmares to Indian IT’s Big 3.
(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 27-12-2010)
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