2019 AWARD FINALIST SPOTLIGHT: Cognizant Technology Solutions - Finalist in the Operational Excellence to deliver Digital Transformation Category

Read this article about Cognizant Technology Solutions, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Digital Transformation, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2019 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program. Click here to read articles on other finalists.

Digital Finance in Cognizant  

Cognizant provides digital F&A services across procure to pay, order to cash, record to report and financial planning & analysis towers incorporating vertical specific expertise and offerings across industries such as banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, life sciences, logistics, manufacturing, energy, utilities, retail, travel & hospitality.

Transformation to digital finance requires a Digital First approach which implies a combination of the following levers - reimagine of the service design and realignment of the operating model, automation at scale and AI powered analytics, new age metrics focused on automation, customer experience and visibility.

Our digital finance approach enables clients to enhance their finance function end to end and deliver to evolving expectations and future ready operations. Our solution enables clients to make their finance processes agile, intelligent, automated and digitally enabled for benefits delivered at scale.

Such enhancements may be summarized as follows:

• Dynamic and controlled data exchange and consolidation – through integration layer for ERPs and orchestration across process platforms and consolidating to a common book of records to deliver single view of process
• Cloud based engagement – on BPaaS platforms for process towers and the integration layer
• Intelligent automation and robotics at scale – through robotics as-a-service or in partnership with RPA and cognitive providers
• Integrated process management and reporting – on dynamic dashboards and common book of records
• Enterprise analytics and business insights – from embedded analytics and AI powered visualization for influencing data driven decision making
• Reimagined process - harmonized and standardized with enhanced user and customer experience and digital led new age metrics"

Business Results

Cognizant Digital Finance & Accounting enables our clients to achieve business value which would otherwise be unobtainable. We may classify such value delivered with examples as below:

Business outcomes

• 2-3 Day improvement (e.g. DSO, DPO), where we have collaborated with customers on projects such as vendor pay terms rationalization vendor debit balance, bad debt reserve reduction, write back etc., reduction in vendor overdue payment impacting working capital by up to $250M annually
• 30-50% reduction in total cost of operations, $25-$35M through system rationalization, reduced close cycle time by 30-40%, spend optimization by $20-$30M and Revenue enablement by $5-$10M

Standard and scalable

• Cloud-based platforms across F&A services with prebuilt automation tools and systems, conversion of capital to operating expenditure, Digital playbook for future growth and integrations
  

Business insights

• Enterprise analytics and decision support across F&A, Domain expertise across O2C, R2R and P2P services – Working Capital optimization at stores for global retailer
• Digital re-imagination of business finance model focused around CX Anytime, Anywhere metric through Digital CFO dashboards with new age metric for multiple clients across industries.

Next gen efficiencies

• Autonomous and assisted RPA including robotics-as-a-service with $150M+ Financial adjustments posted by bots daily, 200+ BOT resumes consulted for client opportunities.
• Next generation digital technology including NLP and NLG, Digital customer experience with integrated bolt-on solution for extraction of exceptional invoice information from ERP enabled, built in AI for invoice prioritization with chat-bots for real time update to suppliers on invoice status to improve end user experience.