Client Needs, Not Visa Laws Should Determine Local Hiring, Says Cognizant
Cognizant to target margins and not just top-line, says its strategy head.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. says client needs and not legislation should determine onshore, or in other words local hiring. The IT giant's head of strategy, Malcolm Frank, tells BloombergQuint that as digital offerings take precedence over other business verticals with clients shifting towards artificial intelligence for some of their customer-facing services, the support required for such applications necessitate more local hires.
The company itself is looking to align its operations with investor demand and shift focus towards higher margins and not just top-line growth.
Over the fall we had an investor, Elliot, who came forward and said we need to look at acceleration. There was lot of alignment in terms of what we were planning to look and planning to do, inside the company...Malcolm Frank, Executive Vice President, Cognizant
The company now wants to accelerate its offerings in the digital services play, and use some of its cash reserves to pay higher dividend to shareholders, make share buybacks and acquisitions in the near future.
The New Jersey-headquartered firm is also looking to increase internal efficiency to improve margins with an eventual target of 22 percent, said Frank. And while he conceded that 2016 had been a tough year for the company, 2017 he said, has started off on a stable note.
The company which has traditionally beaten industry guidance is not willing to stick its neck out just yet, and would rather wait for concrete signals before putting out an aggressive guidance figure, again.