Darwin 2.0: IT companies opt for digital ‘evolution’

Cognizant, Accenture and Capgemini are among companies that have been beefing up this portfolio, anticipating a substantial jump in revenues. On Thursday, Cognizant announced the acquisition of SaaSfocus, a privately-held consulting firm specialising in digital transformation lending credence to the growing buzz in this sphere of business.

SaaSfocus is one of the largest independent Salesforce Platinum consulting partners in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with operations across Australia and India. The acquisition will expand Cognizant’s end-to-end digital transformation services and Salesforce cloud capabilities in these growing markets. Amit Choudhary, Partner and ANZ CEO of SaaSfocus said, “Combining Cognizant’s global capabilities, deep domain expertise and digital solutions with SaaSfocus’ specialised Salesforce consulting competencies will help us accelerate our clients’ digital transformation and create global opportunities for our employees.”

In the US and Australia, this consulting business has got off to a flying start, offering integrated ‘transformation’ solutions for businesses. Having breached the 20 per cent mark, both these markets are proving to be lucrative consulting business opportunities, a UK-based consulting report revealed.

Earlier this month, Accenture had announced the acquisition of two US-based startups – Mindtribe and Pillar Technology to forge ahead with its industry X.0 practice. This is the consulting major’s platform to help companies develop their digital transformation strategies by shifting to digital products and services.

Consider Asian Paints, a pure-play paints manufacturer, which added ‘painting’ to its portfolio of services, transforming its business approach radically. V Ravichandran of Alive Consulting, opines that “Companies are clubbing services along with products. Like when painting is offered as a service, a charge of Rs 6 per sq ft for a paint job, is now worth Rs 100 per sq ft – which will be shared among the end-to-end stakeholders. The digital push has made dealers, contractors and other stakeholders work in tandem to offer customers an option of bespoke interiors. The company takes up the role of training those interfacing with customers, thereby not only adapting to the shift from product to service mode but also expanding the business potential for the intermediaries.”

While sales continue to go on normally, the disruption has led companies to blend their digital strategy to garner more revenues. Accenture, for instance, has seen a surge of 35 to 40 per cent in digital revenues which is proving to be a phenomenal consulting practice by itself. Policy aggregator PolicyBazaar, a frontrunner in the digital transformation space, had disrupted the market with its ‘pick in minutes’ approach. And insurance firms have seen the advantage of linking their products and services to the online portal.