Engineering conglomerate Escorts has partnered with Cognizant Technology Solutions in a five-year, multi-million dollar engagement to digitally transform its businesses across all segments.
This includes agri-machinery, material handling and construction equipment, railway equipment and auto components.
This is one of the biggest deals for Cognizant in India. The company declined to give the value.
Cognizant had also already won a similar deal with the Chennai-based Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Ltd to digitally transform its vehicle finance business operations.
Cognizant will enable Escorts to improve control and collaboration across its value chain by mobile-enabling its workforce and integrating multiple systems used by vendors, sales partners, and customers, says a press release from the US-based IT company that has most of its employees in India.
It will set up a Transformation Office to help Escorts embrace adaptive production lines and demand-based manufacturing practices, and develop new digital capabilities in areas such as mobility, analytics, cloud, telematics, and machine-to-machine communication, the release said.
“Escorts is poised for a leap forward with its transformative business strategies. We are working passionately towards becoming the most trusted and innovation-led engineering company,” said Rajan Nanda, Chairman and Managing Director of Escorts.
R Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice-Chairman, Cognizant India, said the company will help Escorts in realising their vision for innovation in building a data-driven digital enterprise.
By developing new collaborative and real-time capabilities straddling shop floor and supply chain, Escorts will be able to drive transformation across products, people, processes and infrastructure, he said.
On business from India, Narayan Iyer, Vice-President and India Country Manager, Cognizant, told BusinessLine that while the company has invested in a dedicated leadership and sales team, its approach to this market is a lot more consulting, domain and digital-led. The Escorts announcement today is a good example of that, he said.
New focus Cognizant’s focus is on Indian and multinational companies across industries such as banking and financial services, manufacturing, retail, insurance, healthcare and life-sciences, communications, media and entertainment.
In India, the company currently service over 50 clients, including Escorts, Chola Investments, Future Group, Max Life and ING Vysya Bank (now Kotak Mahindra Bank).
Over half of them are large Indian companies and the remaining are global MNCs having operations in India, he said.