Joel Martin, HFS 00:00

Fine, now, last session, Saurabh and Phil are gonna come up and run a session of just discussing what we learned here, what's next in the enterprise, and get some more feedback from the audience. So the questions are gonna go this way now, and hopefully we'll have some good dialogue and wrap up the day, Phil.

Phil Fersht, HFS 00:16

And we got the bar opening a little earlier. We ran out of tokens, so I have to do something. Firstly, just thanks very much, everybody, for spending two whole days here. And we still have a pretty good crowd left at the end of day two. So normally it gets a bit thinner this time. So this is quite impressive. There are more people outside, Phil. And there's more people outside. So, and I personally have absolutely enjoyed this. I've been absorbing the conversation for the last couple of days and I'm pleased as punch for the two keynotes I reeled in. I've really enjoyed Ed and Cathy. So I'll praise myself on that one. I'd like to get some feedback from you guys on what you thought of the last couple of days, maybe what your big takeaways have been. Maybe you, sir.

Gio Moriano, IBM (audience) 01:13

So Gio Moriano with IBM. Just great conversations. I found, especially the conversations around quantum computing and physical AI, We all know that AI is everywhere, but to see how fast it's advancing around physical AI and the next frontier is really fascinating. Also seeing how leaders are approaching processes beyond just point solutions and really looking at the entire end-to-end spectrum. And a big takeaway for me is just the importance of humans, right? Like with all this chatter around robotics and AI and AI replacing jobs, I feel like at the end of the day, humans are still relevant. So that's my big takeaway.

Saurabh Gupta, HFS 02:10

I'd like to ask Abhishek, you've been sitting patiently, so what's your big takeaway?

Abhishek (audience) 02:18

Thank you, Saurabh. So for me, this is the first time I'm here at HFS Summit. I would say a really highly insightful and interactive summit. So a lot of insights to talk about. I mean, how the AI is overall moving, not only for the services company, but for the product and the platform owner companies as well. And the adaptation and the evolution, basically, in the next couple of years, where it is taking us overall in this journey. So that's very insightful. So glad to be here. Thank you.

Phil Fersht, HFS 02:55

Everyone here? Puneet? You managed to look at the equities market. Are you going to raise Cognizant stock price?

Puneet (audience) 03:05

I wish I could do that. No, yeah. But it was like the great couple of days, like learned a lot. Like from my perspective, like hearing all the presentations and everything, I feel like the change management is going to be huge, whether it's for clients, obviously IT buyers, as well as for vendors. There is going to be a new way to deliver services and companies that are hundreds of thousands of employees. It's not going to be an easy task. That's one. And then second, we do get a lot of questions from equity investors about what's OpenAI or what's Anthropic, like what they're trying to do with their services investments. I don't think like they can do everything, which is like a view that many in this room share. But I'll challenge like all these vendors as to why there was OpenAI or Anthropic thought that there is need to demonstrate like what an AI-First model looks like. I would hope, expect like vendors to be more proactive and in remixing towards this AI delivery, going back to clients, the case study that Saurabh shared earlier, that should not have happened. Like the vendors have to be, they got to be more proactive in my view.

Phil Fersht, HFS 04:33

Okay.

Saurabh Gupta, HFS 04:34

Fantastic. Gary, if I can, I'm going to sneak on people who are just lurking in the background.

Gary (audience) 04:44

Thank you. Yeah, I think for me, There were two things when I compare it to last year. I felt like there was more optimism this year I feel like there might have been or last year. There was a lacking in Understanding the direction of AI I feel more Optimism this year in AI because I think we're asking much better deeper questions And I really like the fact that there's almost an accountability being held now up to the C-suite and the board which from my point of view, I don't think they've ever taken real ownership about what's supposed to have changed in the business and why we run into some things. But I think the right people at the exec level below, it feels like there's an awareness of that and there's a seeking component to address it. And I also just, it's all the interaction. It's just all of the, it's the chats outside. It's, that's to me, those are where the real ideas really kind of germinate coming off of this stage.

Phil Fersht, HFS 05:53

I feel if I had to do one summary myself, this is the conference I've been to where the conversation has made a real shift from technology to business. It really felt like a shift taking place. Whereas before it was a much bigger focus on let's just talk tech, tech, tech. It's now about how do we actually use this and how do we use this? Kevin, right? Yes, Kevin. Kevin, were your name tags turned around. I got the K right, right? Your first HFS experience, what did you take away?

Kevin (audience) 06:27

First of all, it was inspiring. I learned a lot. And as a provider, I was very happy to find out that there was a consensus moving towards outcome-based, which is what we focus on. So that was overall just very affirming and inspiring. And it appears as though there is a trend from the C-suite folks that spoke here today, moving towards empowering the employee to exercise some degree of agency in using AI, which is also pretty inspiring.

Saurabh Gupta, HFS 07:02

Fantastic. Sameer, you're the CEO of JK Tech. Thank you for being here for two days. This is your first HFS. What do you think?

Sameer, JK Tech (audience) 07:11

So I think this was a wonderful event. And this is the first time, as you mentioned, in this particular conference. As Phil mentioned, I think I've seen a lot of changes from the technology focus or a productivity focus to the business outcome. I think more and more conversations are happening around the business outcomes with the customers, whether it's part of -- so I'm seeing a couple of things. How to increase the revenue, how to reduce the cost. Those are the two bigger things that people are requesting. And third is how to kind of improve the customer experience. Based on that, I think there are a lot of conversation on the use cases that we are looking at.

Phil Fersht, HFS 07:55

Anyone else like to share some thoughts? Do we have to pick on someone? Warren. Quietly sitting here. Warren Lewis, what do you think?

Warren Lewis (audience) 08:08

Well, first of all, I thought all the speakers were really good. I thought Ed just kind of blew my mind. So he was amazing. I guess one thought was maybe it's kind of a given at this point, but I didn't hear as much cybersecurity, you know, as much as I thought I would. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it's a good thing. Hopefully we don't have to talk about it because everybody's taking that step.

Saurabh Gupta, HFS 08:40

Yeah. So I want to pick on Josh here. Josh, I've been trying to get you for the last two years. You're finally here. Thank you. What did you think?

Josh (audience) 08:51

I thought this was awesome. I'm so glad that I came, and thank you for hosting and including me. I get a ton out of meeting people and learning what else is going on in the industry, what people are thinking about and challenged with. Had a lot of good conversations, have a lot of follow-ups to do with a lot of people, which is fantastic. The funny thing for me with these things is I feel both good and bad. I feel like I'm ahead of the game, but also I'm really far behind. And I don't know how it could be both, but that's what it is. And that's always interesting. If I had to pick something very specific, I would say that we're currently challenged around our IT outsourcing and trying to figure out how to grab that productivity gain through AI with our outsourcing providers. And we're thinking about it on the BPO side as well. So it was really interesting to see a lot of the thought leadership that you guys brought to the table. Thanks, Josh.

Phil Fersht, HFS 09:52

Terrific. Well, now we're coming to the end. I wanted to pick out two people who've been working tirelessly to make this thing happen. One is Perlina, new with us. Thank you very much. And Perlina's boss, who's always hiding away somewhere, Aubrey. Do you want to go grab her? She's the one who's really helped pull this off for us. She's probably watching on the monitor somewhere, but thank you, Aubrey. And then everybody, all the HFS team and the good staff at Apella. We keep coming back because they put on such a nice show, good food and all that as well. So thank you very much. Good stuff. And I think we've got some drinks outside. So I think we should just go out, relax, continue some more conversation. And again, thank you so much for giving up two days of your week. I really hope this was worth your while. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.