Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [00:21]
Hello, and welcome everyone to HFS Unfiltered. My name is Saurabh Gupta. I’m the President of HFS Research.
Today’s conversation is one that I’ve been looking forward to because consulting is going through a pivotal moment. Enterprise consulting is evolving rapidly as AI reshapes how organizations operate, creating both excitement and uncertainty about what comes next.
To explore these changes, I’m joined by the consulting leader for Cognizant, one of the world’s largest technology and services firms. Who better to discuss the future of consulting than Shveta Arora?
Shveta, welcome to the show.
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [01:06]
Thank you, Saurabh. It’s always nice talking to you. I’m looking forward to an engaging conversation.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [01:15]
Let’s jump right into this. From your perspective, how is the world of consulting changing, and do you think traditional consulting is still fit for purpose?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [03:10]
The third change is perhaps specific to our consulting model, which has traditionally been the tip of the spear. We’ve always had more of a diamond talent model.
Agentic-infused delivery is creating opportunities for us to expand the base of the pyramid.
I think on all three of these dimensions, it’s a very exciting time for consulting, and we’re definitely seeing some unique impacts to our traditional delivery model.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [03:29]
Shveta, you’re clearly bullish about the impact of AI on consulting.
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [03:31]
Absolutely.
I think consulting skills will increasingly become embedded in other parts of the services organization. The skills aspect is going to be very important.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [03:39]
Yeah, one hundred percent.
I really like the fact that consultants will no longer be measured by the number of PowerPoint pages they create. They’ll actually be measured by the things they do.
One of the interesting developments over the last few months has been the model makers coming into the consulting market.
Anthropic announced a $1.5 billion fund to get engineers directly into client operations. OpenAI is doing the same.
It seems the LLM providers are getting into the consulting and services market.
What’s your perception of this?
Does it expand the competition? Is it actually a good thing? Or do you think it’s going to disrupt consulting players such as Cognizant?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [04:49]
First of all, I think the model makers entering the services space is the biggest endorsement of just how important the services market is going to be.
Perhaps it should start reversing the rather muted valuations we’ve seen for the services industry over the last several months.
Look, Cognizant, and especially our CEO, introduced this concept of the AI Velocity Gap, which talks about the huge gap between model capability and the true enterprise value our clients are able to realize.
The only way to bridge this gap is through services.
I feel confident taking on this competition from the model makers because of the years of experience we have in scaling the services model and, in this case, taking a truly technology-agnostic advisory approach.
Those are the two things I’m going to continue to emphasize as we take this competition head-on.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [05:57]
At HFS, we coined the term “Services-as-Software,” which is really about the blurring of the lines between software and services.
As you just said, consultants are no longer just creating PowerPoint presentations. They need to be vibe coding and creating actual software, which is a great example of what we’ve been talking about with Services-as-Software.
How does that term resonate with you, Shveta? How is Cognizant bringing that to life?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [06:18]
I think the term completely resonates in its mature state.
As we start to identify processes, we’ll see a model where an end-to-end process is operated by software agents, and humans are either managing the agents or managing exceptions.
That is software agents running the entire process.
The way it’s playing out for us in consulting at Cognizant is that we increasingly see ourselves partnering with our BPO services organization, which perhaps wasn’t as common in the traditional world.
To deliver the next generation of the BPO model, you have to start putting agentic solutions into it.
That’s where consulting is getting embedded, to design the agentic blueprint for outsourced processes.
I think the best example of this is in the customer service space.
A lot of your simple tickets, calls, and first-call resolutions are now being driven entirely by AI or agentic solutions, while humans are used for exceptions.
That is a great example of Services-as-Software, and it’s creating an opportunity for consulting and BPO teams to come together to deliver that solution.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [07:28]
Shveta, I think call centers are a fantastic example.
There are so many high-value, high-volume processes. Look at payroll, accounts payable, and so many business transactions.
In today’s world, why do you need a thousand people to process payroll? It just doesn’t make sense.
Since we launched, or coined, this term over the last one and a half to two years, every enterprise leader I’ve spoken to really likes the vision and wants to move toward Services-as-Software.
But then comes the realization:
“I don’t have the right data. My people are not ready. My workflows are twenty years old, and I have this spaghetti of technology that I don’t know how to unravel.”
I’m sure you’re hearing the same thing.
We’re calling these enterprise debts. They’re not on your balance sheet, but everybody feels the pain.
What’s your advice to large enterprise leaders trying to unravel some of this?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [08:40]
At least we’re starting to see a lot of the technology debt being addressed.
I almost call this the unfinished job of the previous digital transformation: legacy modernization and data modernization, because AI is making it much more productive and the ROI is starting to stack up.
Where my advice for clients differs is this: do not underestimate your talent debt.
You can implement the technology and start to re-engineer the processes, but unless your teams come along on the journey and make the impact, your investments will not generate the expected ROI.
This talent debt, or people debt, is the skills gap.
But it’s also a very deep-seated anxiety that people have about what this technology could potentially do to their jobs.
I think we have to start addressing both aspects very quickly.
I’ve had experiences with client organizations where we’ve driven bottom-up innovation frameworks, and I think that’s a great way to bring employees into the transformation journey.
Top-down, you empower employees with tools and skills.
Bottom-up, you create innovation processes that allow them to start improving their own work.
This is the best way to build scale in your early efforts while addressing that talent debt.
Once you address this, the other aspects will begin to fall into place.
So, go after the talent debt first.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [10:09]
Absolutely.
The other challenge, Shveta, that I’m hearing from a lot of my clients is that they don’t know how to buy and sell these new consulting services, AI-enabled services, or Services-as-Software.
We’ve been used to buying services based on some kind of human rate card, whether it’s BPO, consulting, or even McKinsey.
On the other hand, the model makers are selling tokens, and nobody really knows what tokens mean.
Nobody can budget for these things because they don’t have a real-world value.
How do I know how many tokens I need to process an invoice? It’s completely abstract.
Neither the FTE world nor the traditional rate card model works anymore, and I think tokens are still too abstract for the real world to absorb.
So, how do we buy these Services-as-Software offerings or AI-enabled consulting services?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [11:15]
Saurabh, pricing is still a challenge, and it’s very early days.
I’m starting to see some early signs of change.
AI transformations, by their very nature, are now being owned and driven mostly by business CXOs.
When you have the opportunity to interact with them directly, business outcomes become a common language.
Frankly speaking, I’ve written only two contracts so far where we’re actually talking about real business outcomes being embedded into the pricing framework.
But 95%, or perhaps even more, of our engagements are still with procurement organizations.
I think that’s where the transformation still has to happen.
There are some early conversations where we’re starting to embed agents into our rate card framework.
Instead of pricing only the human rate card, we’re looking at how to price a human working alongside an agent.
That creates a very different kind of rate card, combining both human and digital labor.
But these are still very early experiments, and I wouldn’t call them de facto standards yet.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [12:41]
Yeah, you’re right.
But at least you’re trying new things, Shveta, which is encouraging.
Look, this has been a fascinating conversation.
Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you a slightly personal question.
You’ve been in this industry for so long. You’ve seen different ebbs and flows of the consulting world and the IT services world.
At least for me, I haven’t seen this kind of change in my lifetime.
How are you changing as a leader?
What are you doing differently now?
What can other leaders learn from how you’re learning, unlearning, and adapting your leadership style in this new world?
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [13:31]
I think I’m now reliving the very early years of my career.
The first thing I’m doing differently is learning a lot more.
I’m carving out time every week to experiment with AI because the technology is evolving so quickly.
Second, I’m becoming much more hands-on.
In the past, I would often rely on my teams to build presentations or prototypes. Today, I want to experience these tools myself and better understand what’s possible.
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [14:06]
The third thing, which is what we’ve been advising our clients on, is building a bottom-up innovation ecosystem.
I’m experiencing that within my own team.
Rather than always driving new offerings from the top, I spend much more time observing how our teams are working with clients and delivering programs.
You’ll often find that some of the most innovative ideas are already emerging within the delivery teams.
As a leader, my role is to create a platform where those ideas can quickly be identified, refined, and scaled into formal offerings.
I’ll give you an example.
When we decided to launch AI-assisted business analyst services, I discovered that four different project teams were already doing exactly that.
The challenge was bringing those efforts together quickly and turning them into a formal offering.
Being observant about how teams work every day has become one of the best ways to identify opportunities to transform our delivery model with AI.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research [15:10]
That’s fascinating, Shveta.
Thank you so much for your time today.
One of my biggest takeaways is the player-coach model you described.
Today’s world is all about getting things done.
It’s no longer about creating PowerPoint presentations, making recommendations, and walking away.
Whether you’re a consultant, a BPO provider, a software engineer, a manager, an entry-level employee, or a business leader, success is increasingly measured by what you build and deliver.
That’s my biggest takeaway from our conversation.
Thank you again for spending time with us.
I learned a great deal, and I’m sure everyone listening has as well.
Shveta Arora — SVP & Global Head of Consulting, Cognizant [15:54]
Thank you, Saurabh.
It’s always a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for having me.
