In this episode, we're bringing you a fast-paced conversation with Michael Valocchi, SVP & Head of Cognizant Consulting and Americas Strategy. In it, we take a deep-dive into all things Cognizant Consulting, including:
- Type of work the firm performs
- Industry and practice focuses
- How Cognizant Consulting works with clients
- What sets the firm apart in the industry
- Who the firm is looking to hire
- & more
Heads up: Cognizant Consulting is hiring NOW. Interested after listening to this discussion? Click here to learn more and submit your application!
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Additional Links:
- Learn more about Cognizant Consulting
- Follow Cognizant Consulting on LinkedIn
Transcription: Overview of Cognizant Consulting
Stephanie Knight
Michael, welcome to the Strategy Simplified podcast. We really appreciate having you on today.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Thanks, Stephanie. I just really appreciate this as our initial conversation. Should be fun.
Stephanie Knight
Looking forward to getting to learn more about you and your background. I wonder if we could start there. Could you walk us through your career path and journey up to where you're at today?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Sure. So I like to like to say I'm an accidental consultant. So what I mean by that is I actually started out as an accountant. And in the finance area, they asked me to do a rotation through consulting, before I made audit partner. And I just never left because I frankly figured out I wasn't that good of an audit partner, and really didn't like it as much as I thought I did.
And the reason I stayed is I don't know if I could ever do a real job. I just love the consulting piece of my life. Career wise, I've honestly been with the same company a long time. PwC Cooper's into IBM, and then I joined Cognizant two and a half years ago, as a consulting leader, and just really love this place.
Stephanie Knight
I do want to come back to that timing. But before we get there, can you just tell us a little bit more about Cognizant? What's your value proposition for clients? What's the angle that you have in the industry?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, I could bore you with it's a couple hundred thousand people, and clients from all over, but a couple pieces that really drew me to Cognizant is one, it's not that old of a company. It's about 27-28 years old, started from zero to a couple hundred thousand people and $19 billion in revenue. So pretty interesting growth story. But to me, the real important thing is what is our value proposition to the client. And honestly, it comes down to what we say is intuition engineered, is we're here to solve companies' problems.
And it's even interesting, if you ever take our logo and it kind of rotates a little bit. And one of the reasons it rotates is we try to think about our clients problems from all different angles. So you can come at it from an engineering perspective, but also from a business and a technology perspective. From an industry point of view, banking and healthcare of some of our largest industries, but communications and technology have been the fastest growing industries for us for the last little bit in the company.
Stephanie Knight
So Cognizant Consulting, one area of business within the larger organization of Cognizant. What fraction of the business is your consulting arm? And how do the different business units and business practices interact with each other?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, so it's interesting. Cognizant Consulting is a piece of the business, but it's actually a transformational piece of the business. So one of our focuses at Cognizant is really to change the dialogue with our clients. And Cognizant Consulting, which has really been around for a decade in some form or fashion, is meant to be that front end of what we do from a Cognizant perspective.
So the way we think about it is helping our clients saw from a consulting perspective, be that bridge between business and technology, and really anticipate our client's problems and do a little more of the thinking, while the rest of Cognizant is then doing a lot of the doing. So while it may not be the hugest piece of of Cognizant, it's probably one of the most important pieces of Cognizant as we're driving our clients to something just a little bit different in this ever changing world.
Stephanie Knight
I would anticipate, correct me if I'm wrong, but as we think back to the birth of Cognizant Consulting, perhaps at the beginning, it would allow clients to better understand and lead them towards the service offerings that that broader Cognizant had. But I would imagine over time, Cognizant Consulting has enabled the broader business to be more innovative and speak to the real needs of clients, creating new services, etc. And maybe that initial kind of value proposition has shifted. Is my hypothesis correct in any way?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, Stephanie, that is really interesting. And I've got a discussion at our strategy session to the board in a couple of weeks. And some of it, we're talking about this evolution of consulting within a large scale technology firm can take a lot of different forms. We could be, and honestly, we did start there, exactly what you're talking about is, hey, we're the front end and kind of pre-sales of the rest of Cognizant. Well, frankly, it's hard to build a consulting business that just does that. So this is where we've morphed into a really a management consultancy within a larger technology, where we're building out careers in consulting them. And we'll talk a little bit about who we're recruiting and things like that.
So it's kind of morphed. And then you actually got onto a point that we're discussing with our seat on the board is how do we then incubate for the rest of the company. So two things is we want to be more at advisory as a company, and consulting is helping that. We're not the only consultative people in the company, we want everybody to be consultative. So I can help drive that. The second thing is I want to be an incubator for talent in the rest of the company.
So, for example, I just took one of my consultants, and he's becoming a client partner. I've taken another consultant who's now running one of the strategic business units. So it's, Hey, you come out of consulting, you actually will be a better technology provider, or a better delivery person. And I kind of go back to my beginnings is why did I go into consulting? So I could be a better auditor within the larger scale company. And that's why I want to be that talent magnet for the rest of the company as well.
Stephanie Knight
It's a really unique opportunity that you're kind of giving to people that come into the consulting arm. And it sounds like also an opportunity to engage with you to become better critical thinkers and problem solvers, for those not within the consulting business, but just in broader Cognizant. As you think about and curate that intrapreneurship, that incubation that, really understanding client's needs, and then being able to drive to technological solutions that actually meet those needs, etc. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
And Stephanie, I do see us as a little different than a lot of the other consultancies because of that, because of where we live. I mean, I think of us, as you know, is we're providing some strategies, but they're a lot more executable, they're a lot more grounded in technology, because who we are as a company. And I just brought on another class of MBAs and undergrads, and I'm very honest with them. Like, listen, if you just want to do pure strategy, or pure business cases, and things like that, I've got friends at other consulting firms, and that's a good place for it.
If you want to be part of a roadmap to execution, then come here. And you know what, it's not for everybody. Some people are like, Oh, I'd rather do that. So again, the reason I love being here is it is something unique in the marketplace.
Stephanie Knight
So you've already spoken a little bit to the fact that Cognizant Consulting sits in between business and technology. You've spoken a little bit to some of the industries that you work within, but can you tell us more about your broader work portfolio, your service offerings to your clients, your specializations?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
So great question, because one of the things as you're building a consulting unit is, is you don't want to be everything to everybody. So one of the things that we've talked about with our CEO is, who are we and who are we not. Because that's such an important piece. So a couple of areas that I wanted to point out is one, in each of the industries we're doing work around operating model and architecture of the business. And to me, that's very industry specific. And that's important. Some things that we're bringing from a cross industry perspective is one in the process area. We see the bill built into the modern business, we think process is a really important component of it.
So we're doing work in the finance, the customer, HR supply chain area, so that's become a crux of our strategy. The other piece that's really important to us is what we call technology modernization, is what are the strategies not just for cloud, but the rest of the technology portfolio from a data perspective, from an innovation perspective. What's what's on the horizon for the next one or two years? And so that's a very big piece of our business around technology strategy.
And the last piece is wrapped around this is a transformation component. How do you think about organizational change. How do you think about organizational design, how do you think about culture and bring it all together. So that's really the crux of if. I could draw you a picture, it would be industry at the top and these kind of layer caked behind it. There are certain things that are great markets that I'd love to do, but I think we don't have a value proposition to do.
So I'm very selective in what we build. And then if I can, although my answer is wait too long. But the next thing I'm adding, I'm about to bring on a head of sustainability consulting on a global basis, because I think that's a next frontier of where we can really help our clients. So he joins me on September 15 to help continue to build out that practice for me.
Stephanie Knight
That makes a ton of sense. I'm so glad that you mentioned and spoke to the culture change element, organizational transformation, these broader elements. Do you view that as separate specializations within Cognizant Consulting? Or does every operator and consultant take on that mindset?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
So it's kind of a microcosm of that is yes, I have a number of trained organizational change people that go through certifications, but honestly, I expect every one of my consultants to have that mindset of how do you help a client move from here to there, so they become my incubator of that skill. Now, we may do projects around that. But if I'm running, so we build a digital bank for one of our clients is every one of the consultants on that project has to understand, how's that going to impact how the culture needs to be different in that digital bank vis a vie the rest of the company. So it does infiltrate through things as you said.
Stephanie Knight
I would love to make this a little more practical, tangible for our listeners. Could you walk us through one example engagement, something interesting that you or some of your colleagues have worked on recently?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, I will. And, of course, I can't give you the name of this client.
MC: Stephanie Knight
Sure.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
It's in the energy industry. So this was a fascinating engagement, because it started out actually on the other side of our business, and it was a request for proposal of, hey, we need to consolidate it a couple GIS systems. So hey, can you come do that? Pretty standard. And we flipped it on its head. We actually went back into the client and said, You know what, that's not the problem here. It's not the fact that you've acquired five different companies and GIS systems.
Actually, the problem here is, is from a digital energy perspective, from the transformation you want to do as an energy company, your platform is not right. So let's re-architect the business model and the platform and the processes. Oh, and then by the way, you're right, we probably need to get everything on one technology platform. So it was an interesting mix of some industry expertise.
So our utility expertise could vision it out. Then our process people came in and said, Okay, this is how the process needs to look, end to end. And then we have some technologies are building out the systems. But what I love about it is we flipped it on its head and said, You're not looking at this correctly.
Stephanie Knight
I could imagine that conversation could go in a number of ways. And I've been a part of some of those conversations to come in and say, this isn't the real problem, or the problem is a lot bigger than you initially thought. What the approach, or mindset, or culture within Cognizant where you're able to build a relationship, have that trust and go to your clients and succeed in those types of conversations.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, so it's interesting, because it's twofold. It's also helping my client partners, for the broader Cognizant to have the bravery and the courage to have that conversation. Because Stephanie, as you can imagine, that client partner says, Well, yeah, interesting idea, but I have a piece of work here that I can go do. So part of our job in the company is to help the client partner have the courage to have the conversation. The second piece is the makeup of who I'm bringing in from a consulting perspective.
So I have some dyed in the wool consultants like myself who have been at some of the big name consultancies, but I also have reached into certain industry specific technology firms and software firms and brought some of those practical people out, and then one my magics is also bringing people from industry and teaching them to be a consultant.
So when we actually had this conversation with the client, they could look at us and say, Okay, it's not just a high level consultant saying this, you actually have people who've done this before, and hands on keyboards and been in the business. So doing that dual kind of transformation is important as we're doing this.
Stephanie Knight
Thank you for laying out that example. As we think about the role that you play at the intersection of tech and business, are there other examples that you'd like to highlight to help our listener base understand that a little bit better?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, the other one that is a good example, and I alluded to a little bit is, is a client that we had that was building out a digital bank. Now, this client had some concepts out there, and he was an extremely smart client. What we helped him do was hone in the concepts, and hone in, get to the point where we're going to take this bank to a specific set of healthcare clients. And it came out of a business case that we did, but we're able to help him take it at a much more practical level. So he could actually build out the platform, but then let's go after the mid-level medical practices. Which I thought was very interesting, I wouldn't have thought of that, until we did these sessions.
And then next we can go after agriculture. And, and what he really liked about the work we did, it was practical, because then he could say, Okay guys, I've got a bit of a platform to deliver this. So you haven't just given me a strategy. Now I've got the platform, and we're in the midst of actually building out the platform for him piece by piece. And the reason I bring that up is it took very strong industry expertise, as well as technical and operating model and process expertise, which is to me that intersection piece that I keep talking about.
Stephanie Knight
Lots of different specializations needing to be required, large scale efforts, huge investments on behalf of probably many of your client engagements, exciting work. And it's also very cutting edge work. I mean, digital transformation is the path forward at any given time. You know, 80% of organizations say that they're in some type of transformation. And yet looking in hindsight, such a low percentage of organizations feel that they're successful in the transformations that they undertake. From your perspective, when you look at digital transformation broadly, what are some of the things that you're getting excited about? What are some of the trends that you're seeing?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
I was about to say this, and it almost feels like an overused trend, but I'm actually excited about the cloud journey. I've been around a little while, and we've talked about cloud for a while. And the reason we're so excited about it is we're going over this chasm of just moving to the cloud, to innovating on the cloud. We finally figured that, hey, we don't need, it's not just about the technology, it's about the innovation that I can do on the cloud. And I think that trend, frankly, got accelerated with COVID. And I'm probably I'm not the first one who has said that. But it also is I think the technology has come a long way.
And I really respect the major hyperscalers and what they've done in the past decade to really make this a proven technology. So the first time we're really excited about that innovation on the cloud. The second one is democratization of IT. It is, again, I date myself, is I learned Fortran in college. And I got out of it, because oh my god, I don't know how to do this, is anybody can code now. No code, low code. And in some ways as a large scale technology firm, maybe you say, I should be scared about that. Because then do I need these 1000s of people? And actually, I'm excited about it, because it actually changes how you look at a problem and how you look at it.
You're going to need the consultants, the process and the business consultants. You're going to need the high end architects, even if anybody can code in the middle. And I think that trend is going to open up possibilities like there's never been. And then automations ones out there. The last one I'll wrap around this is the whole experience. Is customer experience, the employee experience, and the end the partner experience is how do we make the experience better for everyone. And that trend I don't think it's going away anytime soon.
Stephanie Knight
Yeah. And the ability to be able to observe that experience, to measure that experience, to be able to have a more rapid iteration cycle around that. Totally agree that the citizen developer with low code, no code, it's just really revolutionary.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
It really is. And you see the coders coming out of high schools and community colleges. And for me, as a leader of a consulting group, that's phenomenal opportunity for me, because you're always going to need us to build out that architecture, to build out the business models.
Stephanie Knight
Well, we'd love to I'm sure that many of our listeners have been excited to hear about this space, want to pivot it back towards, you know, recruiting efforts, hiring at the company. Actually, I want to start with, I saw on your bio, that it looks like you joined, of all the timings, in April of 2020 if I'm correct. So you got a first row seat at the way that Cognizant Consulting navigated through the pandemic and COVID, and now coming out of that era. I just wonder if you could briefly speak to what you've learned through that period of interacting and working differently with your teams and clients, and what type of work model, virtual, hybrid etc, you're in right now.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, no, you're right. I joined April 1, a computer showed up at my house. And I was living in London at that point. And somebody called me and I got all done. And then, literally, for the next five months, I just store stared into the screen. And so yeah, it's been a journey. And for somebody coming out of consulting for so long, you used to work at clients and things like that. So a couple things that it taught me, and then I'll talk about what we're doing is one, you can make things work. The world is so resilient. We're all much more resilient.
But then the challenge that it has is, how do we get engagement in a hybrid world. And a couple things that I think are really important is listening, and meeting people where they are, and engaging them on some fun activities that you can do that. But you also got to sprinkle a little in person in it. So we are doing that for you know, I'm here in New York City in our office, we've got to get together at the end of the day here in our office. Got to have a little bit of that, because I don't think that's going away. We've also looked at how to want people want to be communicated from.
But I’ve got to tell you, one of the really exciting parts for me is, I think this changes the diversity for us. I started in consulting, where I was on a plane mostly every Sunday night, I came back later Friday. We don't have to do that anymore. We can actually have a work life balance, where I can say, I say to most my consultants, if you don't want to travel, I think I can accommodate that. If you want to travel, I can accommodate that as well. I think this is going to be a transformation in the consulting world like we've never seen before. It's going to open up the profession to people who maybe wouldn't have been in the profession 5-10 years ago.
Stephanie Knight
I think we can absolutely support that assertion from our side here at Management Consulted. We're seeing a broader diversity of profiles who are interested, specifically wanting to lean into some of those flex models or virtual models that may exist that didn't before. So broadly speaking, kind of pivoting it back to your current hiring and recruitment process, where are you hiring? What are you hiring for? What kind of people are you looking for?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah. So we're on a full scale hiring binge. I've got a new head of recruiting who started with me about four or five weeks ago and she says, Oh, You may not have to hire this many people before the end of the year? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. This is what you'll be doing. So a couple areas. I'll start broadly is like I said, I want to continue with this diversity of hiring. So I don't want the profiles to all look the same. So like I said, I've given a pretty broad remit on where we're going to find our consultants. That's one is we are doing various levels.
So like I said, I just hired a VP of sustainability. So I'm hiring even at that level, number of mid level people. The other exciting thing for me that we hadn't done enough of, is that an entry level. So I'm in my second year of doing internship programs. And that has been so wonderful. I had 100 undergrads and grads join us over the past two months. And so to me, building out a consultanc is, that was a little bit missing piece of our puzzle, as we move them up through the ranks. So geographically is we're not putting limitations on it, which is kind of fun. I would love our newer people to start in some of our hubs in Dallas and Atlanta and New York, if we could.
The other area that's really interesting and is exciting for me as Canada. I have a growing base of consultants in Toronto and Montreal. Is the schools up there, Stephanie, are just wonderful schools, just wonderful schools.
Stephanie Knight
That's very exciting. So I'm sure that there are people's ears perked up when they learned in general about your business and area, and then perked up even more to hear, Oh, you're hiring and maybe extensively.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
We have a LinkedIn live page too. So if people want to get some more, go to our LinkedIn Cognizant Consulting LinkedIn live page, and you'll see some of the fun we're having around the world.
Stephanie Knight
What are some of the qualities that you look for? What makes a good Cognizant Consultant?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, intellectual curiosity is my top. You need to want to learn, you need to want to be curious, and tinker and work through. I do various degrees. I'm a finance person. So finance is always good. You know from your early career is numbers always count. But having that very different types of people, but as long as you have that intellectual curiosity. The other thing is be comfortable with ambiguity. Is your work on different things with different clients? So are you creative enough to be able to have that? And then last thing is communication skills, is written and oral, are just so important. We were working on a presentation for the board and just how you tell your story. You'll laugh as I'm still a Minto. And if I was in my home office, I'd show you my Minto book. But we actually - do you have that?
Stephanie Knight
It's just outside of my arm's reach. Yeah, absolutely.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
And I actually had the wonderful experience to have Barbara teach the course. So it's very scary, because I don't think I was that good in her mind. But is we actually just the deck we're doing for the board. It was situation, complication, and being able to communicate. That's really my third one that you really have to have that.
Stephanie Knight
What's the hiring process like for you at Cognizant Consulting? I'm guessing that there's some behavioral fit questions, probably you have some case discussions or some business problems you walk through with them live. What should they be prepared for?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, so a couple things. You kind of hit on, on there is for me, cultural and behavioral fit is really important. So it is that art of questioning to see, will you fit here. And it's not even from my perspective, but certainly will you enjoy working here. Case studies, I'm a huge, I hate to say I'm old school, huge believer in case studies. And we've actually streamed on a little bit of our case studies so that the experience is the same regardless of your hiring. If you're coming into our BFS practice, or you're coming into our our healthcare practice. So having that case study is really important.
Our number of interviews is not that great. So we're trying to, you only really probably need to talk to a couple of us to really get that fit, because I'm not a believer in a 10 interview process. And our recruiters do a lot of the early screenings. I have a group of experienced recruiters that are helping screen that process. So, and honestly, those of you listening, it's not that painful of a process.
Stephanie Knight
Well, I am sure that people will be going to that LinkedIn page that you referenced. Going to review Cognizant Consulting on your main business website. We'll make sure to put all those links down in the show notes to the podcast. In terms of recruiting and hiring, any other thoughts here that you wanted to add or share?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is that we're building a unique experience here at Cognizant Consulting. It's something that I've experienced over the past two years, and I just think it's a wonderful place to be in the work that we're doing with clients. Our focus is around the global 2000 clients. There's not every place that you get to do the things you get to do here.
Stephanie Knight
Well, Michael, I really appreciate you taking the time to share a little bit more with us about the business and your hiring. But we have a tradition here at Strategy Simplified. We want to close out the conversation just to learn a little bit more about you personally. I have a couple of fun questions prepped. If you'd be willing to share with us what do you think the most unique food is that you've ever eaten?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
It was in China. And it was some of the fish head and different things of that nature. And honestly, for me, it was a little daunting because I was at a dinner where I was one of the most senior people there. And until I ate something, nobody around the table would eat. So yes, definitely. I had to.
Stephanie Knight
I understand that situation completely. So here's another one for you. You know, as you look in the rearview mirror, what's one piece of career or life advice that you would share with your 25 year old self?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Let the path and journey reveal itself to you is honestly is one of my dreams is become a, is help people in their early career is you try to plan everything out. Well, I have to be this level by this time. And just honestly, let it reveal itself to you because it actually does.
Stephanie Knight
Wise words. Absolutely. And you already in this conversation spoke to the fact that it's not all all work and no play. At Cognizant you're able to find a work life balance. So what are some things you like to do in your free time? What do you like to do on the weekend?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, so I have the wonderful opportunity to live right in New York City. So there's a couple things we do almost pretty regularly is first, we probably have the cutest dog in the entire world who comes to Central Park with us every Saturday for some of the most beautiful walks that we do. Love Broadway shows. There are some weekends that we'll do double matinees. We'll do a matinee on a Saturday and a matinee on a Sunday. My wife sits on the board of one of the Broadway theaters. So love that. And frankly, I'll read voraciously. So I will at any point in time, I'll be reading one or two different books.
Stephanie Knight
Throw another one at you then. Anything that you're reading now that you would recommend?
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Yeah, it is interesting is I'm in the middle of - I'm a history history buff - I'm in the middle of a book on Kissinger's leadership lessons, and you forget what a great man he was and some of the things he does. And so some of the, I've read the Colin Powell ones, but this Kissinger one's really fascinating on some of the things from a leadership perspective.
Stephanie Knight
Interesting. Well, Michael, it's been great to get to know you. Great to learn more about Cognizant Consulting. We just really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.
Cognizant Consulting: Michael Valocchi
Okay, well, thank you.
Conclusion
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