The role of AI in redefining Enterprise Partnerships

What makes a great enterprise partnership in the AI era? We’ve been tackling that question at Cognizant as we designed some groundbreaking new strategic partnerships in the ANZ region. We think it’s important to understand how tech isn’t just transforming business, it’s changing the very nature of what a true partnership looks like.

Increased complexity, economic uncertainty and constrained productivity have become hallmarks of business operations. As the economic pendulum swings towards cost optimisation, delivery costs continue to rise. Leaders demand the realisation of TCO on shorter timeframes than ever before across the entire organisation.

“Simplification” has become the new strategic objective de jour. Retiring inflexible legacy systems, transforming engineering methods, and finding more effective ways of working all reflect the desire for less complex systems and processes.

Forward thinking IT leaders understand that new AI enabled partnership models are critical levers to simplification. By focusing on the foundational elements of an AI-powered organisation – data, privacy, security, and ethics – we also see a path toward building new products and services to bring to market.

Companies today are striving to become technology businesses, and AI is creating new opportunities to transform operations. We see two drivers at play for weathering today’s economic climate – reducing cost and innovating quickly. Cost savings are critical, but organisations must balance the need for business growth, leveraging transformation to drive greater value.

By focusing on those foundational AI elements – data, privacy, security, and ethics – you can prepare today to ensure a faster path toward AI-powered business foundations for the future.

What enables this? We see three key themes emerging amongst those seeking quality partners.

Productivity: How can partners help make a step change in the economics of technology? How can they improve their time to market, reducing time to market without compromising quality?  

Flexibility: Can we help navigate uncertainty and the rapid pace of change? How soon can we mobilise and how quickly can we integrate with their teams while navigating to unite around consistent “ways of working”?

Innovation: Can we help them see not just the latest innovations from their own industry, but innovations from anywhere that could be applied to their context? Common topics of interest are the latest breakthroughs in AI, Gen AI, and Data Science. Innovation is a mindset and Cognizant has explored cross business “Ideathons” to ensure optimised outcomes.

Most importantly, we see enterprises seeking new approaches to partnership that go beyond cost reductions and service delivery but instead focus on achieving long-term objectives and aligning around deep business value. This ushers in a new era for professional services.

Partnerships are being constructed differently and we are seeing a departure from the conventional commercial models that the industry has used for decades to flexible models which are designed to support ongoing innovation and change.

Our new Telstra partnership is built on a very new partnership paradigm, supporting the evolution of AI solutions while eliminating legacy systems and reducing tech debt, but also increasing employee retention and creating a more persistent workforce. The partnership will feature deeply integrated teams and speaks to a decade-long evolution from price-based, to value-based, to a model where co-creation of business opportunities and joint talent pipelines can flourish.

We are also building new partnership concepts with Fletcher Building in New Zealand, working together on a customer-centric tech transformation that unifies data value across 30 siloed companies. AI and APIs drive the technology integration, but it’s the teams and collaborative culture that drives the partnership innovation.

Here’s what their executives have said about working together.                  

"In today's rapidly advancing technology environment, strategic partnerships are fundamental to achieve our shared ambitions, in this case, digital leadership and great customer experiences. We're on a journey of consolidation and simplification across Telstra, streamlining our operations to ensure sustainable growth, and selecting Cognizant as a strategic partner for our software engineering and IT function is a key part of that,"

- Kim Krogh Andersen, Group Executive Product and Technology at Telstra.

“When you’re building strategic long-term capability, it’s not about price. It’s about the value and it’s about the thought leadership. We needed partners who could build and cleverly design what we needed. We know our environment is challenging so they had to be adaptable. That’s where Cognizant came in. The joint problem solving gave us the edge we needed.”

- Joe Locandro, CIO, FletcherTech

We are excited to be on a new kind of journey with Telstra, Fletcher Building, and many more partners as they evolve toward these new ways of working together.

Transformation is not just a technology change. It challenges internal cultures to change too. And the next phase is where integrated and aligned partnerships can yield greatest results in the AI-powered future we’re heading into.