Cognizant says AI scans employee emails and chats, helped drive $200 mn sales
Cognizant says an AI system that analyses employee emails, chats and meetings has helped generate around $200 million in additional sales pipeline. The company expects the figure to grow to $1 billion by the end of the year as it expands its AI-driven "context engineering" initiative.
For years, technology companies have promoted AI as a tool that can write code faster, answer customer questions and automate repetitive work. Cognizant now says it is using AI in a different way, to uncover business opportunities hidden inside the company's own conversations. The IT services giant has revealed that an internal AI system that analyses information generated across emails, meetings, chats and other workplace interactions has helped create nearly $200 million in additional sales pipeline. The company believes that figure could grow fivefold and touch $1 billion before the end of the year.
Speaking at Cognizant's AI Forum, CEO Ravi Kumar described the effort as a way of turning everyday organisational knowledge into a business asset. Instead of depending solely on sales teams to spot opportunities, the company is using AI to piece together information spread across different departments and customer engagements.
"At this point of time, we roughly have $200 million of pipeline generated incrementally through this extraordinary effort of doing a sprawl on the systems, emails, meeting, chats, everything else and generating it," Kumar said.
According to Money Control, the system draws information from employees who interact with customers in various capacities, whether through project delivery, support functions, account management or sales discussions. By analysing these signals collectively, the company says AI can identify customer needs that may not be immediately visible to any single team.
One example shared by the company involved a client that was looking for ways to lower engineering expenses. After analysing information connected to that account, the platform suggested a quality assurance optimisation proposal that could potentially address the customer's concerns. Cognizant says similar insights can also help detect delivery risks early and guide teams towards corrective action before problems escalate.
The company is additionally exploring the use of the technology for staffing decisions. Rather than relying entirely on employee profiles and skills inventories, the platform can look at actual project experience and past work contributions when matching talent to assignments.
Cognizant to soon give appraisals to employees
Just recently, it was reported that Cognizant had pushed salary revisions to a later date. During a town hall meeting, Kumar informed employees that merit increases would become effective from August 1, CNBC TV18 reported.
Responding to reports around a delay, Cognizant said the appraisal schedule remains consistent with its previous cycle.
"We remain steadfast in our commitment to recognising the hard work and dedication of our associates through merit increases and bonuses. As part of this ongoing commitment, merit increases for eligible associates will be awarded in August, exactly one year after the prior cycle," the company said.
Cognizant also maintained that claims of a delay were inaccurate and said bonuses for eligible employees would continue to be paid separately. For more such details, you can stay tuned to India Today Tech for all the updates.