Automation is a trending buzzword in the solutions space — and for good reason. It is a major component of digital transformation and a nifty tool to keep employees focuse on critical tasks and deliver consistent, enjoyable experiences for customers.

As a customer and partner of UiPath Inc., Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. recently embarked on an automation-led digital transformation renaissance of its own — to astounding results.

“We actually started working with automation ourselves back in 2018, where we just put in a CoE,” said Mariesa Coughanour (pictured), head of automation advisory services at Cognizant. “We said we want to drive it into our business operations. But about a year ago, we decided to go further. We wanted to empower our employees through citizen development. And we know that that’s really the future.”

Coughanour spoke with Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during last month’s UiPath Forward IV conference. They discussed Cognizant’s unique automation and digital transformation journeys so far, as well as real-world results. (* Disclosure below.)

Driving value across the board

When organizations begin to decide on automating some of their processes, the primary consideration that’s usually made revolves around value — value to employees, customers or to the customers’ customers. The recent efforts internally at Cognizant, driven by UiPath, are yielding value across these three aforementioned spectrums, according to Coughanour.

“We went and had 2,500 people participate in our recent ‘Game of Bots’ hackathon over eight weeks. We built over a thousand bots. And guess what? We drove over 200,000 hours back into the organization in just eight weeks. So super big success story. People loved it. Our teams were excited,” Coughanour explained.

Automation has helped free up time and resources for the bright minds at Cognizant to innovate and explore new profit avenues, while setting several customer-facing tasks on autopilot and dramatically bringing down wait times, according to Coughanour.

Leaning on its partnership with UiPath, the company is making strides toward getting 60,000 of its employees trained in robotic process automation, up significantly from the 7,000 currently trained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath’s Forward IV conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath’s Forward IV conference. Neither UiPath Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE