Coforge is taking significant strides in AI with its dynamic collaboration with Microsoft. In an exclusive chat with CXO News and APAC News Network, Vic Gupta, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Business Unit, Coforge explains the contours of this collaboration and Coforge’s overall GTM strategy.
What solutions and services currently available in the Coforge portfolio for customers worldwide?
Coforge is a global digital services and solutions provider, that leverages emerging technologies and deep domain expertise to deliver real-world business impact for its clients. A focus on selected industries, a detailed understanding of the underlying processes of those industries, and partnerships with leading platforms provide us a distinct perspective.
As our CEO, Sudhir Singh says, and I quote him here “We are somewhat atypical in our approach to solving business problems. We are specialists, not just engineers and technologists, who spend an inordinate amount of time understanding the targeted functional spaces that we focus on.” This is what differentiates us and with our vision- Engage with the Emerging and mission- Transform at the Intersect and our values on integrity, collaboration, respect, excellence and innovation we believe in always doing the right thing for our clients, partners and each other, working within our local communities to make tangible differences.
Our success stems from our unwavering focus on product engineering and transforming enterprises with AI capabilities. Our services cover the whole gamut of technology ecosystem including Cloud and Infrastructure Management, Data Analytics, Cognitive and Generative AI, Digital Services, Product and Quality Engineering, Intelligent and Digital Process Automation, ERP and CRM and Business Process Management. We partner with specialised technology companies in these domains and offer to our customers comprehensive services with a track record of delivery excellence.
As a result, over 96.5% of our business is repeat with over 10+years of relationship with top 10 customers. We meet and exceed the unique needs of our clients across BFS, Insurance, Travel, Transportation & Hospitality, Public Sector (outside India), Healthcare, Manufacturing and Retail.
What are the key highlights of Coforge’s GTM strategy for India and what are the key initiatives under this strategy?
Coforge has deep roots in India. We have a strong presence in Greater Noida, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Kolhapur employing over 70% of our global workforce. They are talented individuals contributing to the growth of the firm. We have one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry- 11.4% which is a testament on our focus on nurturing and retaining top talent. We tap into the country’s talent pool to address the business requirements of our clients worldwide and in India.
We are deeply engaged in community development activities around education, environment with initiatives closely aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring that our projects create long-term value for the communities we serve. With a relentless focus on two pivotal themes — Education & Environment– Coforge has touched the lives of 6 lakh beneficiaries till date.
We also set up The Coforge Public Library – a community library in 12000 sq ft area, in sector 59 Noida. This is the first time a corporate has stepped forward to set up a community library providing free access to high quality resources. All communities and marginalized sections are welcome to access resources in the library free of cost. The Coforge Public Library, Noida has a repository of 10,000 books across all genres and 35 million digital titles and is shaping up into a knowledge hub that is providing tremendous benefit to the community. The library also hosts a series of workshops aimed at engaging all age groups, all free of cost,which are eagerly awaited month on month.
What are Coforge’s unique differentiators over other competitors?
Coforge stands out in digital transformation through its deep domain expertise, particularly in the BFS, Insurance, Travel, Healthcare and Retail sectors.What sets Coforgeapart are our unwavering commitment to a customer-centric approach, delivering tailored solutions that drive significant, tangible business outcomes.
Central to Coforge’s strategy is its use of technologies such as AI, digital, cloud, product engineering and automation. These innovations enable clients to navigate and lead in a rapidly changing market with confidence and agility.
Coforge’s ability to swiftly adapt to client needs provides a level ofcustomized service in unique. The company’s strong focus on partnerships and co-innovation nurtures long-term relationships, reflected in an impressive 96.5% repeat business.
Additionally, Coforge’s global delivery model, which blends onshore, offshore, and nearshore capabilities, ensures cost efficiency without compromising on quality. This approach delivers exceptional value and service tailored to each client’s specific requirements.
Investments in talent development and a culture of continuous learning further differentiate Coforge. By continuously upskilling its workforce, Coforge remains at the forefront of innovation, solidifying its position as a leading player in the digital transformation space.
What are the dynamics of the recent partnerships with technology players?
Partnership and alliances are integral to IT Services that provides a win-win for all and the provides the best value to the customer. Over the years, Coforge has built several long-term partnerships with hyperscalers, cloud and enterprise application providers, data platform providers, low code no code providers, security providers and niche domain centric providers. We have integrated them to build industry specific solutions, trained our workforce and implement them at client businesses basis their requirement and successfully integrated them within their existing infrastructure.
How do you envision the future of Coforge in the rapidly evolving technological landscape, especially with the advancements in AI and the ongoing collaboration with Microsoft?
The context of AI is not new to Coforge. Coforge has already been actively working on leveraging AI for its clients for last five years and has 75+ Customers, 200+ AI Projects delivered. The firm has over 500+ specialized AI practitioners, 10+ strategic partnerships, 15+ IP/innovations and integrated 23 LLMs in core and applied AI.
The firm’s focus is to enable AI adoption for its clients by delivering AI enabled use cases that add tangible business value. These areas resonate with the majority of the clientele. Clients have progressed from hastily searching for use cases to now being able to pinpoint their areas of focus with precision. Coforge is now working with its clients to transform theoretical concepts into tangible real-world use cases, leveraging its industry expertise to ensure success from the outset.
Our AI taskforce is centered around core areas like
Data strategy: Recognizing data as the cornerstone of AI, we enhance data platforms for optimal performance, implementing real-time data streaming, and ensuring scalable integration with a range of upstream and downstream applications.
Improving productivity with tools like Copilot: Utilizing assistants like Microsoft Copilot to increase automation in areas like code development, documentation, quality review, and testing, thereby enhancing efficiency and productivity.
AI enabled customer support: We work on providing smarter chatbots and AI enabled voice support for our customers
Back-office workflow automation
Shift towards custom AI Models: LLMs are not tailored for specific tasks and the costs associated with retraining them are getting prohibitively expensive, there is a noticeable trend towards developing custom, smaller models. We are working with our customers in this direction.
Coforge is poised for a stellar future in the rapidly evolving technological landscape, thanks to our significant strides in AI and our dynamic collaboration with Microsoft.
This partnership has been a game-changer, supercharging developer productivity, streamlining cloud migration, and enhancing enterprise efficiency across diverse platforms, from unified communications to ERP and CRM systems.As we transition into an AI-first company, with the backing of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI and GitHub Copilots, we’re on track to drive value across key sectors such as travel, BFS, and insurance with our specialized Copilot solutions. Our vision includes expanding our service offerings and training a substantial number of developers on GitHub, further fuelling our innovation engine.
What are the dynamics of Coforge’s partnership with Microsoft that enhances developer productivity, and what specific tools and platforms are being utilized to achieve this?
Coforge is revolutionizing software development with a holistic approach that leverages GitHub Copilot and our proprietary FAST framework—Functionality, Accuracy, Speed, Transformation—to achieve unparalleled efficiency.By integrating GitHub Copilot with the FAST framework, we transform the development process across all key roles. This involves reimagining the roles of multiple personas including the product owners, business analysts, enterprise architects, developers, testers and deployment specialist and enabling them to use AI and leverage GitHub Copilot to align their role goals and business goals of the firm.
Especially for developers we enable Gen AI led code generation on Java JS, Python, along with code reviews, code documentation, code refactoring with over 40-50% efficiency than current industry standard practices. Coforge has also developed proprietary agents for specific tasks such as enterprise architecture, coding, testing, and deployment, all enhanced by GitHub Copilot. This comprehensive strategy ensures a seamless and efficient development process across the software development lifecycle.
How does the Microsoft partnership facilitate cloud migration and improve enterprise productivity, especially across the Office suite?
Ourpartnership with Microsoft is transforming cloud migration and elevates enterprise productivity through a powerful tech stack that across the suite of offerings Office, Azure, Dynamics and GitHub. This collaboration is designed to streamline the transition of infrastructure to the cloud, addressing common challenges like outdated hardware and high operational costs.
With this alliance, organizations can reduce technical debt, enhance system performance, and achieve remarkable reliabilityand high uptime. The migration process is not only efficient but also economically advantageous, with some organizations realizing up to 60% savings in IT infrastructure costs and CAPEX. Advanced disaster recovery strategies further boost system performance, mitigate high-severity incidents, and improve overall availability.
Operational efficiency is taken to the next level with self-service business intelligence for advanced analytics and automated processes, accelerating data migration by 20%. The shift from CAPEX to OPEX, enabled by flexible licensing and pay-per-use models, offers improved cost management and budget control.
Moreover, data consolidation and accessibility are greatly enhanced, supporting superior reporting and analytics. With over 98% of service level agreements (SLAs) met on time, this comprehensive approach ensures that organizations can modernize their infrastructure while optimizing costs and performance, paving the way for a more agile and cost-effective future.
Can you share some industry-specific use cases of CoPilots for the Travel, BFS, and Insurance sectors? How will these industry-centric CoPilots benefit your clients in these sectors? How will establishing a Center of Excellence on GitHub/CoPilot enhance collaboration and innovation within Coforge and for its clients?
The biggest opportunity we see is engaging with clients to build industry specific use cases with the help of Github Copilot and Copilot Studio., which significantly benefits them by automating tasks, enhancing productivity, and improving customer experiences. For instance, in the travel sector, a large airline company needed to modernize its management system and streamline corporate processes.
Coforge migrated over 60 processes using Dataverse, SharePoint, Power Automate, AI Builder and Power Apps, covering key areas like flight operations and incident reporting. The solution enabled rapid development, empowered citizen developers, and created an internal development community for knowledge sharing. Embedding Power Apps into MS Teams centralized information access. This led to a 20% efficiency boost across departments leading to greater employee satisfaction.
In the BFS sector, one of our large banking clients aimed to accelerate time-to-market and enhance consistency in application delivery by reimagining their Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). We established a comprehensive plan to leverage GitHub Copilot, implementing a 30-60-90-day strategy. Specific use cases and teams were identified for applying the entire SDLC lifecycle. These teams transitioned to an accelerated DevOps execution model powered by GitHub Copilot.
As a result, we achieved a 30% improvement in productivity for new application development and a 10% improvement in other areas of development and testing. This streamlined the application development and delivery process, significantly enhancing operational efficiency and developer productivity.
A large US-based insurance organization needed to analyze large volumes of documents and improve accessibility for their analysts. Coforge developed a semantic document search using Vector Store technology for consistent storage and efficient retrieval. The solution also integrated real-time chart and image creation within documents. This led to a 15% improvement in employee efficiency and productivity, and a 20% reduction in time spent retrieving and analyzing documents.
Rajneesh De, APAC News Network
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