Cognizant to acquire cloud services provider Collaborative Solutions

Teaneck, New Jersey headquartered technology major Cognizant has signed a pact to acquire finance and human resources (HR) cloud services provider Collaborative Solutions by June 30. 

The company did not disclose the financial details of the deal.

Collaborative Solutions uses Workday’s proprietary HR, finance and student cloud capabilities, along with lifecycle management tools, to provide services to the government, and enterprises in financial services, healthcare, technology and education sectors. Workday is an on‑demand financial and human capital management software vendor.

“Workday is a critical enterprise cloud suite that gives finance, HR and other functions greater resiliency and agility. Collaborative Solutions, with its expertise in the Workday ecosystem, expands our opportunity in cloud by establishing a new practice area in this large, fast-growing market,” Greg Hyttenrauch, president of digital systems and technology at Cognizant, said.  

“Our combined strengths in cloud strategy and enablement will differentiate our offering, positioning us to provide full support to clients throughout their digital transformation journey,” he added. 

Founded in 2003, Collaborative Solutions is headquartered in Reston, Virginia near Washington DC and has over 1,000 employees, with operations in Australia, Canada and the UK. The company has a client base of 800 companies -- ranging from firms with a staff strength 1,000 to those with two lakh employees -- across 125 countries.

“Together with Cognizant, we will provide even greater scope and scale, extending our capabilities for clients to accelerate innovation in their digital agendas and optimise their Workday investments,” Carroll Ross, CEO of Collaborative Solutions, said. 

This is the third acquisition by Cognizant in 2020 so far. In February, it acquired customer relationship management solutions firm El-Technologies, and cloud-based billing and pricing solutions provider CodeZero. A month before that, the company won a five-year contract from Network Rail, a British rail infrastructure company.

Despite starting the year on a positive note, the firm reported 2019 revenues at $16.8 billion, up 4.1% from 2018, much lower than the overall IT industry growth of 7.7% during the previous financial year. It also withdrew its earnings guidance due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic. This month, Cognizant also fell prey to the Maze ransomware attack, which according to the company, could have an impact on its financial performance as well.