Cigniti makes headway into digital engineering via a quality-driven approach

Cigniti is striving to outgrow its image as a quality engineering company to become a digital engineering provider. The math is simple. The digital engineering market is lucrative—it’s more than 10 times bigger and growing much faster than digital assurance. There’s also a natural progression path: quality engineering to digital assurance and advisory to digital engineering. During this journey, its 2022 acquisition of analytics, AI, and blockchain engineering firm Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr) has paid high dividends. Cigniti has grown the RoundSqr side of the business fivefold in the past two years.

Cigniti relies on proprietary AI platforms and extensive automation (RPA) work to make headway in the digital engineering space

Over the years, Cigniti has succeeded with homegrown digital assurance platforms like BlueSwan, which offers functionalities including AI-powered, scriptless test automation, predictive dashboards, process acceleration, and quality engineering support. Since its RoundSqr acquisition, it has added to its platform (and AI) repertoire, including Zastra, an AI-based collaboration platform apt for computer vision applications.

On the other hand, Cigniti has executed several robotic process automation (RPA) implementations, thanks to its gold partnership and 360-degree relationship with UiPath and strategic alliances with other leading RPA players such as Automation Anywhere, Leapwork, Jiffy.ai, and Nintex. A key reason for its success has been its comprehensive RPA framework, which encompasses specific metrics and measurements across the bot lifecycle, accurately predicting sustainable ROI. Cigniti has also progressed in other related areas, such as developing formidable maturity assessments and process prioritization frameworks for RPA implementations.

The sales approach is to farm existing quality engineering clients by cross-selling AI/ML (artificial intelligence and machine learning) and automation expertise required in their digital engineering pursuits.

Results from Cigniti’s recent RPA work are promising

Cigniti has done extensive RPA work across industry verticals in the US, including retail and consumer packaged goods (RCPG), utilities, banking and financial services (BFS), energy, and automotive. An excellent example of how it’s trying to expand its wallet share by farming the same client is with a leading utilities company in North America, a joint client when Cigniti acquired RoundSqr. Over the past two years, the size of engagement has significantly increased the revenue generated by the individual entities before the acquisition.

Cigniti is doing end-to-end RPA work with this client, including advisory, implementation, assurance, maintenance, and support. So, for enterprise clients looking for partners that excel in quality engineering and process automation, Cigniti is a credible option. RPA implementations can be a good interim goal, but HFS’ work with enterprise clients clearly indicates that the enterprise world is trying to move beyond RPA.

Cigniti has its work cut out to move beyond this point

Cigniti has gained initial success in its digital engineering pursuits, but they only account for 10% of its business and are mainly based on its proven quality engineering work. Moreover, its current portfolio of digital engineering services has many non-core engineering offerings, such as enterprise application integration, mobile application development, and content management.

For its quality engineering business, Cigniti is viewed as a pioneer for new-age, high-value models, such as continuous testing, but it doesn’t have the same advantage in its digital engineering business. It would require more guardrails, differentiators, and some bold moves in the form of partnerships or acquisitions to protect and grow this part of the business.

Cigniti should consider one or both of the following:

• Focus on the quadfecta of AI, advanced analytics, intelligent automation, and data platforms such as Snowflakes and Databricks to make further inroads and double its current digital engineering business to $50 million.
• Build or acquire core engineering capabilities, such as integrated product development or edge computing and assurance, to find a niche in this market.

The Bottom Line: Enterprises looking to adopt a quality-first approach in their digital engineering work should have Cigniti on their provider shortlist.

Cigniti has found a natural pivot from digital assurance to digital engineering. It must expand its services portfolio and focus on the emerging tech stack to continue witnessing success.