Performance Matters: How Cognizant Is Helping Transform Operational Processes
Cognizant’s UK&I Media, Entertainment and Sports lead David Ingham explains why the biggest gains come from combining connected digital ecosystems with data-led AI that removes friction and accelerates decisions.
The topic that everyone is talking about right now is how AI can create real impact as enterprises move from experimentation to industrialised, enterprise-scale deployment,” says David Ingham, Head of Media, Entertainment & Sports, UK&I, Cognizant.
“But while there’s a lot of excitement, many organisations are still struggling to bridge that gap.” Cognizant is increasingly positioning itself as an ‘AI builder’, focused on helping organisations bridge that gap and operationalise AI at enterprise scale.
Ingham’s perspective comes from helping organisations modernise fragmented platforms into connected digital ecosystems, and he stresses that the biggest challenges are rarely purely technical.
“Often it’s not even the technology changes,” he says. “A lot of it is getting the clubs or the organisations behind the idea.”
That buy-in matters because transformation competes with day-to-day priorities and can be derailed by the next distraction.
Digital initiatives, he argues, should be treated like strategic assets: “These are investments just like a player – if you get them right, they will have a longterm impact,” he says.
“However, we often see programmes cancelled or significantly ramped down because some other shiny thing becomes a distraction and they lose focus.”
Capability is another barrier. “Most clubs are small organisations and a lot of times you have people who are split between roles,” Ingham says. With AI now touching all areas of a business, “you can’t expect somebody to be an expert on AI and how to deploy it across fan engagement platforms, content, performance and data.”
Where AI is making the fastest, most visible impact is customer-facing personalisation because the economics have changed.
“With AI we finally have these cost-effective tools that are available to do personalised marketing like we’ve never had before,” Ingham says, from offers and newsletters to content and social posts driven by prior interactions.
The same logic applies to media: “How do you give customised video highlights to people based on what you know they engage with – AI can automate all of that.”
Beyond new experiences, AI’s bigger prize is process change. In service operations, marketing ops and content supply chains, it compresses workflows that previously required heavy manual effort.
“These tools are increasingly accessible and can be applied at scale across the data that these clubs have,” Ingham continues. But he adds a critical caveat: “One thing you need is the data and they really need to be investing in data, or the AI is not going to do anything for them.”
The falling cost of AI is resetting expectations. In the past, sophisticated analytics often meant expensive custom models and specialist teams.
Now, “this democratises the analytics,” Ingham says, as AI brings advanced capability within reach for far more organisations. Cognizant’s work with The Football Association (The FA) shows how a connected ecosystem and automation translate into measurable outcomes.
“We have some very clear metrics to remove friction in grassroots football,” Ingham says. The goal is to cut the administration burden, so more time goes into the game. “The FA want as many people as possible to be involved in the game but don’t want administration burdens such as organising matches and managing payments taking up too much time.”
On the fan side, Ingham says Cognizant is “supporting the FA to embed automation and AI to deliver more relevant messages, offers and content on the website,” alongside a milestone release: “We’ve just launched a new app. That will enable more personalised content experiences.”
Ingham points to The FA’s discipline: “The executive team will develop a 3-year plan that identifies their priorities and targets and is very public about tracking those. In all the projects that we’re supporting, we must show that we’re trying to move the strategy forward.”
The formula is clear: connect platforms to improve data quality and visibility; use AI to remove friction from high-volume workflows; and keep success tied to measurable outcomes.
“AI is the biggest thing, and the democratisation of this technology is huge,” Ingham says, because it enables organisations “to implement some of these tools we’ve been talking about for years.”
