PERSPECTIVES | Five years with Cognizant: Thea Hayden and David Ingham on our partnership, what's next, and how together we're turning AI hype into reality
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Adopting AI is one thing; getting the most out of it is another. Five years into our partnership, Cognizant has become our Global AI Services Partner. Thea Hayden and David Ingham explore what we've achieved together and what comes next, from transforming team operations to bringing us closer to our I / AM members.
F1 is an early adopter. Not of anything in particular: F1 is an early adopter of everything. It doesn't really have a choice. Unlike most engineering businesses which work in timescales measured in months and usually years, F1 tends to think in weeks; often in days.
The visible tip of that particular iceberg is a car that never runs in the same configuration twice, but behind that, the same process is ongoing at the factory. If there's a new technology that may lead to a better design process, testing regime, or manufacturing operation, F1 teams are the first in line to try it out.
There is room for genius, but ours is primarily an iterative business, measured in points of downforce, grams of weight saved, bhp gained, fhp reduced. This is why shutdown periods have to be codified in the Sporting Regulations: if you didn't physically lock the factory, the idea of taking a day off would be absurd. You'd lose so much ground.
Over the decades, the battlegrounds shift. Again, on track it's easy to see from the first downforce generating aerodynamics, through composite chassis and active suspension, all the way up to Coandă exhausts, hybrid engines, haloes and driver cooling systems. Laptops appeared on the pit wall and mobile phones in the paddock before they appeared almost anywhere else.
But the visible progress at the track is mirrored in the factories, with autoclaves, computing, CNC mills: CAD, CFD, CAE, FEA, PLM. Having the toys doesn't mean you're going to win – but not having them means you're going to lose. The modern battleground is Artificial Intelligence.
F1 has gone for AI in a big way. Tools are popping up everywhere, from the pit wall to the commercial office. Enthusiasm for new tech is strong… though not necessarily tempered by profound insight. Fortunately, we have Cognizant to help us bridge the gap between the potential inherent within the technology, and the practical application.
They came on board as one of the first partners of the new Aston Martin F1 team, back in 2021, and we're now celebrating five years of an incredibly successful relationship. Ahead of the US Grand Prix, we sat down with CMO Thea Hayden and David Ingham, UK&I Media, Entertainment and Sports Lead, to reflect on our partnership and to understand where AI is, where it's going, and what that means for us.
Five years of partnership
Thea: "Five years? It's gone by in a blink! I do remember the very beginning, and the original goal on both sides was to approach this genuinely as a partnership, rather than sponsorship or a vendor relationship. That set the stage.
"Our Cognizant team and the Aston Martin F1 team, collectively, have grown, adapted and evolved, and we continue to complement each other. We've just been named the team's Global AI Services Partner and we're still finding new ways to work together. To me, this partnership today makes more sense now than ever.
"That's not to say it's entirely technology based. The sponsorship and marketing impact of our partnership is huge. I think we were super fortunate to get in early with Aston Martin and ride the wave of increasing popularity F1 is enjoying. The global fan base has grown exponentially in that time. The popularity in the US is seeing double-digit growth year-on-year. It's exciting to be part of this – and Aston Martin is the right partner for us. It over-indexes for C-level fans with over a third in managerial or executive positions, which is a great match for our Cognizant audience base. There's a high brand awareness, and 84 per cent of Aston Martin fans who are familiar with the brand see Cognizant favourably. For us, that's a really significant outcome from this partnership.
"F1 is changing, and Aston Martin is changing. At the very start, the list of partners inherited from Racing Point had very little evidence of tech sponsorship in the portfolio. That's evolved rapidly. Today it's probably 50 per cent tech companies and high-end AI disruptors. That's fascinating for us, because it brings in a whole other set of people who are legitimately interested in the tech and the engineering. People we really want to talk to and people we are oftentimes already working with on client work."
Even the most powerful AI model doesn't work off the shelf. The model is probably 10 per cent of the solution. The other 90 per cent is making that model work within the context and construct of your business.
Thea Hayden
You can't just add AI and stir
Thea: "AI has changed a lot over these five years, and today that pace of change is accelerating like nothing I've ever seen. This brings with it some issues for business. We recently asked decision makers in IT and business if their AI capabilities were meeting their AI ambitions. 89 per cent said their current capabilities do not meet their ambitions. I've read other research saying 97 per cent of businesses say they still have significant challenges adopting AI. The gap is real, and as an AI builder, we exist to help clients close that gap.
"This is an interesting time for the adoption of AI. Every business has decades of legacy systems, data and processes that were built long before AI became a topic to discuss with your kids around the dinner table. It doesn't work to simply drop AI into the midst of those existing processes: you can't just add AI and stir.
"Even the most powerful AI model doesn't work off the shelf. You can't plug it in, sit back and expect it to deliver value. The model is probably 10 per cent of the solution. The other 90 per cent is making that model work within the context and construct of your business. The gap is structural: clients need to reimagine their processes and workflows to really take full advantage of AI and deliver useful outcomes. That's what Cognizant helps clients do.
"Taking a step back, something that's at the very core of Cognizant is that we know our clients' businesses. We know their industries and the context in which they operate – and we apply that context to AI. In some cases, we know a client's IT estate better than they do, and that gives us the opportunity to build all of that knowledge into AI that actually works in that space. We have a frontier-led workforce that builds AI with agility, so that our clients can move faster."
David: "Jensen Huang of Nvidia likes to talk about the five layers of AI: energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications, that have to come together in order to deliver end-value. That's things like the hyperscalers, the cloud, AI models, data, services. You need someone to build all of those things together. Aston Martin has been very strategic with its partners in that sense: it has CoreWeave, it has Cohere, it has all of these layers of the AI value chain represented, as well as Cognizant who can then pull those things together and extract the value from those individual partnerships – which is what many of our other clients are asking for at the moment.
"As the team brings on more technology partners, they feel like natural partners for us as well. With ServiceNow, with Zscaler, with NetApp, these are all partnerships we had prior to, or separate from, our partnership with the team. We do integration projects with our clients where we're implementing and supporting all of these tools. So, to be able to do that in the Aston Martin environment, in the F1 environment, and be partners with all of these organisations, and demonstrate value to the team, that's been a really great showcase of Cognizant as an integrator between technology partners on the car.
"For me, as someone who wasn't particularly into F1 before our partnership, the thing that attracts me now and makes me want to see more and more, is the understanding of what goes on in the AMR Technology Campus. There's a temptation watching on TV to assume the team is the drivers and the 20 people visible in the garage. But when we're able to take our clients into the team's Silverstone home and see the extent of the engineering effort, see people working in Mission Control on a race weekend, that reveals something different, and drives an appreciation of the global operation and the level of integration it requires. It's information for our clients – but I've become the sort of fan who just wants more of that behind-the-scenes insight."
The boundaries are blurring between sport and business
Thea: "There are parallels between sport and technology but, today, many of those parallels are becoming intersections. It's very much a two-way dialogue: businesses can learn from F1's relentless focus and tireless execution. The most successful businesses are singularly focused on the outcome they're trying to drive – and F1 teams excel at this. Results generally take a bit longer in business – it might be the quarter or the fiscal year, rather than the next race weekend – but the focus required, and the execution required are the same. That's why clients come to Cognizant: so we can help them make sure their investment in technology drives the business outcomes they are looking for."
David: "The cost-cap restrictions in F1 are a brilliant narrative to use when I'm speaking with clients. The cost-cap effectively means that no matter where you find efficiencies in the business, that frees up resources to invest in upgrades for the car. Those efficiencies don't need to be located in the design department or in the manufacturing hall, they could be in HR or facilities management: the less spent there, the more of a capped budget can be redirected into engineering. I think this really helps our clients see a parallel between F1 and their business, and make a connection to their world once we go beyond the excitement of seeing the car at a racetrack on the weekends."
Millions of fans come to Aston Martin for thousands of different reasons – so how do you address their interests?
David Ingham
Cognizant and I / AM
David: "A lot has changed in this team over our five years as partners, and one of the things that has changed most significantly is the fanbase. In 2021, this team became Aston Martin, and with that came a new strategy, new investment, more data and a new set of fans. There are a huge number of people who have joined I / AM, want to stay close to the team, and want to know what's going on. I / AM is there to ensure the team does everything it possibly can to engage with fans and reward that loyalty – and Cognizant is helping with that.
"At the beginning of this journey, the team would send out one standard newsletter a week with offers on merchandise and things like that. That's fine if everyone lives within five miles of the factory and speaks English as a first language, supports the drivers equally and has a global interest in the sport. But it's not necessarily the case, and the team doesn't work like that anymore. Millions of fans come to Aston Martin for thousands of different reasons – so how do you address their interests?
"We know there's a contingent of Spanish fans and they're supporting Fernando, just like in the past German fans were supporting Sebastian Vettel. There are Canadian fans interested in what Lance is doing, there are Aston Martin owners with a loyalty to the brand. And then, through Drive to Survive there is an entirely new class of genuine fans for whom the actual racing is the least interesting part of the sport. You can't really serve the fanbase well by putting them in the same box as pure petrolheads who live for race day.
"So, how do you give fans the content they want, providing them with the sort of messaging they want to receive, tailor the offers, products and merchandise to delight that individual? Humans can't do that: you'd need a marketing team twice the size of the engineering team. But AI can do that, and that's why we're currently supporting the team in developing a content strategy and a clean data ecosystem that can recognise what people want from I / AM.
"It'll understand where they are geographically, and promote material based on whether they're most likely to be interested in content about Fernando or about Lance; it'll learn what time of day they're most likely to enjoy reading fresh content. It'll understand the languages in which they'd like to receive that content, it'll understand if they're more likely to be interested in a race taking place in Austin, or Miami or Las Vegas. The goal is to personalise at scale so we can give fans a better experience, with the team talking directly to them. AI allows us to do that, and ensure the team is getting the most from the effort, and delivering the best sort of content to each part of a very diverse fanbase."
Thea: "And it needs to be seamless because as consumers, when we sense AI in the background, that's not a good thing. Fans want to be heard and they want to be part of the experience – and AI can enable that."
Five years of partnership… and beyond
David: "Where does AI go next – and where does our partnership with the team go next? The sky is the limit. We can't let AI loose on designing a car, but there are hundreds of other operational use cases that could add value to the team, and we're discussing lots of opportunities at the factory. Things like 'digital twins' and how you can have AI agents monitoring things like 3D printers and autoclaves, adding value by freeing up staff from having to walk around inspecting the machines as they do today."
Thea: "Overall, my hope is that we're just getting started as a partner. Success to me looks like a continuing partnership that continues to deliver real results. Again, there are parallels between how you approach an AI programme, and how an F1 team attacks a race weekend or a season: there is consistent learning, continuous improvement, rapid feedback, short cycle-times. It's about a need for progress rather than perfection, curiosity ahead of certainty, learning over knowing. F1 doesn't wait for perfect, and neither do we. As an AI builder, our job is to turn that relentless pace into results our clients can feel."
COGNIZANT
Building the bridge to AI impact
A technology partnership that's never stood still, learn how together Aston Martin Aramco and Cognizant are bridging the gap between AI hype and real results.
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