Rising Stars of the Profession 2021: Shray Khajuria

Shray Khajuria is a senior manager consulting within Cognizant Consulting's Banking and Financial Services practice. He has strong experience in IT and business consulting areas, specializing in digital banking and payments. He has collaborated with clients in strategic business and IT transformation programs driving large-scale revenue benefits.

Shray has worked with leading banks across the US and Europe to launch new innovative products like automated account payables and receivables solutions, defining first-of-its-kind payments as a service integration model for the bank with >$250 M of targeted annual transaction volumes. He has led strategic transformation programs like post-merger and acquisition integration (one of the largest since the 2008 financial crisis) converting 40,000+ corporate and business banking customers. His work includes defining commercialization models, product roadmaps, business architecture and technology integration solutions.

Some of his major accomplishments include delivering a complete product roadmap and three-year implementation plan for the rollout of the "data as a product" initiative for a leading US mid-west bank, cutting costs by $6M across business and technology. The key objectives of the program included modernizing information reporting, building a payables and receivables digital reporting hub, and enabling actionable customer insights. The client targeted $2M incremental revenue in the first year after launch.

Shray credits his drive for learning as the biggest factor in his success to date, "I believe having the zeal for continuous learning, whether it is keeping myself abreast with the latest in banking domain and digital technology, or keeping myself open to new opportunities across geographies. Often as consultants, we transition from one engagement to another and it is important we take some time to reflect on what we have learned from our experience. Similarly, it is also important to learn from your peers. Thus, networking and collaboration are key elements of success in consulting. The more we learn and share, the better we become as consultants. I also like to challenge the norm or the status quo by remaining curious and being inquisitive in my engagements."

"I believe the most enjoyable aspect of consulting is problem-solving," says Shray about what he enjoys most about his career. "From complex business problems to issues in IT and operations, as consultants we remove barriers, open up new opportunities for clients, and deliver value to end consumers. While at a high level the problems at hand might look similar, every client organization is structurally and culturally different, which brings a unique element to each engagement. Strategy, solution recommendation, or roadmap are no longer sufficient as consulting output; clients are looking at execution and engineering aspects with proof of concepts that bring technology to the forefront. The entire notion about "walk the talk" has made consulting more intriguing than ever."

"One of the best pieces of advice that I have received is to treat business not just as a contractual obligation between companies, but to always look at the human aspect. It is important to deal with empathy and understand the thoughts and opinions of the person on the other side of the table while trying to assess or understand a problem. It is similarly important to keep the organization's people culture in mind while providing recommendations or solutions to a problem. The human values not only help you to understand and solve problems better, but they help you to become a trusted advisor."

What is your proudest achievement to date?

"As part of an engagement with a US client that was launching a new automated payables product, I had the opportunity to study their entire commercial payments ecosystem. Through this exploration, I found a couple of instances where I could help the client make the corporate customer experience much more intuitive and richer by leveraging data. With the change I had in mind, the client could also acquire more customers in the process. These opportunities were beyond the new product rollout."

"Around that time, the client ran a hack-a-thon that was open to external consultants. I teamed up with some technology architects and developers, defined the proof of concept around the above opportunity, and showcased the solution in just 48 hours. My team won first prize and the solution transformed into a live project with a budget of $500K. It gave me tremendous satisfaction that something that was seen as a perceived value was actually practically solved and brought true benefit to the client."