Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (CTSH), and America’s Third Best CEO Could Give You an Investing Edge

Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to dissect balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements. This is the first step in getting your feet wet in the investment world.

But it doesn’t stop there. If we were to base investing decisions solely on what we read in these statements, that would be akin to picking a significant other based solely on their Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) profile — to many, it just doesn’t make sense to avoid real-life interaction.

Investigating these “soft” aspects of a company is important for investors. And although we can’t capture all of the intangibles of a company in one article, Glassdoor.com — a website that collects employee sentiment for companies across the world — recently came out with a list that could help: the Top CEOs of 2013.

Over the past few days, I’ve covered CEOs 25 through 4. Today, I’m going to introduce you to the company with the third-highest-rated CEO, give you some background on the company, and at the end, I’ll offer access to a special free report on who is going to win the war between the five biggest tech stocks.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH)
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) is a specialist in technology and outsourcing consulting. It is the second technology-consulting firm to have a CEO in the top 25, as Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN)‘s Pierre Nanterme was ranked as seventh overall this year.

In understanding why technology-consulting can be such a big business, I think fellow Fool Dan Caplinger put it best: “With constant advances in technology, many companies simply can’t keep up without outside help.” And that makes sense, if one is focused on clients, there hardly seem to be enough hours in the day to serve them and keep abreast of all the ways the latest technology can help you serve them.

That helps explain why Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN) and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), the industry’s two biggest players, have been able to gobble up so much market share. But there’s a second tier of technology-consultants — in terms of sheer size — as well. That’s where Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH), as well as its main competition — Infosys LTD ADR (NYSE:INFY) and Wipro Limited (ADR) (NYSE:WIT) — come in to play.

One of the key differentiators between Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) and its two closest competitors is location. While Infosys LTD ADR (NYSE:INFY) and Wipro Limited (ADR) (NYSE:WIT) are located in India, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) is headquartered in New Jersey. That might sound like as disadvantage — as much of the outsourcing occurs in India — but lately, it’s been more of a boon.