Under the deal AstraZeneca's Global Shared Services organisation will work in conjunction with Cognizant, with the intention of reducing the cost of IT ownership and improving efficiency.
The deal expands on the long-term relationship between the companies, freeing up AstraZeneca to focus on other areas of its business.
Richard Williams, Global chief information officer at AstraZeneca, said: "Our strategic partnerships will enable us to streamline operations efficiency, raise standards and deliver world-class services.
“The selection of Cognizant will allow us to leverage their global operations to meet the needs of our business and increase our focus on our core business - to make the most meaningful difference to patient health through great medicines."
Having entered into the deal AstraZeneca will be hoping to benefit from Cognizant’s knowledge in IT, business process and analytics.
This assistance will be implemented by some of the 10,000 people working in Cognizant’s Healthcare and Life Sciences division, which includes doctors, pharmacologists and biostatisticians.
Cognizant believes that by identifying areas of AstraZeneca where improvements can be made, and using its expertise to implement changes, it can enhance the efficiency of the R&D, sales and marketing departments.
An “effect-based” model will be implemented to achieve this, which defines services as the effect on the business achieved, not the specific work done. Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.