It was, expectedly, a full house at Goa University the afternoon when Tony Saldanha delivered a lecture and released his latest book. His reputation, as a recognised thought-leader in global business services (GBS), president of Transformant, a consulting organisation that advises Fortune 100 companies in digital transformation, founder of blockchain and AI companies, adviser to venture capital companies, preceded him.
Saldanha didn’t disappoint. His topic for the day was ‘How organisations can change the way they work due to disruptions from artificial intelligence’ and the book released was titled Revolutionizing Business Operations: How to Build Dynamic Process for Enduring Competitive Advantages.
In his lecture, Saldanha focused on how GBS is a cutting-edge global management strategy on attaining ongoing competitive advantage, which is also the topic of his book, that is a blueprint for enduring competitive advantage and that addresses the issue of the limited shelf-life of most business transformations.
The book falls in the business genre and is a one-of-a-kind that gives industry captains an insight that they may be running their company with only two-thirds of the engine power, while being a handy tool for everyone else.
Asked why he chose this particular subject, Saldanha said, “Two reasons, one is because of the changing business operations and the other being that the techniques that were always in my mind, but I hadn’t jotted them down until now.”
Revolutionizing Business Operations is a based out from his first book Why Digital Transformations Fail and sums up how to succeed in a business while facing changing technology.
It is co-authored by Filippo Passerini, known as one of the world’s leading shared service strategists and recognized for his game-changing approach to business management. His work has been the focus of numerous books and articles, including the Harvard Business Review.
Saldanha also touched upon AI and how it functions around us even without us really being aware. He added that AI should be used as a tool and not as something to rule us, humans.
This is where his book comes in handy, as it provides an insight on the constant, ongoing, enterprise-wide process optimisation by focusing on three drivers of change.
He explained these three drivers of change as “open market rules”—each business process must be run as a separate business, instead of via monolithic mandates coming down from on high; “unified accountability”— outcomes must be clear and consistent across the company, instead of being siloed within departments; “dynamic operating engine” —a methodology to convert the constantly changing business process goals into tactical day-to-day employee actions.
With the changing dynamics in today’s times, Saldanha ended by saying, “If you want to make this opportunity, you have to learn quickly about what you can do best. This is the best thing you can ever do for yourself.”