HYDERABAD: CE chats with Tony Saldanha, whose new book ‘Revolutionizing Business Operations,’ throws light on how to transform businessES to have a competitive edge in a rapidly transforming technological world
Taking from his three-decade-long experience in heading business and IT operations at Procter & Gamble across the world, author of ‘Why Digital Transformations Fail,’ Tony Saldanha, recently released his second book, ‘Revolutionizing Business Operations,’ which he co-authored with his former boss, Filippo Passerini. Tony’s mantra for success is to keep it simple: do your everyday boring chores but in a smart manner. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
Could you share some insights from the books?
My first book came out in 2018. It was a passion project because I wanted to figure out how we could completely reimagine the boring operations in big companies, like finance and IT. Just like Google X, which is the disruptive innovation organisation in Google that came out with driverless cars and balloon internet, my challenge to myself was, what such an innovative organisation in accounting or HR, would look like. I started an organisation like that at P&G. It drove me to understand that it is not about the technology but the organisational change.
That led to Why Digital Transformations Fails. Fast forward three years and the other insight that I had was, the way businesses run, they don’t just rely on products, they also rely on all of these boring things that I was talking about. For example, Amazon excels not just because they have a good website but also because their day-to-day execution is perfect. Their logistics, tracking, warehousing, everything. For the real longevity of these companies, they have to be good at both product and internal operations. That’s really what drove me to write this second book, Revolutionizing Business Operations.
What do you mean by ‘transformation’ and ‘revolutionising’?
That’s one of my favourite questions. I think that this is all relative to industrial revolutions. We are in the fourth industrial revolution. Digital transformation, unlike other revolutions, is changing social technology, electrical technology, biotech, everything. Digital transformation is the process of upgrading the way we work so that we continue to be successful by transforming the way we work for success. In the fourth industrial revolution, a 10% continuous improvement year on year is not sufficient because, during industrial revolutions, you need to change more than normal.
What does this ‘revolutionary’ change look like? Are you suggesting that all should jump to AI?
First off, I think that the scope of what I’m talking about is every organisation, whether big or small businesses, governments, or non-profits, without a doubt, all of them are covered in the scope. The terminology for digital transformation gets hyped very easily and AI equally is overhyped. Make no mistake, there are some incredibly revolutionary capabilities that exist in AI. But I differentiate between the technology and what I call a use case. The use of AI, for example, going back to Amazon, to say, if you like product A, B or C, you might also be interested in product D. That is a use case of AI called recommendation engine.
The ability for your phone to do voice recognition is a use case. So I think that there are already proven use cases. I recommend that organisations need to examine for themselves which use cases are relevant for them to stay alive in the fourth industrial revolution. Now talking about risks. Whether they want to take that risk or not is a decision that they are going to have to make. However, this is a very important time for the regulation of AI. I think that the uncontrolled development of AI, which is what exists today, is a real menace to society. There is a need for regulation. But I’m pragmatic enough to understand that individuals may not be able to regulate personally. There are others, people like me who know the technology and those in the media, whose job is to push back on unregulated AI.
Could you give some specific examples of where these use cases helped bring changes?
The use of blockchain technology for land records in India. We know that ancestral property records are not safe. Putting that on something like blockchain, which is immutable, meaning nobody can go and change it if you have a record can make your small pieces of land much more secure. Use of blockchain for small payments in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, through banks, they would face cuts but with this, there are no transaction fees.
The use of technology for buying and selling solar energy that is created by really tiny homes to the electricity grid. Again, this one’s from Africa. That’s one of the great things about human ingenuity. It is a painful but necessary step that we are going to have to take to make technology cheaper, better, faster and into the hands of the masses. There’s no avoiding that. The pain in the case of technology adoption will be that it starts to create two layers of people. People who are technology savvy and people, especially elderly and poor people are not. That’s the pain there, that you have winners and losers in technology adoption.
When it comes to education, what needs to change as far as India is concerned?
India’s not alone, but I think the first thing that needs to happen is a revisiting of the formal curriculum of education, which I think is still a little outdated, it’s still based on a lot of things that we got from the British. It needs to be much more practical and skills-based. I don’t think the world needs more programmers. The world needs more people who know how to use technology to do whatever they’re trying to do. Whether it’s running a shop or teaching. Secondly, we need to accelerate women’s education because studies have shown that when the mother is educated, the adoption of new capabilities as well as broad thinking is three times better than if the male is educated.