Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

In most enterprises, business processes are automated in isolation, creating “automation silos” — a major barrier to realizing the fuller potential of enterprise-wide integrated automation. In their article, Aravind Ajad Yarra and Danesh Zaki address this issue. They differentiate between first- and second-generation smart automation and identify key imperatives to ensure desired integration across an entire business process. Furthermore, they present a detailed architecture for, and a pathway toward, smart automation 2.0, which enterprises can adopt to enable their automation bots to cooperate across the value chain

Namratha Rao and Jagdish Bhandarkar outline the concept of intelligent auto­mation using AI, ML, and RPA. A case study from the financial sector highlights the benefits gained through RPA. The authors explain how an intelligent bot can be trained and deployed over a period of a few months, and they emphasize establishing a roadmap, applying the right security measures, and setting up robust governance as three key tenets for scaling automation.

Joseph Byrum describes an intelligent enterprise as one that embraces AI to guide all its functions and decisions, small or large. However, this business is not run by the all-knowing, utopian artificial general intelligence (AGI) that science fiction writers and some commentators envision, which is a distant dream. Rather, it is an enterprise run by augmented intelligence — humans using AI and decision support tools that are enriched to the extent that is currently realistic and feasible. Byrum discusses the advantages of enterprises embracing augmented intelligence but cautions that making the entire enterprise “intelligent” requires concerted effort.

We present in this issue of CBTJ a set of five articles that provide actionable insights on topics of current interest to professionals and executives. We hope the articles inspire and encourage you to harness advanced automation in your domain of interest.

Although many organizations’ IT departments have begun to focus on quickly adopting emerging technol­ogies, many of those organizations struggle to balance the need to deploy new technology with speed and agility while maintaining compliance with their organization’s traditional risk management frameworks. This struggle is why organizations adopting BaaS must shift from letter of the law (“box-checking compliance”) to spirit of the law (principles-based compliance) risk management (i.e., to risk-based methodologies whose foundational risk mitigation principles align with desired business outcomes).

In this Executive Update, we put a spotlight on the energy industry and offer a view of the challenges energy retailers face. We also examine various strategic moves companies should consider to reinvent themselves and stay relevant.

This on-demand webinar offers digital strategies and technologies that support oil & gas industry transformations, identifies possible scenarios for the industry in the post-COVID-19 world, and offer insight into two key areas companies need to focus on for the best chance to weather the COVID-19 storm.

Increased communication among team members leads to a culture of transparency. Transparency is about making shared assumptions explicit. The more transparent teams and stakeholders are with one another, the more the organization understands priorities, and the sooner critical feedback loops get closed.