Who is the author of The Automation Advantage?

The authors of The Automation Advantage are Bhaskar Ghosh, Gayathri Pallail, and Rajendra Prasad.

The Automation Advantage Book Summary - The Automation Advantage Book explained in key points

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Name: The Automation Advantage
Rating: 3.9 (139 reviews)
Author: Bhaskar Ghosh, Gayathri Pallail and Rajendra Prasad

Bhaskar Ghosh Gayathri Pallail Rajendra Prasad

Embrace the Future of Productivity and Improve Speed, Quality, and Customer Experience Through AI

3.9 (139 ratings)

22 mins

Brief summary

The Automation Advantage by Bhaskar Ghosh, Gayathri Pallai, and Rajendra Prasad is a business book that explores the use of automation in transforming industries and creating opportunities for business growth and development.

Topics

Leadership Success Artificial Intelligence Strategy Digital Transformation

Table of Contents

The Automation Advantage
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Learn how you and your organization can succeed in an ever-more automated world.

Over the coming decades, it’s looking likely that automation and AI will continue to transform the working world. And not just in the predictable ways – in manufacturing and heavy industry. Whole sectors where these technologies are still in their infancy, from journalism to medical science, will be changed unrecognizably. If businesses fail to adapt with the times, they could be swept aside. Just as it revolutionized manufacturing, automation is reshaping other areas of work.

In this Blink, you’ll find guidance and strategies for how to ensure that you and your business are not only able to adapt but are also able to benefit from these technological advances. You’ll see things from the perspective of a leader looking to integrate automation and AI in their organization. And, last but not least, you’ll learn how automation and AI can leverage the talents of human beings, rather than simply replacing them.

Though the content of this Blink to The Automation Advantage by Bhaskar Ghosh, Gayathri Pallail, and Rajendra Prasad is geared toward a more intermediate or advanced reader, you may be able to follow as a beginner to the world of automation and AI.

This is a rich, in-depth work with lots of valuable nuggets of wisdom, and so, in the interest of expediency, we’ll walk you through the most powerful ideas that ultimately distinguish this title from others in its field. And so what you’re going to get here is a focus on the fundamental steps to developing your automation and AI integration, setting up a roadmap for automation maturity, and insights on why a human-centric approach to your automation strategy is essential.

In this Blink, you’ll learn

what happened when an Italian newspaper employed a virtual assistant;
what learning to ride a bike has to do with developing your automation strategy; and
why a human-centric approach is crucial to ensuring sustainable automation and AI integration.

Automating your systems and AI technologies should make business sense.

Let’s begin by defining a term which will come up frequently in these blinks: Intelligent automation.

When the authors use the term, they mean the use of machines to automate tasks like data analysis and decision-making, including the follow-up actions and learnings that stem from those. Yes, these are typically tasks that are still performed by humans, which might set a few alarm bells ringing in people's minds. But don’t waste that energy worrying – Ghosh, Pallail, & Prasad’s work shows us how we can make intelligent automation benefit teams and businesses in our ever-changing technological landscapes.

Take the example of one of Italy’s leading newspapers, Il Secolo XIX. Long at the forefront of innovation in the newspaper business, pioneering color printing, a digital presence, and integrated newsrooms, Il Secolo XIX nevertheless faced serious challenges.

The leadership realized that if they didn’t change fast to keep up with the digital world, they’d fall behind. They knew that they needed to produce high-quality, cost-effective journalism to sustain and grow their readership.

Their solution? They introduced something called a virtual assistant. The AI technology would quickly check pieces of journalism for grammatical errors while also scouring the internet for surprising links. This meant that journalists at Il Secolo XIX could reference sources and previous news items that might have escaped their attention – the end product being in-depth, expansive pieces of writing that readers would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

It meant that the journalists could spend their time writing great journalism, while the machine did the tiring research and proofreading. Rather than making the human writers at Il Secolo XIX redundant, the virtual assistant simply allowed them to do their jobs better.

This is a great example of how leadership saw an opportunity not only to improve their key metrics, like maintaining and growing their readership, but to adapt so that the journalists could do their best work, at scale. It also shows us the necessity and value of aligning business strategies with intelligent automation and integrated AI.

So, let’s get practical – how can you set your business on the right path by integrating intelligent automation with your business strategies and systems? Well, as a leader in your business, you have to begin by asking yourself the right questions: Where do you want to take your business or organization? What does the future look like for your industry? Will developments there affect how your business value is defined a few years down the line? In answering these key questions, you can then implement a clear strategy that will allow your leadership teams to think through all the components and systems, resources, and boundaries that need to be reviewed and aligned.

Basically, what you need to remember here is that while the goal of automating repetitive work and freeing up human potential is a great one, it must also make business sense. For automation and AI integration to really take off at your organization, you need to have a serious strategy.

Business strategy is a key part of introducing successful automation.

So what needs to be done? First, you need to understand how, through automation, your organization intends to get a competitive edge; you need to be clear about how it’ll give you that edge.

This might even involve a complete overhaul of your business model.

Outline your automation roadmap and set your business up for successful automation and AI integration.

Creating an automation roadmap will help you clearly identify how you can implement, track, and innovate your integration strategy. It should be developed on two levels simultaneously: one with a focus on business results, and the other on the journey to better automation maturity in your company. Let’s get into the business results roadmap now. We’ll cover the strategic model for a successful automation maturity process in a moment.

The authors structured the business results process into three main phases. The first is titled, Establish. For this phase, you should explore and pinpoint where there’s potential for automation across your business applications. The next phase is Scale. As the name implies, here’s where you develop, activate, and scale your solutions. Finally, in the third phase – Operate – you’re ready to widen your geographic coverage to better observe true value realization, and update your intelligent automation strategies based on your learnings.

To implement automation, leaders need to reassure and inspire their workforce.

Next, let’s dig into the practical implementation of intelligent automation in your business.

Right off the top, it needs to be said that if a business fails to adapt with the times, it could be swept aside. And many will fail to adapt. Change is hard, and in addition to that, there are several reasons for this inability to adapt. Some of them are self-imposed obstacles and others are due to external factors. But without going into too much detail about those, what the important takeaway here is, when faced with obstacles to technological adaptation, like skills deficits in your teams, resistance from leadership, or reliance on outdated tech infrastructure, the answer is to build an entirely new system with automation and AI at its heart.

In many organizations, there are obstacles to automating.

Intelligence automation integrations should be a holistic endeavor. Everyone at every level of the company, from business and IT leadership to the operational staff, should be engaged and active contributors to the project. But in order to do this successfully, Ghosh, Pallail, and Prasad suggest the following model which can guide your decision-making processes as you go. These are the four S’s that’ll help you reach the highest automation maturity level: Simple, Seamless, Scaled, and Sustained.

Simple: This is the point where you’re performing a kind of diagnostic check. Take a close look at your IT and connected business infrastructures. Wherever you see deficits or room for improvement, retool your applications and architecture with the goal of simplifying your functional units or modularity.

Successful automation and AI means constant innovation.

In today’s world, companies can’t afford to sit still. Such is the pace of technological change that anyone caught dawdling will be left in the dust by their competitors.

Whether that’s traditional booksellers waking up to Amazon’s digital store, or taxicab firms watching Uber’s success, those that choose not to innovate will lose out. The same is true of those looking the other way as automation and AI begins to take off.

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What is The Automation Advantage about?

The Automation Advantage (2021) provides a roadmap for building automation and AI in a modern organization. From the different stages a business must go through on its automation journey to the best ways to reassure employees worried about job destruction, it shows leaders how to prosper in a future world.

The Automation Advantage Review

The Automation Advantage (2021) explores the transformative impact of automation on businesses and society. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It provides a thorough analysis of how automation can drive productivity, efficiency, and innovation in various industries, offering practical insights for organizations.
The book examines the ethical considerations surrounding automation, highlighting the potential risks and suggesting ways to ensure a responsible and inclusive approach.
With its engaging case studies and expert perspectives, the book presents a nuanced view of automation, dispelling common misconceptions and highlighting its potential as a tool for positive change.

Who should read The Automation Advantage?

Business leaders looking to automate
Employees at companies set to flirt with AI
Anyone interested in how tech will transform the world

About the Author

Dr. Bhaskar Ghosh is chief strategy officer at Accenture, the multinational professional services company. As well as strategy, he’s responsible for investments, ventures, and acquisitions at Accenture. He holds a PhD in business management from Utkal University in India.

Gayathri Pallail is the associate director for automation strategy and deployment at Accenture. A conference speaker, she’s an innovator in automation analytics, prediction models, and tools to deliver effective automation.

Rajendra Prasad directs Accenture’s myWizard, an intelligent automation platform that has AI at its heart. He’s appeared at industry events such as the O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference, and has published his papers on technology in IEEE and Harvard Business Review.

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