Operational excellence has traditionally been associated with objectives such as reducing costs, standardizing processes, eliminating inefficiencies, and increasing productivity. These objectives remain fundamental, but today’s business environment requires us to broaden that ambition.
NTT DATA’s Operational Excellence 2030 report shows how the convergence of artificial intelligence, advanced automation, new regulations, demographic shifts, and rising expectations from customers and employees is transforming the conditions in which organizations operate. Complexity is no longer the exception; it is becoming a permanent feature of the business environment.
This requires us to broaden our view of operational excellence. Optimizing what already exists is no longer enough. Operations need to interpret context more effectively, adapt quickly, and develop a greater capacity to anticipate and respond to change.
For Operations and Technology leaders, the question is no longer simply how to make processes more efficient, but how to use all available intelligence to generate real business impact.
From efficiency to operational intelligence
We are evolving toward a model in which processes, data, decisions, technology, and controls need to work in an integrated way.
AI is accelerating this transformation. AIOps, advanced automation, and agents are enabling a gradual shift from operations that react to events toward models capable of interpreting signals, anticipating scenarios, recommending actions, and executing certain decisions.
But adding AI to an existing process does not automatically make an operation intelligent.
Operational intelligence emerges when an organization can combine data, business knowledge, AI, automation, and talent to understand what is happening, decide what to do, and turn that decision into action that delivers results.
This shift moves the center of gravity from the process to the business outcome.
Turning intelligence into impact
This is precisely where Intelligent BPS takes on a strategic dimension.
Business process services are evolving from models focused primarily on executing activities efficiently toward a new generation of services capable of orchestrating end-to-end operations.
The objective is no longer simply to execute a process better. It is to connect capabilities, data, platforms, automation, AI, and specialized knowledge to continuously improve how operations contribute to business objectives.
This means evolving from task automation to the intelligent orchestration of decisions and outcomes.
Intelligent BPS can therefore become an enabler of more dynamic operations, capable of adapting to context, learning from available information, and responding faster without losing traceability or control.
People and agents: a new operational workforce
This evolution also changes the way we think about talent.
The debate should not simply be framed as people versus technology. Intelligent operations will increasingly depend on the ability to combine both.
Agents provide scale, speed, analytical capabilities, and automation. People contribute business knowledge, creativity, empathy, judgment, and accountability.
The opportunity lies in designing operations in which people and agents work in complementary ways, defining which activities can be autonomous, which require human intervention, and where this combination generates the greatest impact.
Greater autonomy requires stronger governance
As autonomy increases, governance becomes even more important.
Organizations need to clearly establish which decisions can be delegated to intelligent systems, which must remain under human responsibility, and which mechanisms can ensure security, compliance, transparency, and traceability.
Governance cannot be a layer added after the operation has been designed. It must be part of the operation itself.
True maturity will not be determined by how much autonomy an organization achieves, but by its ability to combine autonomy, control, and accountability according to each business context.
A shared agenda for Operations and Technology
For CIOs, CTOs, and Operations leaders, this transformation also redefines the traditional boundaries between business and technology.
Processes, data, AI, platforms, and people can no longer be managed as independent initiatives. They need to be part of a single operational architecture designed around outcomes.
This also means rethinking how we measure performance. Costs, productivity, and execution times will remain relevant, but they need to coexist with indicators related to speed of adaptation, resilience, decision quality, and the ability to turn data into value.
Operational excellence therefore takes on a new dimension.
It is no longer only about doing more with less, but about building organizations capable of learning, anticipating, and continuously adapting.
That, in my view, is the potential of operational intelligence and Intelligent BPS: connecting people, processes, data, and technology to turn intelligence into impact responsibly, continuously, and at scale.