If you haven’t read the first two parts of Robots and Sustainability you can find the first piece at www.ekalore.com/post/robots-and-sustainability and the second at www.ekalore.com/post/robots-and-sustainability-2
Many tasks in financial services, insurance, web-based shopping, travel, and even some government services are now handled by “robotic’ automation”. Automation now used AI-based spoken language interfaces, business models (such as customer support by ecommerce vendors), and computer-based applications designed for flexibility instead of limited to “just right” paths. Global public dissatisfaction with low-cost “service call centers” (and outsourcing) has combined with advances and expectations driven by smart-speaker/mobile interactions (Siri, Google, Alexa, Cortana, others) for people to accept services from robotic automation over irritating human interactions. A plurality of people is satisfied with an application interaction reaching their needs rather than requiring “personal touch service”.
Personal touch service is now viewed as a luxury item. The “personal touch” of a newspaper delivery person coming to the door once a week to collect cash is viewed at best as an anachronism. More likely viewed as a hazardous task for a young person. The “personal touch” of a travel agent has been replaced by 24-hour-a-day shopping for bargain fairs and packages purchased from an industry using computer-application-driven yield management.
The “personal touch” of a secretary to place/receive telephone calls has been replaced with instant-automated-presence-sensing automation. The robots have been accepted.
The value of white-collar robotic automation (just the software category) is anticipated to grow in this decade at similar rates to factory automation (albeit from a lower starting base about 75% of factory robots). The compensation costs of the displaced workers is likely to higher, and just as permanent, as the justifications to replace factory workers. In either case, the result is the same – robot workers displaced humans.
Enterprises will rush to continue automating the office functions (and changing the business processes, lobbying for regulatory changes, and restricting exceptions) for the same reasons factory automation is pursued. Enterprises are looking for better speed, quality of work, consistent costs (especially in inflationary periods the investment debt is paid back with inflated monies), and fewer humans. The compelling reasons to automate will be the same and the capabilities to replace people will be analogous.
The key to enterprises’ sustainability will be the use of robotic automation, and process changes, to be sufficiently flexible enough to support agility and be resilient. Like factory automation driven by the too-specific manufacturing production design, the agility of white-collar robots will be a trial-and-error growth for enterprises. Tesla has acknowledged the first generation of robot supports for vehicle manufacturing was too rigid. Newer flexible techniques will grow (with AI as a key technology) in office worker automation (just as it is now being used to displace service center/contact workers). Enterprises planning to automate, review, and refine/improve will see similar results to the manufacturing processes pursuing automation strategies over the last 75 years.
EkaLore developed a framework that looks at Agility, Resilience, and Sustainability as three key measures of strategy.
If you’d like to read more on the topic we’ve got posts at www.ekalore.com/ars If you’d like to talk with a senior analyst about how to optimize these three measures for your organization, send us a note at www.ekalore.com/contact
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