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Posts about next generation technologies and their effect on business.

There is more to BPO automation than just replacing people expense

Charlie Bess| November 5, 2012
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Human Automation.pngAutomation is one of the ways that businesses can use the abundance of computing capabilities to maximize value. The Horses for Sources blog had a post about the automation of BPO efforts titled: Greetings from Robotistan, outsourcing’s cheapest new destination.

 

The post made the case for replacing people in processes with automation – automation in services is something I’ve mentioned many times before.

 

What the HfS post didn’t cover is the role that people can and must play even in a highly automated environment. Automation is good at handling situations that are fairly well understood. What agent techniques are not good at is knowing what to do when there is not sufficient information or the patterns identified are not well understood. This is a role where humans excel.

 

When performing automation it can be as important identifying what is unusual and how to bring attention to the situation. Human augmentation of automation is as important as the automation itself. Effectively bringing people into the situation to make decisions is an example of scarce resource optimization that is so important in a world of IT abundance. The people involved will have to be knowledge workers who are ready for a dynamic environment that addresses anomalies and be able to describe how their involvement can be replaced by automation in the future.

Tags: abundance| automation| Business process outsourcing| Cloud| Outsourcing| View All (7)
Labels: abundance| automation| Business Process Outsourcing| cloud| Outsourcing| services| Trends
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About the Author
  • Steve Simske is an HP Fellow and Director in the Printing and Content Delivery Lab in Hewlett-Packard Labs, and is the Director and Chief Technologist for the HP Labs Security Printing and Imaging program.
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