{"id":851,"date":"2016-06-24T04:15:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T04:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/digital-labor-1-4-million-jobs_062416\/"},"modified":"2016-06-24T04:15:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T04:15:00","slug":"digital-labor-1-4-million-jobs_062416","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/digital-labor-1-4-million-jobs_062416\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital labor will trim 1.4 million global services jobs by 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time we dispelled the scaremongering and hype and gave you the true picture of how advances in automation tools and methodologies, such as RPA and autonomics, will impact the global IT services and BPO industry over the next five years.<\/p>\n

The current debate on these issues is as polarizing as it is confusing. On the consumer-facing side of technology, we have a fervent and far-reaching debate about the ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, led by executives from the likes of Google and Facebook. On the enterprise side, we frequently see quotes from studies from firms such as McKinsey and Gartner<\/a> predicting seismic job losses through the impact of disruptive technologies that could have a devastating impact on the global economy and society in the next few years.<\/p>\n

Yet, many of the leading stakeholders much closer to the true deployment of emerging enterprise Intelligent Automation tools and platforms\u2014namely the service providers, the ISVs and the sourcing advisors\u2014remain on the sidelines when it comes to discussing the true impact<\/em> of automation as it\u2019s adopted by many enterprises today.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been talking, for the best part of two decades, about how to \u201ctransform\u201d business and IT processes after the cost benefits of labor arbitrage have been maximized. Well, the simple fact is that much of these arbitrage costs are close to optimization for mature services providers that have well-honed global delivery machines. As enterprise clients demand further cost advantages, and as competitors become increasingly aggressive with their service pricing, the focus shifts toward clients attaining outcomes that are not always directly linked to lower headcount rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntelligent Automation-as-a-Service\u201d is a genuine lever for enterprises to pull for further productivity gains beyond low-cost offshore labor <\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, many enterprises that have chosen to externalize their service delivery can enjoy even more cost effective services, as ambitious service providers further rationalize their delivery organizations by taking advantage of automation to standardize and scale service delivery to their clients.\u00a0 In short, while many enterprises can invest directly in Intelligent Automation into their own processes, they can also simply outsource those processes to service providers, which can embed further productivity gains tied to automation, in addition to labor arbitrage.\u00a0 \u201cIntelligent Automation-as-a-Service\u201d is quickly emerging as a significant productivity option for enterprises as part of their service delivery.<\/p>\n

Sadly, greater productivity and effectiveness through \u201cdigital labor\u201d comes at a societal cost\u2014jobs that were once required are no longer needed. However, we would point out that the jobs that are being phased out are no longer being recreated in any case, and much of this shrinkage will likely come from natural attrition as some people leave the service industry for more relevant jobs in other industries.<\/p>\n

The Impact of Automation on Services Jobs<\/span><\/p>\n

The following graphic\u00a0shows three Automation Impact Scenarios<\/em> for the IT and BPO services industry, ranging from a modest\/conservative prediction which is a continuation of current RPA use to a scenario we consider more likely where adoption of RPA and more Intelligent Automation increases to an aggressive scenario, where automation adoption hits a broader range of the skills. If we examine the most likely outcome, Scenario 2, we see strong growth for highly and medium skilled personnel\u2014with highly skilled positions in our industry increasing by 56%, and medium-skilled by 8%. However, low skilled, routine jobs drop 30% as many of these roles get phased out over the next 5 years, resulting in a net loss of 9% of jobs, totaling 1.4 million:<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The following graphics shows Scenario 2, the Likely Scenario<\/em>, in more detail, outlining the number of workers being affected within each skill category over the next 5 years:<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So what does this mean for the future of the global services industry?<\/span><\/p>\n

The business and IT services industry has grown rampantly since the early service deals in the 1960s (with the likes of EDS, IBM and Hewitt Associates) and has reached a colossal scale we estimate close to 16 million workers across the prime delivery locations. Like any major industry that reaches a saturation point, as technological and operational methods improve, the need to continue adding staff will decrease once customer demand slows to modest levels. Just look at the evolution of automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing industries; now the same is finally happening to white collar industries where it is now very feasible to digitize work that was previously manually driven. Finally, automation has truly reached \u201cswivel chair\u201d business processes where manual interventions to process chains can be mimicked into software \u201crecordings\u201d to conduct said sub-task. While smoothing out various processes has the impact of freeing up time for existing office workers to focus on other (possibly higher value) activities, the ultimate effect, besides \u201chuman augmentation\u201d is to enable businesses to conduct more of the routine work with less human effort and, potentially, less headcount.<\/p>\n

How enterprise buyers and service providers of IT and business services will adopt\u00a0digital labor<\/span><\/p>\n

Most buyers are constantly investigating how to improve processes and where automation makes sense for them. It\u2019s simply not possible to automate every flawed process chain\u2014the cost and time is simply not worth it, so they need to select processes that warrant the Intelligent Automation investment\u2014usually ones with high intensity repetition and throughput (and lots of paperwork that can be digitized), where RPA has a sizeable positive ROI. In most cases, Intelligent Automation potential is overlooked because the buyer just didn\u2019t have enough financial incentive to make the investment.<\/p>\n

However, on the sell side, the more service providers can deliver standard process delivery models to their clients, the more cost effective they become and the more price competitive they can be. Hence, smart automation is critical to their business models and competitiveness, and this is where we see most of the impact in the services industry in the coming years. The service providers will delivery efficiently automated services and then be able to pass on these \u201csavings\u201d from \u201cdigital labor\u201d to their clients. This is why we envisage significant updates from the service provider community as Intelligent Automation capabilities quickly get embraced and embedded in service models across all core business and IT processes.<\/p>\n

The Bottom Line:\u00a0Automation and digital labor are increasingly pivotal elements of service delivery\u2014we need to be smart about increasing human value in services<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The choice will largely be down to the workers figuring out whether they want to stay in this industry and learn new skills and ways of working, in order to continue to be effective. As the data plainly shows, the services industry, from an employee standpoint, is likely to be 10% smaller in five years\u2019 time. That may be a significant number of workers, but this reduction is gradual and gives ambitious workers the chance to reorient their skills and job focus. Our industry will likely lose that number (or more) through natural attrition over a five-year time period, so the core issue here is to embrace the value of making processes run better and how this helps us focus on growth initiatives and customer-aligned initiatives. As the head of a call center recently declared to us: \u201cAs long as we touch the customer in a valuable way, we can\u2019t be automated.\u201d That says a great deal about where we need to focus as this industry goes though this evolution.<\/p>\n

HfS subscribers can <\/em><\/span>click here<\/a><\/em><\/span> to download the full POV, which details the HfS sizing and forecasting methodology for the impact of digital labor<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time we dispelled the scaremongering and hype and gave you the true picture of how advances in automation tools…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,52,57,78,80,81,90],"tags":[303],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-process-outsourcing-bpo","category-cognitive-computing","category-digital-transformation","category-hfsresearch-com-homepage","category-hr-strategy","category-it-outsourcing-it-services","category-robotic-process-automation","tag-enterprise-irregulars"],"yoast_head":"\nDigital labor will trim 1.4 million global services jobs by 2021 - Horses for Sources | No Boundaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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