{"id":1177,"date":"2014-02-08T14:17:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-08T14:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/process_automation_020814\/"},"modified":"2014-02-08T14:17:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T14:17:00","slug":"process_automation_020814","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/process_automation_020814\/","title":{"rendered":"Automation: it’s about solving business problems, stupid!"},"content":{"rendered":"
We’re very shortly going to reveal the incredible findings (and they really are) of our new Technology in BPO study, and one of the key areas that jumps out at us is the rising importance of automation as a core value-driver for BPO clients. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n As organizations seek to “cross the chasm” from a legacy labor arbitrage \/ staff augmentation model of business service delivery to a technology-enabled service experience that isn’t completely dependent on adding extra bodies to scale a service, the most immediate measure is to map out simple process workflows that humans are doing, and develop them in a software program using a process automation tool (and yes, I am trying to avoid using the term “robot” for now…).<\/p>\n Suddenly BPO clients discover, for example, that as sales of a particular product increase, they can scale their order management capability by replicating many of the human tasks processing those orders, as opposed to simply throwing more bodies at the problem. \u00a0Many service providers will not be happy as this may well hurt their model of earning money through the supply of additional labor, but smart clients are already wisening up to the fact they need to get out of the FTE game. \u00a0So, we asked HfS’ Charles Sutherland<\/a> to share his views on what is really happening with process automation and why is shouldn’t be confused with technology automation theories of yesteryear…<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen it all before: IT suites, BPM Suites, customer service management tools etc. so how is this any different?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n