Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
Business is can be very competitive. The only way to get ahead of the competition is to do things differently. You can be cheaper, faster, higher quality or something else. It requires doing something better and creating more value. Most recently, robots and automation are changing how businesses manage their costs. As a business owner, you should carefully consider autonomics as an alternative to cheap labor. In fact, we will see how robots are affecting the outsourcing industry.
Traditional Outsourcing Markets
Previously, outsourcing was all about lowering costs. If someone can do something cheaper somewhere else, you should pay for it there after overcoming outsourcing challenges. In developing countries, there was no shortage of cheap labor. As developing countries continue to mature, their labor costs have skyrocketed in the past decade. The locations of outsourcing will shift again to new developing countries. And, the cycle continues.
Robots And Automation Disrupt Outsourcing
In response to higher outsourcing costs, business owners no longer have to change countries. Instead of re-training an entire workforce, robots and automation will replace them. Known as robotic process automation (RPA), the software performs routine business task that are similar to how a human would execute them. There are many benefits including costs, scale and reliability. Certainly, any business owner would want to give it a try.
RPA vs. BPO
While you might be interested in hiring robots to do you work, other companies are already using them. Certain RPA programs are substituting work that business process outsourcing companies would do like telephone answering services. They (the robots) can handle calls, book appointments and perform data entry. In fact, they can be customized to handle almost any repetitive task that follows a set of rules or procedures. In one case, a company replaced an entire call center with one RPA solution.
Mainstream Robotic Automation
While most small businesses have not caught on yet, many enterprise companies are investing heavily in artificial intelligence and automation. Companies like Best Buy already have fully functional RPA technology in place. In Manhattan, a yellow robot named Cloe will actually search and find products that customers ask for. Instead of paying employee contracts and wasting resources to search the shelves, the robot does it for a fraction of the cost in less time.
Robots And Automation Application
Quite simply, the robots are just computers. And, similar to the last technological revolution we went through, the automation revolution will affect every industry. You can apply it to CRMs, ERPs, customer support systems, sales and, of course, operations. As the RPA technology continues to lower costs, you can leverage the efficiency in your business rather than hiring in the US or abroad.
For the innovative business owner, RPA represents a major opportunity. This is a chance to get ahead, lower costs and deliver more value. For consumers, it’s another opportunity to receive better products and services at lower prices. However, this could be disastrous for the business process outsourcing industries. In the years to come, we will see business owners like yourself invest in robots and automation over cheaper labor markets.
Image from http://www.anglonautes.eu/english%20words/vocabulary_economy_main/voc_$_jobs_robots_1/voc_$_job_robot_1.htm
