Companies started looking at business outsourcing in the early 1980’s.

Outsourcing is a structured arrangement with a company and a services provider for transferring the functions from in-house to external providers. The services are usually delivered overseas for lower costs. Therefore cost and efficiency is one of the key drivers for most companies to embrace outsourcing.

Nowadays it is an accepted fact that all companies outsource their back end services and operations.

However due to war for talent in developing countries, companies are rapidly finding their costs are going up and benefits eroded.

So how do companies increase productivity ?

Productivity is the measure of how much output a company generates with one measure of input per unit time.

The perception is that we use people predominantly for their interaction, judgement and analysing skills. That is for their people skills.

However businesses around the world are realizing that they do not have a very high level of automation in their IT systems and processes. Therefore people are being utilized to overcome this gap to provide the necessary services and products. And in the last few years we have end up using more and more people in the gaps.

These gaps are prevalent throughout the delivery life-cycle of a product or a service. They commonly occur when the cost to change existing technology is not feasible. Therefore it is more cost effective to deploy more people to the life-cycle.

Companies have been trying to achieve the nirvana of a globally integrated single instance enterprise platforms. However the realities of cost, time, market changes and regulatory updates make this dream very difficult.

Enter the world of artificial intelligence and robotics. Technology is disrupting the world and providing innovation to get things done quicker, easier and better.

So what is a robot and how does this look like ?

When you picture a robot working in the office are you thinking of a robot sitting next to you with arms and legs typing on the computer? This is not how it will look or work.

Instead think of a player-less piano. This piano is the same instrument, plays the same piece of music but without a player.

Anywhere there is a repeatable rules based work a robot can be “trained” to do the task. It can “watch” a person do the task and “learn”. There is no need to change any of the existing systems or delivery life-cycle. Therefore implementing a robot is fast, easy with limited risks.

A robot can be deployed for a third of the cost of an offshore person. It will work 4 to 20 times faster than a person 24 hrs a day. It will not complain or ask for a raise. If work increases a new robot can be deployed for $10K-$20K within a couple of hours.

So how does the future company look like?

The way things are panning out, it looks like a company manager will have two reporting lines as shown below.

Readers what do you think?

DAR

A lot of people seem to think the fact that they stayed with a company for many years they deserve a huge salary. Another common issue many people get caught out by is the requirement of advanced skills to perform a task. Everyone forgets the primary purpose of a business is to make money. Therefore to earn more money we have to get closer to the money. As an example sales.

Okay so now we are closer to the money but how do we translate the role into a higher paying job? By achieving outstanding success at work. We do this by

1. Do some homework on
   1. a) Understanding the vision, values, purpose and objectives of the business b) Reviewing the company strategy to achieve the company objectives
2. Meet up with senior managers in your company and understand their role and responsibilities
3. Ask them what you can do that will “knock their socks off!”
4. Execute and deliver on the above

You might need to re-run the approach to the above steps and work with senior managers in your company.

Readers, what do you think? What are the tips that worked for you in achieving outstanding success at work?