There is no shortage of doomsday-style coverage on the ‘rise of the machines’, this headline grabbing narrative has been delivered in increasing volume for the last decade.
The story generally centres around the number of jobs that will be replaced by robots by a certain date (which looms ever-closer) and frankly seems designed to instil fear in everyone from business owners, who may not have even started their automation journey and employees who become convinced their days of meaningful employment are numbered, to customers who see a future devoid of human contact!
But like many things, that’s not the whole story.
The more accurate story is probably less headline worthy but certainly less scaremongering. Here’s the way we see it and why we felt compelled to create a manifesto - a public commitment to our people-centric approach which you can link to at the end of this blog:
The fact is that some automation is not only inevitable but necessary as competition increases, a new, younger, digitally native workforce enters the job market and customer demand for simple, frictionless and personalised experiences increases.
So the rush to automation has to be taken with a people-first pragmatism. How will the people at the heart of your business be effected? And how can a thoughtful, planned strategy mitigate the ‘them or us’ approach and manage the process seamlessly?
The Emergence approach uses a combination of advanced AI technology and small, agile teams to develop and sustain automation solutions that deliver continued cost savings and service improvements across countless processes.
But it isn’t all about cost ROI. Rather than representing a threat to the workforce, robots should be thought of as a complementary workforce, working together with people to help them improve their performance and focus their time on other, higher-priority tasks, strategy and innovation.
Ultimately, robotics and automation is enabling people to work better, smarter and more creatively to deliver higher quality customer experiences.
So, whether it’s your first step on the digital transformation journey or you’re halfway there, talk to us about how a human-first strategy will ensure you end up doing things better for your people, customers and shareholders and that the machines help you do it.