Software Robot: Humans 2.0?

Talking with Business Process Outsourcers about Software Robot, some interesting insights come to light. One thing that is not really understood is just how weak the competition is – that is humans.We all know humans have their frailties, but looked at in detail – and especially compared to their virtual or mechanical counterparts – the differences become somewhat stark.The first stand-out win for the machines is security. This single issue is probably enough in regulated industries to make software robot the drones of choice for all routine work. When regulatory failures occur then, like a snow storm, the massive admin deluge arrives.Take something like Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) miss-selling in the UK. The big retail banks, on the whole, had to hire temporary staff to manage the workload of millions of claims. There was just too much admin to manage with existing staff – that is, without stopping all the day jobs. So what to do? Hire temps.

• One of the biggest hiring issues is vetting. It’s a regulated industry and these temps will have access to sensitive data. Imagine if one of them decided to leak a list of customers to another regulator. Its another accident waiting to happen on top of the initial accident.• Privately you will hear that one attraction in outsourcing is precisely

to off-load this risk to 3rd parties. To meet regulatory timescales and vet the temps is almost too hard to even achieve.• In this world any safe alternative to humans is a leap forward, and for

the recent PPI scandal in the UK, one bank used robots for just such management. And with more recent scandals it probably says that the first question in the work triage should be, “Can the robots do it?”