Predictions 2017 – Business Process Services

In the UK Business Process Services (BPS) market Unlocking the Intelligence is all about exploiting the huge and ever-growing stream of data flowing into and across enterprise business processes.

Hidden in this data lie solutions to be biggest process challenges today, insights that can help predict and avoid future problems, as well as intelligence to decipher where tomorrow’s opportunities will lie.

The rising adoption of Intelligent Automation makes Unlocking the intelligence a critical factor for 2017. Technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), cognitive/artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and advanced analytics, are data hungry applications that thrive on crunching, mining, and refining information from the big data lakes being created across enterprises.

They can process orders of magnitude more data than humans, far faster and more accurately. People can then be freed to do what they do best, using their skills, creativity and domain expertise to oversee operations, and make important judgement calls on how processes need to change and adapt.

This has huge implications for BPS providers as they re-position themselves to design, re-engineer and run Intelligent Operations and Intelligent Processes for their customers.

We see specifically the following factors playing out in 2017:

• Market headwinds accelerate need for intelligence. We anticipate a significantly more subdued market for UK BPS in 2017 than in recent years, as uncertainty around Brexit and the deflationary impact of Business Process Automation bite. Providers are therefore going to need to unlock far more intelligence from within their own and customer operations, to seek out additional cost savings and uncover incremental business opportunities.
• Incumbents destroying their own revenue. Intelligent Automation will drive even more competitive pressure across the outsourced lift-and-shift BPO space in 2017 – forcing incumbent suppliers to ‘destroy their own revenue’ within existing operations, to remain competitive.
• Robots unlocking and sharing more data. Robotic Process Automation will remain a key strategic driver for BPS in 2017, and a vital tool Unlocking the Intelligence from within disparate processes and silo’d operations. As it does so, RPA is going to be increasingly used as a Digital Transformation enabler, as much as for back office business process automation.
• Overcoming the (im)maturity gap. We expect to see an increasing focus on certification, compliance and standards in 2017 as Intelligent Automation adoption matures. This is going to be needed to help overcome data and security concerns, and give providers and customers assurances that the intelligence gathered from these new tools and services can be trusted for wider use.
• Artificial Intelligence moving mainstream. So much hype [and fear] surrounds Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it exploits data and intelligence to solve problems, create new ideas and opportunies, but also, very controversially, automate increasingly higher value jobs. We believe initial partnerships and pilots with leading BPS providers will begin to show compelling returns on investment, making AI a necessity for competitive advantage in 2017. Whether for or against AI, we believe it’s going to move increasingly mainstream this year.

Posted by John O'Brien at '08:01' - Tagged: predictions