WATCH: BPO, AI and the bottom line for jobs

To paraphrase playwright George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, outsource”.

For many companies, business process outsourcing (BPO) allows them to contract certain back-office and front-office functions — such as customer relations, HR management and even accounting — to third-party providers. That frees up resources that can be used to enhance core competencies.

In SA, the rapidly rising BPO market is ripe for augmenting with technology. The kind of AI used in process automation may not be smart enough to pass the Turing test, but it does involve increasingly more complex processing algorithms, iterative learning and sophisticated data abstraction, replacing decision-making and administrative skills that have, until now, necessarily been performed by people.

But isn’t AI going to sterilise the main benefit of BPO in SA: creating jobs? Joining Michael Avery on this discussion are Johan Steyn, a management consultant and an authority on smart automation and artificial intelligence;  Reshni Singh director: global business services at Department of Trade, Industry & Competition and incoming CEO of BPES (Business Process Enabling SA); and Llanley Simpson, director: mining and mineral beneficiation in the department of science and innovation