AiiA's January roundup on: GBS

The turn of the decade marks the next shift into the GBS landscape. This collection of January resources boasts dense reports, whitepapers, articles, and interviews that help set the stage for the future of shared services, IA, and GBS.

5 Intelligent Automation Trends to Watch Out for in 2020

RPA is most commonly thought of as a productivity and efficiency tool – employees simply don’t WANT to waste time on the menial, repetitive tasks, and through leveraging automation tools they are afforded the opportunity to focus on the stuff that really matters.

However, as we enter a new year and a decade of possibilities, we’re seeing the scope and application of Intelligent Automation (IA) technologies expand into previously unexplored territories. Tools that can automatically identify processes to automate, act upon this insight, and optimize deployments throughout to guarantee the best possible results. What a wealth of opportunities this could unlock.

But what can what we can expect to see from Intelligent Automation in the next year?

This article explores:

• A shift to the front office
• The future of work: skills, jobs & workforce management
• IA for security
• The global economic downturn will encourage automation adoption
• RPA’s increasing intelligence

REPORT: How to Scale the Digital Workforce

According to a recent survey, nearly 90% of global business leaders recognize the critical importance of adopting intelligent automation. That message is loud and clear.

What is not clear is how to transition to this 'digital workforce.' However, transitioning to it is only the first step.

To optimize the opportunities presenting themselves today requires deploying the digital workforce at scale. 

Download this report to find out how.

The Next Frontier for Outsourcing: Product Outsourcing

Software Product Outsourcing is where the third-party provider takes over the tasks of product development, operations, compliance and its related IT infrastructure and applications support. This represents a major shift, as traditionally such tasks have been managed in-house.

In this article, find out why software product development outsourcing and the ability to manage it effectively will be an important lever for clients in the years to come.

Shared Services: Digitized and Disrupted

The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network released a new report on global investments trends that illustrates the global economic landscape is fundamentally being altered by the dual impact of changing trade regimes and digital disruption. The former is impacting companies’ capability to leverage global supply chains, while the latter is changing how and where value creation takes place. 

This article summarizes the main report themes such as:

• The false paradox between automation and jobs
• Is the world getting smaller?
• Shared services scene dominated by US and UK players
• Outsourcers as frontrunners in replacing the people-based delivery model through automation
• Fundamental reconfiguration of digitized global operations and location footprints

REPORT: Evolution of the Enterprise Workforce in the Age of Automation

Automation empowers and complements the human capability by handling repetitive tasks and leveraging cognitive capabilities for continuous learning. To achieve holistic business value, enterprises need to view humans and digital bots as a unified coordinated workforce. Humans will need to drive customer-oriented activities using their creativity and empathy while bots complement their efforts with higher productivity and consistency.

Covered in this report:

• RPA in early stages of adoption
• Benefits of RPA adoption
• Governance and visibility remain significant challenges
• Enhanced systems to aid the pursuit of automation singularity
• Future needs: orchestration on the rise
• Key recommendations

WHITEPAPER: From Artificial Intelligence to Financial Intelligence

AI continues to be a subject of debate and speculation, fear and fascination, and definitely raises a lot of questions. This whitepaper aims to explain clearly how artificial intelligence applies to financial and accounting processes, and its predictable effects.

In this white paper, Yooz thought leaders explore:

• Origins of AI and an overview of other emerging technologies, such as optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning
• The future of accounts payable and leveraging AI to automate financial processes
• Smart automation and the positive impact on finance processes
• How intelligent AP automation powered by AI ensures the mitigation, even elimination, of finance workflow challenges and leads to real profits
• The transition of finance teams from being task-oriented to making more value-added contributions to the entire organization.

REPORT: That’s now and next for Finance and Procurement

This 2019 report, carried out by The Economist Intelligent Unit, surveyed over 400 senior contacts within Finance and Procurement to find out what they thought were the key and current trends happening in their industry that they should prepare for. 

Key findings include:

• Expectation that automation would be the driver to free up time required to adapt and play a role more focused on strategic initiatives
• Automation of payments, procurement processes and supply chain management will supersede AI as having the greatest impact on an organization.
• Just over 60% of respondents believe that their finance and procurement functions are prepared for the impacts of digitization within the next 18 months
• Almost 25% of respondents cited post-Brexit trade negotiations and US/China relations as the trend expected to have the greatest impact within the next two years.

Interview with Viral Chhaya, Global Payroll & Timekeeping Operations, General Motors

Viral Chhaya packs a lot into this 10-minute video interview. He is the Director for Global People Services Operations, Payroll and Timekeeping for General Motor’s GBS, leading the Offshore and Onshore Shared Services Centers as well as Outsourced, In-Country and Hybrid Services in these areas.

Prior to this role, he was the Director for Data Strategy at GBS, where he enabled setting up of those key capabilities of Data Sourcing & Integration, Data Governance, Master Data Management and Data Quality, which were essential components for the CFO’s Priority Initiatives. 

Japan’s Tryst with AI, Analytics and IOT

Japan has always had a fascination for robots. In fact, the country has been using robots in restaurants, schools, hotels etc., for quite long time now. It is therefore surprising that a country with such advanced experience in robots seems to be lagging (e.g. US, China) in taking a lead in AI, IOT and Analytics.

This article discusses Japan’s need to adopt diversity to generate ideas; and global services delivery models to tap into technology and innovation.

REPORT: Ten Commandments of Automation Security

Enterprises are slowly and steadily increasing their automation footprint and deriving more and more business value from their existing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) investments. At the same time, the automation industry is also shifting towards amalgamating traditional RPA with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies, thus breaking new frontiers with ‘Intelligent Automation’. 

All  these  elements  are  compelling enterprises to reimagine the delivery of customer value by investing in efficient internal processes, methodologies and practices, which are covered in this report. 

SSON Awards Winner (2018), Mondelez Business Services - Excellence in Automation

Caroline Basyn is the Senior Vice President of Mondelez Business Services and Mondelez International. At the time of last year's awards, Caroline had been with the company for three and a half years, with the mission to build global business services from scratch.

In this interview with SSON, Caroline – who also sits on SSON's Global Advisory Board – provides insight into the story of Mondelez Business Services and how it won the award for Excellence in Automation.