A recent survey conducted by PwC has shown that increased automation through the rise of ‘bots’ will become the next big thing for shared service centres (SSC) and centralised processing centres (CPC) across various industries in Nigeria.
In the report, 82 per cent of the 93 respondents across various industries including financial services, education, real estate, manufacturing, oil and gas, services (marketing, transport/ logistics and processing), technology and telecommunications who operate as centralised processing centres indicated a high likelihood to invest in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), while 64 per cent of them in shared service centres are likely to invest in RPA.
It was revealed during the report presented at the PwC in Lagos on Wednesday, November 22, 2017, that the high likelihood of RPA investment across these industries is majorly due to high cost of operation, especially as 89 per cent of CPC respondents operate as a cost centre while none operate as a profit centre. Similarly, 74 per cent of SSC respondents operate as a cost centre while only 17 per cent operate as profit centres.
RPA is the use of smart software to execute processes across various systems. It does not replace existing ERPs/ systems but bridges and automates the manual interfaces between multiple systems.
READ ALSO: Are we ready for robotic automation in Nigeria?
Speaking on the significance of RPA in the workplace, Alistair Hofert, PwC South Africa, Associate Director, Finance and Accounts said that Robotic Process Automation will make it possible to fully automate highly rule-based/repetitive processes, thus reducing headcount and associated costs.
“I think it is important that people in finance and technology know that RPA is not an intrusive robot and will not take over the jobs of people as is the popular scare in many industries. Rather, the RPA software sits on existing software, learns and is very good at understanding and applying intelligence.
When you add machine learning to basic robotics, you must teach the robot how to understand voice and language so that you can use things chatbots and natural language processing bots. So it still needs human beings,” Hofert said.
READ ALSO: Rising significance of Imota Rice Mill
The survey report states that as more SSCs and CPCs implement advanced automation tools, the role of transaction processors will be redefined. Job roles will be more focused on handling exceptions, providing insights and ‘adding value’ and that the scope of SSCs and CPCs will continue to grow from the traditional single-function model, towards the Global Business Service (GBS) mode.
Adedoyin Amosun, PwC Nigeria, Associate Director, Operations told BusinessDay that; “although the use of RPA is relatively new around the world and does not have a high adoption rate yet, the sectors that are likely to adopt it first in Nigeria are probably the financial services, telecommunications and companies in the manufacturing sector. These are clear targets.”
According to Amosun; “wherever there are medium to high volume transactions that really do not require much thinking because they are manual and repetitive, RPA processes are more likely to be adopted.”
The PwC report predicts that next-generation SSCs will expand their service scope to include predictive analytics, business intelligence, data management etc., thus creating more complex SSC organisations and operating models.
Jumoke Akiyode Lawanson
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
