The Homecoming Revolution

Remember the days when the model for outsourcing was simple? Find a country with a low cost labor force, relocate your shared services centre there, then sit back and watch profits soar. It was all too easy and for decades it looked like the bubble would never burst.

That was until the working class rose up (not in a revolutionary sense) in countries such as the Philippines, Poland and India and demanded more buck for their bang. Suddenly salary arbitrage was summarily tossed out of the window and the scramble to discover the next best gains in process efficiencies became a hot topic of debate in enterprise boardrooms around the world. As if on cue, enter from stage left Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Undeniably the way of the future, RPA eliminates slow and error prone manual effort across business processes.

With the advent of RPA, there are many vendors out there who are vociferously campaigning for the eradication of the Shared Services Center (SSC) in its entirety. Grabbing their pitchforks and torches, these experts are beginning to see RPA as the next best thing, since sliced bread, for radically overhauling and improving process efficiencies across global organizations.

As the leaders in Enterprise Process Automation, you’d expect Redwood to be standing right at the front of the protest line. However that’s not entirely the case. You see as opposed to the knee jerk reaction of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and dispensing with the SSC completely, we say let’s rather dispense with it as you’ve always known it.

To accomplish that Redwood is looking to release capacity of Full Time Employees (FTEs) in critical business processes using robots that eliminate slow and error prone manually repetitive tasks.

And that, folks, is where the homecoming revolution comes into focus. With offshoring no longer as viable an option today as it was over say the past decade, onshoring is coming back into the equation.

Using Redwood Enterprise Robotic Process Automation companies are finding it easy to do more with less. Plus as a by-product, these companies are suddenly finding that they are able to drive more efficiency and margins, improve process visibility and meet SLAs, as well as achieve greater process standardization, compliance and control.

With offshoring no longer as viable an option today as it was over say the past decade, onshoring is coming back into the equation.

And that’s just your starter for ten. Many experts believe that the true potential of robotics is still to be realized and that we’re only just scratching the tip of the iceberg. So, onshore, offshore, reshore? Not sure? We say it doesn’t actually matter. It’s time to Cybershore™.

Redwood defines Cybershoring as the replacement of traditional modes of labor arbitrage and replacement of manual process activities with smart robots that complete the entire business process – whether that is onshore, offshore or re-shored. It’s a term we use for the services required to get customers from their current state to a true enterprise robotic process environment.

These smart robots provide improved accuracy and increased productivity across end-to-end business processes. And the benefits of process robotics do not just apply to shared services. For companies that outsource, the same improvements in accuracy, production and quality can be achieved.

What’s more the robots don’t need to be watched. They use process "know-how" based on predefined best practice rules to make decisions and only need to notify their supervisor if and when human intervention is required. Allowing key decision makers to focus on analysis rather than the traditional constant daily fire-fighting as brought about by inefficient processes.

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Smart robotics and the advent of ‘Cybershoring’ is here to stay and those that see the potential of what can be done versus the legacy of what has always been done, will enjoy continued growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a revolution that’s been defined as one that will focus on how global businesses can harness big data and use automation software to streamline operations and grow.

So as this seismic shift to Cybershoring continues to happen around you, you need to be asking one question and one question alone: "Will I be setting the trend, or following it?"