Automation to cut by half simple contact center tasks – CCAP

The rate of automation brought about by efficient technology will significantly outstrip growth in simpler tasks of contact centers reducing its share to a mere 27 percent by 2022 from 47 percent, but demand will shift to mid to high and complex tasks offsetting this negative impact and resulting in the overall continued growth in job creation and revenue contribution for this sector.

This was stressed by Benedict Hernandez, chairman of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) – the bigger sector in the overall IT-business process management (IT-BPM) industry, in a briefing for the annual industry conference, “Contact Island” in October in Shangri-la Boracay to tackle industry trends such as the impact of artificial intelligence, robotics, analytics and other key technology on the industry and job creation.

According to a study conducted by its partner Frost & Sullivan, there will be a reduction in simpler tasks from 47 percent of total contact center jobs today to only 27 percent by 2022 or in six years. Job categories in the sector are simpler tasks, mid and complex. Simpler tasks refer to simple phone calls, emails and rules based functions.

This means that the mid to complex tasks will improve its share in six years and less jobs for simpler tasks. The share of mid and complex tasks will improve from 53 percent to 73 percent, accounting for almost three fourths of work in this sector in 6 years.

“Simple tasks will still continue to grow because of the overall market expansion but the rate of automation will outstrip the rate of growth of simple tasks,” Hernandez said adding “simple jobs are shrinking and bulk are going to mid and high and complex.”

As such, the study said the mid to complex tasks are going to create more than 73,000 jobs annually or 435,000 more up to year 2022. Last year, the contact center sector contributed 751,000 direct workers out of the 1.2 million jobs of the entire IT-BPM industry.

In terms of revenue generation, the contact center sector is expected to post 8.2 percent growth CAGR (compounded annual growth rate). This means from $12.5 billion revenue contribution last year, which is more than half of the $22 billion total IT-BPM revenue generation of 2016, the contact center sector is going to generate $20.4 billion by 2022 or by the end of the Duterte administration.

This continued growth is going to counter the dampening impact of automation. The growth, Hernandez said, is largely driven by sustained growth in the global outsourcing markets at over 6 percent a year from $166 billion in 2016 to $250 billion by 2022.

In addition, he said, the Philippines has always been growing faster than the global market growth making it a leader globally with a growing share from 12 percent to the current 15 percent.

“We continue to earn market share and that is enough to create that positive net growth after the impact of automation,” he stressed.

“AI and automation is a reality happening years ago. Today it finds its way in the way we are performing our work, this is no longer a phenomenon, so thousands of jobs are being transformed because those being done manually are now done by machines and when we do that the job becomes different and now we are doing different things,” said Hernandez.

In this particular reality, Hernandez said, what is more critical is the ability to move up the value chain.

“This has significant implication in how employees and partners need to continue to over invest in human capability because this is all about doing more complex type of work,” he stressed.

The complex tasks are mostly in the knowledge process outsourcing services such as data management, analytics, legal, marketing, procurement, engineering services, among others.

“This has significant implications for the Philippine industry in the human capital development that companies are getting, huge impact on the educational system to produce talents and for companies and partners to invest in new digital strategies to maneuver digital disruption,” Hernandez added.

As tasks shift to more complex tasks, there has been also a continuing shift in terms of markets and client sectors.

Potential client targets are banking, which continues to be a big user of the contact center services, telco, health, insurance, pharmaceuticals, supply chain and government.

In terms of markets, the US, which share in the country’s total outsourcing business has been declining to 72 percent from more than 90 percent five years ago, still remains the biggest, while Asia Pacific has now overtaken Europe largely due to the strong demand from Australia, which now accounts for 15 percent of total outsourcing business originating from the Asia Pacific region.

Source: http://business.mb.com.ph/2017/09/01/automation-to-cut-by-half-simple-contact-center-tasks-ccap/