Digital Innovation
less than we expect in the short term,
but more profound in the long term, in
ways we don’t expect.
How can other people
start using this tech?
robot that people use daily (think
Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa) will
take away some of the drudgery and
enable us to focus on what we do best
as humans. People will have data at their
fingertips and they won’t have to do all
the administration.
Where do humans
out-perform robots?
Humans empathise, infer, make leaps
of intuition; they create, offer opinions,
link organisations; they sell. If we
could free them up to do those things
all the time, that would probably be
designing the ultimate organisation.
So… no ‘Terminators’ in the
workplace anytime soon?
We’re going through the super hype
era at the moment. People are blending
AI and robotics and coming up with
magic! We’ll all have to learn how to use
this technology in our everyday work,
in just the same way that we learned
how to use email; it’ll be part of our
daily toolkit. I think the impact will be
alexandermannsolutions.com
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“Choose
projects that
are simple, and
use these to
understand the
implications
for your
organisation”
Initially, the individuals who built
the robots said “hey, we’ve got robots,
would you like to use them”, but
most people couldn’t get their heads
around how. The next wave has been
consultancy saying “we’ll review your
business processes, do the analysis and
come up with a strategy for how you use
robotics in your organisation”, but it’s
got a big price tag to it.
I think the third stage has been
people in areas such as ours, where
we have subject matter expertise in
talent, saying “we can help you dip
your toe in the water, at low cost; we’ll
get something up and running so you
can experience it and then once we’ve
shared what we’ve done, we’ll help
you to then feed it into your talent
acquisition strategy”.
Working with the software vendors
for robotics can be a challenge and
once you’ve set up the robot within
your organisation, there’s a bunch
of methods and controls you have
to put around it, so you can access
the different systems and processes.
You have to configure it correctly
and get it right from an IT security
point of view. Each is a little learning
experience. We’re well down the track,
but if I’d known at the start, it would
have helped me move forward quickly.
That’s why we’re offering to help our
clients with that.
What would be your advice
to clients and peers?
Get some help. But if you’re determined
to do it yourself, start on a small scale.
Get your tech team involved, choose
projects that are benign and simple,
and use these to understand the
implications for your organisation.
If you can find some help to get you
through that first stage, that will
accelerate the process.
We will be discussing our AI and Robotics strategy in more detail
at the Catalyst event in November (see page 66)