Home Professional Services Accenture Deploys AI That Automated 40,000 Roles

Accenture Deploys AI That Automated 40,000 Roles

Global consulting company Accenture is expected to start selling services and software that are already in use internally, especially in redeploying nearly 40,000 workers and automating tasks.

The novel platform, which has been in the development stage for five years, recommends ways of streamlining and automating processes in various areas such as procurement and marketing, accounting and finance.

The Group CEO of Accenture Operations Debbie Polishook claimed that all its affected employees had been retrained by the firm to take up other jobs.

While Accenture was busy creating SynOps, its workers’ headcount increased.

Currently, the global consulting company employs 469,000 workers, which marks an increment from 425,000 people in 2017.

Accenture Operations, Accenture Plc’s outsourcing unit, once tasked human employees in low-wage nations like India to deal with routine customer service and data entry tasks for customers.

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The new unit hopes that the new software will assist customers in attaining more savings by getting rid of the need for human beings altogether.

For example, when utilized in procurement, the SynOps system can take an order from a client, produce an invoice, check the particular invoice against a contract, rectify any errors before emailing it to the client.

“This is not trying to get rid of the human,” Polishook said, “but to make them as productive as possible and get them to focus on the work that a human really needs to do.”

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a fast-growing field for enterprise software.

UiPath, one of the leading providers of RPA software, has received nearly $450 million in VC financing to date and hit a valuation of $3 billion in its recent funding round back in September 2018.

Competing firm Blue Prism Group Plc currently has a valuation of 890 million pounds, which is equivalent to $1.2 billion.

Nearly 100 Accenture customers have leveraged the SynOps platform for procurement purpose, with about 20 having tested the finance product and five customers testing the pilot marketing program.

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In some instances, using the automation platform means that Accenture Plc can carry out the same task for customers at a cheaper cost than it has charged previously.

Polishook claimed that currently the consulting firm charges customers either a fixed charge or based on the number of people required to tackle their outsourced task.

Accenture Operations’ Group Technology Officer Nirav Sampat claimed that the SynOps platform is built on top of the firm’s existing record-keeping systems and databases.

He added that the platform could handle things such as predicting which invoices can be rejected due to the failure to meet the contract’s terms and in some instances rectify those invoices automatically before sending them to a given client.

SynOps also enables Accenture’s customers to measure how efficient their processes are compared to those of other companies across industries or in the same industry.

Accenture’s customers can also come up with custom rules that determine whether a system will process a particular thing automatically based on the amount of confidence the AI software has in its forecasts.

READ MORE: RPA – 10 Powerful Examples in Enterprise

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KC Cheung
KC Cheung has over 18 years experience in the technology industry including media, payments, and software and has a keen interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks and its applications in business. Over the years he has worked with some of the leading technology companies, building and growing dynamic teams in a fast moving international environment.
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