The influence of robotic process automation on BPO industry.

Abstract

This study explores and describes the impact of the introduction of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. I decided to analyse this topic because the BPO market is changing quickly and the next step for BPOs is not just find a better labour arbitrage. Companies push every year to reduce costs and this is becoming harder and harder for companies which offer Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) considering the increasing turnover and the increase of wages. In the last ten years BPO industry in South-East Asia is moving to secondary and tertiary cities trying to decrease costs, but this phenomenon is going to reach a critical point where there won’t be any additional leverage available. BPO providers need to be able to continue to guarantee savings to clients, but if they have almost already exploited all the low-cost labour market, it would be a titanic challenge to bring additional cost saving. This would become a critical point for BPOs. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to a software robot that drives existing enterprise software in the same way that an employee does, and represents to BPOs a new solution to improve their performance and at the same time lower expenses. RPA is a new way to approach this problem and is not only about cost saving. The study’s goals are to understand how the application of RPA technologies can change the way-of-working of the BPO companies and which effect it has on job’s market.