We are in a fight with no rules. And white collar work is in the direct sights of this fight.
In 1970 it took 108 individuals 5 days to unload a timber ship. Today it takes 8 people 1 day. Accounting jobs have remained essentially the same over the last 100 years. We have merely exchanged the abacus and paper journals for a laptop computer and automated systems.

Sophisticated organisations realise this and have setoff after white collar jobs with a vengeance. To the extent that 90% of white collar jobs in existence today will disappear or change beyond recognition in the next 15 years. The new benchmark for sophistication is that 80% of all activities in an organisation will be fully automated. That is no human intervention whatsoever. Smart businesses have set themselves the goal of 80% automation by end 2008.

They automate with the view to freeing their employee’s energy and removing the mundane from them. These smart businesses aggressively enable customer self-help capability to leverage their customer’s investments in their own connectivity. Wherever possible, they extend these self-help capabilities to their suppliers. The end result is a web of connected stakeholders – suppliers, employees and customers who are free to focus on the success of the business instead of passing paper and bits of data between each other.
What is your nxt step regarding automation?