Companies are on the cusp of a massive leap in productivity. Today, thousands of people are involved in process work, where they take information from one source and put it into another place. For example, take procurement and accounts payable:
- Procurement staff help a customer create a purchase order, and then send it to a supplier.
- The supplier’s order-processing staff then take the purchase order and enter it into the order-processing system, where it’s fulfilled and shipped to the customer that placed the order.
- Staff on the customer’s loading dock receive the goods, and the finance staff enters the invoice into the customer’s finance system.
Over the next decade, all of these processes will be completely automated in almost every company, and machine learning will play a big part in automating the decision points at each stage of the process. It will help businesses make the following decisions:
- Does the person approving the order have the authority to do so?
- Is it OK to substitute a product for an out-of-stock item?
- If a supplier has substituted a product, will the receiver accept it?
- Is the invoice OK to pay as is or should it be queried?