There’s a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence. Mostly it’s concern about what it will do to employment, accoridng to Thomas Bourgeois, CEO of Dhatim.
Speaking to HR Grapevine, he says that AI could revolutionise the professional practices of white-collar workers; in a good way.
“Rather than putting people out of jobs, clever automation is a unique opportunity for business functions to reinvent themselves, enrich their services and invest in the future,” he says. “Business functions can sometimes be the poor relations of innovation, but we see areas like Finance, Purchasing and HR as the top three ‘AI-sable’ professions.
“That’s not surprising because some of the day-to-day work involves repetitive tasks. So, rather than being a threat, AI could optimise the team’s time, allowing them to devote themselves to much more interesting and productive work. It could have knock-on, soft benefits like improving motivation and attracting talent.
“For example, accounting teams often have a heavy burden in checking invoices against contracts. The volumes and complexity of data can be huge and creating order from the mass of big data can take up much of the team’s time. Of course, some of this is already automated, but at one of our recent projects, we were able to do things like use AI to interpret the handwritten notes on the contracts that were impossible for a human to do efficiently. This uncovered an additional 18% of savings and millions of euros for the organisation.
“This work would have been arduous and time-consuming for the team. Managed well however, digital assistants powered by AI, can improve productivity and generate savings. Investing in this new technology could be an opportunity to improve our working lives and the company turnover at the same time.”
