Category Archives: Automation

The topic seems to strike fear in the hearts of employees in every industry: artificially intelligent, robots, automated systems and the threat of them taking over the world. But not every industry is dreading their presence.

With the annual tax season in full swing, accountants couldnt be happier with the thought of automation. Accounting and tax preparation is by its very nature, repetitive work. Once the differing figures are taken into account, the procedures are pretty much standard.

A global independent survey of 700 accountants by Sage, a cloud accounting provider, revealedthat systems automation is welcomed and considered a strategic asset to their business. The companys full 2017 Practice of Now Report is available here.

According to the report, a whopping 96 percent of those surveyed are positive about the role that automation will play in their day-to-day process.

The ability to get rid of a frustration, number-crunching, while freeing up time to focus on client acquisition is a great thing. Automated accounting systems allow firmsto increase their scope of services, providing their clients with a broader range of financial services.

The combination of a highly accurate automated system and a human-driven service is something every accounting office is eager to implement. Ultimately this type of hybrid system means growth and more meaningful client relationships.

89 percent of U.S. accountants view automating data entry and reporting as a way to create more value add service for clients. The Practice Of Now Sage (LON:SGE)

Automated document processing and especially document transfer may carry an inherent risk although this practice is already in place. The automation and digitization of documents is by far more secure than their manual counterparts.

AI driven automation eliminates human error while increasing speed beyond the capabilities of a human accountant. Its safe to say that automation provides a measurable increase in security and efficiency for accountants: factors that will increase the bottom line during tax seasons.

A looming deadline, coupled with not enough hours in the day is a hectic recipe. By freeing up an accountants workload, artificial intelligence has the potential to take the pain out of tax season.

The unbillable hours of shuffling papers and manual work increases during tax season and detracts from the bottom line of the accounting business. By drastically cutting the amount of time required to process returns, accountants are able to take on more clients and in turn, increase their profitability.

What automation promises is less time calculating figures and filling in spreadsheets and more time providing insight and consultancy based services.

In an industry moving towards automation, 99 percent of U.S. accountants surveyed voiced confidence about the future of accountancy and your role in it, while 58 percent see their role becoming more strategic and allow them to provide more financial advice to customers. The Practice Of Now Sage

Its no longer enough for accountants to just do taxes. CPAs are continuously held to a higher level of expectations and clients are demanding a greater level of service.

Intelligent automated accountingsystems provide firmswith a technology-driven component that allows them to keep pace with the market and stay relevant. Its for these very reasons that accountants are welcoming AI with open arms.

Accounting Photo via Shutterstock

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96 Percent of Accountants Feel Positively About Automation, Study ... - Small Business Trends

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is preparing his country to deal with the challenges new technologies place on the workforce.

The rise of artificial intelligence technologies has made it easier for companies like Google ( goog ) to automatically identify cats in photos. But as cutting-edge AI technologies amplify automation, people are increasingly worried that powerful software will replace the need for human workers .

Earlier this week, Trudeau addressed the subject of automation and labor on the question-and-answer website Quora and explained some of his ideas to help Canadian citizens keep their jobs in light of rapid technological advances.

Trudeau concedes that the job market is changing but instead of resisting in vain, Canada is going to fund research in the areas that are directly causing the change, like artificial intelligence.

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The prime minister didnt point to any examples of government AI funding, but Canada has recently invested in several big AI policy projects. In March, Canada said it would spend $125 million on a new initiative designed to attract and retain top academic talent in Canada and boost the number of graduate students and researchers studying AI.

Canada is currently a hotbed of AI research , with some of the worlds leading experts in the AI technique of deep learning residing in the country and researching at various universities like the University of Montreal and the McGill University. Several big tech companies like Microsoft ( msft ) and Google have also recently invested in AI research projects in Canada involving the countrys top academics.

For Canadas unemployed, Trudeau said the government is proposing a plan that would allow citizens to pursue self-funded training while still receiving unemployment benefits. This unemployment plan would cost $132.4 million over four years, beginning next year, and $37.9 million per year thereafter, he wrote.

For unemployed workers receiving [Employment Insurance], this will mean that they can return to school to get the training they need to find a new jobwithout fear of losing the EI benefits they need to support themselves and their families, Trudeau wrote.

As for Canadas current workforce, Trudeau said that the country is expanding access to grants and access to interest-free student loans for adults, although he did not say how much it would cost.

This initiative, Trudeau said, will help make it cheaper for adults with children to go back to school on a part-time basis to keep their job skills up to date. He also said that Canada is going to invest in an initiative that would help students find jobs after they finish their education.

Trudeaus comments about how Canada is preparing for automation technologies contrast with recent statements made by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Steve Mnuchin. Mnuchin told news outlet Axios in March that he does not believe artificial intelligence would significantly impact jobs for around 50 to 100 years.

Besides increased government spending on education, several analysts also recommend that companies spend money on employee training projects as well for their own workers.

For example, a recent Accenture report on technological trends in the workplace recommends that business leaders instill a life-long" culture among their employees, reawarding those who seek outside training to increase their skills.

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Justin Trudeau Has a Plan to Save Jobs From Automation - Fortune

From driving your car to investing your pension, automation is becoming the status quo across industries. Last year, TechCrunch exclaimed that we were on the precipice of an automation revolution. Many economists term this transition the fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, where automation and robotics perform professional tasks with more precision and efficiency. Skeptics fear machines ability to perform high-risk operations, like landing an aircraft. But when it comes to investing, robots are responsible for trillions of dollars. According to Business Insider, robo-advisors are expected to manage $8 trillion globally by 2020.

Robotic process automation or RPA is leading the frontier in FinTech innovations. A publication by Ernst & Young explains RPA can significantly enhance capabilities of finance in providing analysis and insights. For instance, it can substantially increase scope of data available to the organization. Cognitive RPA can extract and combine data from various sources. It can also provide initial analysis and conclusions. Automated investing strategies curve the risks of volatile markets in ways humans cannot. It didn't take industry leaders long to roll out their own automated services.Forbes reported that JP Morgan has devoted $600 million to the emerging FinTech solution.

On the surface, automated robo-advisors may seem identical, but a closer look reveals the unique fingerprints of each program. Wealthfronts robo advisor asks clients their preferred risk, then constructs a portfolio to fit those parameters. The underlying operations are created by finance professionals and while multiple companies offer similar robo advisors, they are each unique to their creators. Automated processes are most useful when there are clear parameters of input and output that are relevant to each other. In order to mitigate risk, automated investing processes must analyze pertinent dimensions of a market. Take the art market for instance.

Traditionally, investors use art advisors and instinct to speculate prices and determine opportunities. While this strategy can be successful, it operates on a narrow view of the market. Even the most experienced advisors are unable to detect the most growth opportunity, which is why many remain undiscovered. Further, art assets have a tendency to materialize in extreme competition. In his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, Don Thompson examines the auction that set records for a work by Damien Hirst. Thompson points to battling egos on the auction floor for the works high price.

The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Livingby Damien Hirst (1991)

Applying robotic automation processes to the art market curbs the risk of pursuing unsupported acquisitions. At Arthena, computers execute analyses on nearly 40,000 data points from the art market to effectively assess an art works price and value. This process goes further to identify opportunities in the market that traditional techniques ignore. Applying our analysis to last years art market indicates that Arthena could have deployed up to $500M in capital, given our investment parameters (price, asset value) and our requirements for expected asset growth, volatility and liquidity.

Art world experts set the parameters for optimal investments and examine auction costs to complement the quantitative analytics. All an investor has to do is choose a fund. Automation in the art market introduces opportunities and maximizes value by determining real-time peaks and lows in the market.

RPA in art investing is yet another example of the power of automation. According to The National Direction of Corporate Directions, it is not uncommon for todays powerful RPA technology to reduce the number of humans needed on a data-intensive process from 50 people to five. For the the FinTech industry, automation allows innovative managers to focus their resources on crafting new products that expose unique asset classes. To learn how Arthena managers are doing just that in the art market, visit our How It Works page.

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Finally, Automation in the Art Market - Huffington Post

The 24th of March was a disaster, politically speaking, for the President of the United States, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and, more importantly, for huge cohorts of future and present American workers.

Florida officially lost 5,000 jobs in February; from the District of Columbia came more bad news new President Trumps second huge political loss occurred when the House of Representatives didnt vote on Trumpcare. It did not have enough support by Paul Ryan-led Republican congressmen.

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The Right Side:Automation and job losses - Porterville Recorder

Financial Times

Can a robot do your job? Financial Times This interactive calculator, based on data from the McKinsey Global Institute, gives an indication of how the future of work will change: instead of destroying entire jobs and creating completely new occupations, for the most part AI and automation ...

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Can a robot do your job? - Financial Times

ATLANTA, GA, Apr 05, 2017 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- Report finds accountants globally are optimistic about the future of accounting in the face of rising automation

ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - Apr 5, 2017) -

38% reveal one of their biggest business frustrations is time spent number-crunching

32% of those surveyed use manual methods as part of their record keeping for clients; 25% Excel and 7% handwritten notes

86% say they would be happy for technology to make the admin elements of their job invisible, so they can focus more on their clients and building their practice

23% would take time off with the extra time they save with automation

Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software, today announced the results of a new global survey of 700 accountants which shows that attitudes towards automation within the accounting profession are changing as the benefits become clear -- signaling a new era for the accounting practice.

The 'Practice of Now' report, conducted for Sage by independent research company Viga, reveals that 96% of those surveyed are confident about the future of accountancy and their role in it, despite 68% seeing their role changing through automation in the future.

"Technological change can be divisive -- some are quick to adopt while others are more hesitant. This research shows that the majority of accountants see the empowering opportunity that automation can create and how it will free up more of their time so they can focus on their practice and their clients," said Jennifer Warawa, EVP Product Marketing, Sage. "As artificial intelligence and bots become progressively more intuitive, there is even greater potential for a future of invisible admin to help accountants focus on more strategic areas of their business. The industry must come together to support these changes and help eliminate any barriers or fears that can hold accountants back from the benefits of the increased efficiency that automation will afford them."

U.S. Specific Data The report also showed that 89% of U.S. accountants view automating data entry and reporting as a way to create more value add service for clients. Currently 77% use a cloud-based practice management solution to help serve their clients, while the majority stated that the most important service accounting software provides is automation that frees up time for clients and empowers staff to spend less time crunching numbers and do more analysis, which leads to greater job satisfaction. In an industry moving towards automation, 99% of U.S. accountants surveyed voiced confidence about the future of accountancy and their role in it, while 58% see their role becoming more strategic, allowing them to provide more financial advice to customers.

Further Global Findings from the Practice of Now Include:

Cloud Adoption: With cloud now seen as table stakes in most organizations, cloud-based solutions among accountants are proving popular:

57% say their firm invests in the best technology available, including cloud technology, to help offer the best services to their clients

67% have adopted a cloud-based practice management solution

Security is seen as the biggest barrier to adopting cloud technology (37%), while 14% say it's client concerns

Admin & Automation: Many accountants surveyed find admin tasks such as time spent number-crunching frustrating and can see great benefits in automation such as it freeing their time to serve more clients and creating more services for their clients. However, some still worry about how technology will impact their role:

An overwhelming 86% agree that by automating data entry and reporting, they would be free to create services that add value for their clients

Accountants are on the fence as to whether admin is enjoyable or a frustration with 35% saying it's the most enjoyable part of their role while 38% say time spent number-crunching is their biggest frustration; regardless, they are in agreement that it takes up a lot of their time

38% believe the biggest threat to the accountancy profession is new emerging technology that can do some of the jobs they currently do

23% would take time off with the extra time they save with automation

Future Gazing - Optimism Prevails: Despite fears and frustrations, accountants have an optimistic view of the future of their profession:

96% of those surveyed are confident about the future of accountancy and their role in it; 47% are very confident & 49% moderately confident

68% see their role changing through automation in the future; 43% believe it will change through automated admin and 25% see some of their work becoming automated but still applying that information under their control

Over half accountants surveyed (53%) see their roles becoming more strategic and being able to provide more financial and business advice to their customers

When asked what the biggest threats to the accountancy profession are, 36% believe it to be self-service accounting solutions, with 25% saying it's customers not understanding the full benefit of working with an accountant

Methodology: The State of Accounting research was conducted by research & data collection agency Viga, on behalf of Sage, between the 13th and 27th February 2017. 700 accountants, from entry level to C-suite, were surveyed online across seven markets, including the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, France, Spain and Ireland.

About Sage

Sage is the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of entrepreneurs and business builders.

Today, business builders measure success in strong relationships, partnerships, and communities. It's why Sage helps drive today's business builders with the most intelligent and flexible cloud-enabled software, support and advice to manage everything from money to people.

Daily, more than 13,000 Sage colleagues in 23 countries work with a thriving global community of over 3 million entrepreneurs, business owners, tradespeople, accountants, partners and developers to champion the success of business builders everywhere. And as a FTSE 100 business, we are passionate about doing business the right way, supporting our local communities through the Sage Foundation.

Press Contact: Victoria Borges PR Manager, North America Sage Office: 470-447-4086 Victoria.Borges@Sage.com

2017 Nasdaq, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Global Research Reveals Accountants Welcome Technology and Automation for Administrative Relief - MarketWatch

Credit: Voodoo Manufacturing

Automation is coming? No, its already here

While the current administration focuses on bringing jobs back to the United States from China and Mexico, the real threat to job loss already resides within our borders.

We've teamed up with Product Hunt to offer you the chance to win an all expense paid trip to TNW Conference 2017!

According to a study by two Ball State University professors, 87 percent of all manufacturing jobs lost from 2000 to 2010 werent due to globalization, butrobots.All told, some five million fewer manufacturing jobs exist todaythan in 2000, a problem government leaders are mostly ignoring.TNW alum Martin Bryant likened it to recklessly putting their heads in the sand when describing politicians views on automation.

Brooklyn-based Voodoo Manufacturing offersa peek into whatthis future could look like.

The 3D printing company consists of nine printers mounted on server racks, a track where a robotic arm harvests finished plates, and a plate hopper that feeds new, clean plates to the robot as needed. This is forward thinking, as 3D printing isnt laborious, per se, but it does require human intervention.

Unfortunately for most humans,these are exactly the types of menial jobs best handled by robots.

Whether you choose to embrace it is up to you, but theres no denying its coming. Humans simply cant match robots in outputat scale.

Today we have about a 30- to 40-percent utilization rate of our factory, explainedVoodoo Manufacturing CPO Jonathan Schwartz. Were hoping to push that to 90- to 95-percent over the next three-to-five years.

This sort of efficiency before the automation age was unheard of. Now, itsnot only a possibility, its a near-certainty. And its hard to blame a company aiming to cut costswhile improving output. Business, after all, isnt charity, and global competition is making it harder to compete than ever. If robots offer an edge, businesses are likely to take it.

But maybe were focusing on the wrong things.

Once we let the cat out of the bag, which we assuredly did in the push toward automation, its not something we can undo. While we attempt to write off job loss to globalization a petty tactic used to distract, not inform maybe its time to recognize the true cause. And onceunderstand where our jobs are going, maybe then we can put our collective heads together to find out a solution for a newly unemployed workforce.

Its time to adapt, to create a future thats both cognizant of whats coming while impervious to the fear-based rhetoric that surrounds it. Automation is a good thing, or it will be at some point. There will be hurdles, and we will overcome them. But the conversation cant get underway, at least not in an impactful way, until we quit trying to shove the cat back into the bag.

As for the solution, I dont have one. But automation is coming, andits time we stop pretending we can stop it. Its time to leap, while at the same time figuring out what this new landing area looks like.

Bring on the robots.

Read next: Twitch's game store for streaming fans is now open

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The solution to automation-related job loss starts with admitting it's happening - TNW

The latest report on the disruption that the automation wave may bring in its wake makes for no more cheery reading than its predecessors. It probably doesnt help that its produced by the International Bar Association. Lawyers are just one of the white collar professions that are going to find themselves at the sharpas in guillotine end of the automation revolution. Worlds smallest violin, I know.

The Guardian discusses the report here.

Some highlights:

The competitive advantage of poorer, emerging economies based on cheaper workforces will soon be eroded as robot production lines and intelligent computer systems undercut the cost of human endeavour, the study suggests.

While a German car worker costs more than 40 (34) an hour, a robot costs between only 5 and 8 per hour. A production robot is thus cheaper than a worker in China, the report notes. Nor does a robot become ill, have children or go on strike and [it] is not entitled to annual leave.

Thats not great news for China. The term premature deindustrialization is one worth keeping in mind when reading reports like this, and as for those emerging markets hoping to use cheap labor as their route to prosperity (or at least middle income status), well.

The Guardian:

Peering into the future, the authors suggest that governments will have to decide what jobs should be performed exclusively by humans for example, caring for babies. The state could introduce a kind of human quota in any sector, and decide whether it intends to introduce a made by humans label or tax the use of machines, the report says.

In January, I noted a report produced by the EUs parliament that included this recommendation (my emphasis added):

A new reporting structure for companies requiring them to report the contribution of robotics and AI to the economic results of a company for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions.

Back to The Guardian:

Even some lawyers risk becoming unemployed. An intelligent algorithm went through the European Court of Human Rights decisions and found patterns in the text, the report records. Having learned from these cases, the algorithm was able to predict the outcome of other cases with 79% accuracy According to a study conducted by [the auditing firm] Deloitte, 100,000 jobs in the English legal sector will be automated in the next 20 years.

Pushed by the necessity to adapt to an older, eventually smaller population (a change which wont always be easy, but in a post peak labor world will turn out, in the end, to be a happy accident) Japan, as so often, leads the way.

Robots may soon invade our home and leisure environments. In the Henn-na Hotel in Sasebo, Japan, actroids robots with a human likeness are deployed, the report says. In addition to receiving and serving the guests, they are responsible for cleaning the rooms, carrying the luggage and, since 2016, preparing the food.

The robots are able to respond to the needs of the guests in three languages. The hotels plan is to replace up to 90% of the employees by using robots in hotel operations with a few human employees monitoring CCTV cameras to see whether they need to intervene if problems arise.

Work in the hotel sector is, of course, allegedly one of those jobs that Americans wont do..

And education, that magic pill?

The surveysuggests that a third of graduate level jobs around the world may eventually be replaced by machines or software.

Oh.

Elite overproduction is not an ideal recipe for social peace. Mass unemployment is not so great either. History, of course, suggests that these things work out in the end, but what happens before they do?

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Automation: Another Day Another Report - National Review

Automation is most closely associated with DevOps teams, but it can be applied to any number of functions in a traditional data center or cloud environmentespecially those mundane, repetitive tasks that take up precious time and invite human error.

However, just dont automate for the sake of automating, said Joel Sprague, principal systems engineer for General Dynamics, during his Data World session, Automation: Not Just for DevOps.

If you automate a task that doesnt end up saving time and money, its better for it to remain a manual one. Thats best accomplished by focusing on repetitive tasks that require doing the same things multiple times in one sitting; tasks that involve doing the same thing every day, week or month; and those that call for applying the same action to a large amount of systems in a short period.

Tasks can range from developing scripts to checking for software updates to handling more complex matters such as rooting out security problems, including preventing potential risks that might have resulted from human error.

Automation can let one person accomplish the work of 20, added Sprague. When something needs to be done many times, very quickly, look to automation.

Automation can go beyond rudimentary data center tasks. As recently as 10 years ago, it could take a company several weeks to deploy an additional server. IT would wait for the purchasing department to buy the new server and software licenses, then wait for the equipment, CDs and installation manuals to be shipped, then manually install the software, manually match the hardware, software, networking and access rights configurations with the existing implementation, and physically deploy the server onto the network.

Today, thanks to the automation of processes it is possible to fully provision an application server in under an hour.

Sprague recommended two free automation tools: VMwares vRealize Orchestrator and Microsoft Powershell.

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Automation: Not Just for DevOps - Data Center Knowledge

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It's an exciting time to work in tech. With all of the advancements in areas like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, the world we live in is progressively becoming smarter. Even the things that seemed impossible and taken straight out of a science fiction movie (self-driving cars!) are now beginning to become a new normal.

With all these fantastic technology advancements, though, the management of new products and features can often become... a little complex. And this fact is no different in the IT infrastructure space. If you don't believe me, scroll through your Twitter feed and it wont be too long before you find one or two IT aficionado that you follow rallying around the cry of "Automate everything!"

Automation works to simplify typical tasks, so it's easy to imagine why IT teams seek out automation tools and products. After all, why spend three hours completing a mundane task when automation can save you the time and effort? Automation tools become especially important when used in a management capacity. There, they enable IT to drive more business value to the entire organization, meaning more services are delivered faster and without the strain on the administrators or the end users.

Just as the emergence of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things has come with new products to manage devices leveraging these technologies, so too has the trend toward hybrid IT. Hybrid IT has resulted in new management and automation tools to further simplify and streamline the process across multiple technologies you are using both within and outside of your data center.

Perhaps there are no better examples of hybrid IT than hyperconverged and composable infrastructure. These solutions have transformed data centers and the IT teams who manage them from complexity connoisseurs into masters of simplicity. But even simple solutions can (and should) benefit from automation tools.

Take HPE OneView for example. HPE OneView is an infrastructure automation engine and an essential part of HPE's existing hyperconverged and composable infrastructure solutions. HPE OneView drives business value (the ultimate goal of any good IT solution, automation-related or otherwise) by allowing IT to deploy infrastructure faster, simplify operations, and increase productivity.

Template-based automation enables IT generalists to rapidly and reliably provision resources in response to applications requirements. This allows IT to deploy infrastructure faster with less human error. Agent-less monitoring, online firmware updates, and a new Global Dashboard deliver streamlined lifecycle operations at scale and simplify operations overall. And the unified API gives developers and ISVs the power to unify infrastructure automation with application and IT service delivery which increases their productivity.

While the world continues to get smarter and become more automated, the tools we use to manage new, innovative technologies have to evolve as well. By driving simplicity and decreasing time spent on management, automation tools are the key to the success of the future of IT.

To find out how you can take the next step in automating data center operations, watch this webinar detailing why and how to migrate to HPE OneView with ease.

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It's not science fiction, it's automation! - InfoWorld