"Accenture Operations, the company’s outsourcing unit, once used human workers in mostly low-wage countries such as India, to handle routine data entry and customer service tasks for clients. Now that unit is hoping this new software will help clients’ achieve further savings by -- at least in some cases -- eliminating the need for humans altogether."
"The consulting firm took five years to build the SynOps platform, Polishook said. About 100 Accenture clients have used the system for procurement, with around 20 having trialed the finance product and five clients currently piloting the marketing offering. For instance, if used in procurement, the SynOps system can take an order, generate an invoice, check that invoice against a contract, correct any errors and then email it to the customer."
"Accenture’s clients can also set custom rules for whether a system will process something automatically based on how much confidence the artificial intelligence software has in its own predictions. For instance, if a system were handling routine insurance claims, a company might allow it to automatically pay those claims as long as it had at least a 95 percent confidence that the decision was correct".
"SynOps platform sits on top of a company’s existing databases and record-keeping systems."
Reportedly the system has resulted in 40,000 staff being redeployed as presumably their tasks and responsibilities were automated.