India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has harshly criticized a Bank of America forecast that automation would cut three million jobs in its industry.
NASSCOM released late last week [PDF] One document diplomatically states that the Bank of America (BoA) report “offers some great insights into the future of work and other emerging trends.”
But the rebuttal document quickly takes on a sharper tone, accusing the BoA of fundamental errors such as over-counting the number of people working in business process management in India: the abbreviated public version of the report states that India has 30 percent of jobs will lose in India. IT work in the back office ”. NASSCOM’s refutation states that the Business Process Management (BPM) sector employs 1.4 million people, while the “IT-BPM sector” employs 4.5 million.
NASSCOM adds that around a third of jobs in the BOM sector are related to customer interaction services. “Most of the customer work from India is now done in an omni-channel model and requires high-end know-how with technology and automation already built into the processes,” the association wrote, suggesting that the Automation has already found its way into the industry.
The association also points out that providing automation projects to customers is a tremendous opportunity for India’s service companies and that these companies collectively hire over 100,000 people annually in India alone.
It is unclear whether NASSCOM is referring to the edited version of the document published by the BoA or was able to access the full version. The redacted version of the BoA report makes no mention of business process automation or customer service work. However, research is cited according to which ATMs initially led to downsizing in retail banking, but then boosted employment growth by lowering the cost of running a bank branch and allowing banks to open more retail locations.
“While we are seeing another round of disruption in retail bank branches from mobile payments today,” the BoA report said, “the growing role of fintech could stimulate job creation to offset the job losses for today’s bankers. “®
