Business Process Management and permanent job elimination
Business Process Management (BPM) is the top layer of a software stack that orchestrates how services on multiple servers communicate and process business transactions. This also includes collecting and acting on information entered by customers and by other businesses via web servers.
Below this layer are Web Services, Enterprise Service Buses, and various software plumbing that connects clients, services and databases.
Using BPM, businesses can implement "straight-through processing", where a customer transaction is processed to completion without invoking any humans in the process. A good example of a straight-through process is filling your car at a self-service gas pump using your credit card. From the time that the credit card magnetic stripe data, the customer's various button presses, and the grade, quantity and price of the gasoline purchased are collected from the the pump, until the transaction appears on the customer's statement, there is no human intervention.
Since the mid-'70s, there has been a debate about how software applications should be designed. Some have thought that software applications should support people in work centers, while others have thought that applications should support end-to-end processes. For a long time, the work center automation concept won out, and client-server software converted paper-based processes to digital, one job task and work station at a time. This was inefficient, since often jobs would involve accessing, cutting and pasting between applications, making printouts of partial transactions, or entering data from paper references.
BPM and the lower layers of software plumbing now allow software developers to create interface to these applications so that they become services which communicate directly to each other. BP also implements the necessary data transformations, data lookups, routine logical functions, and routing of results, which was previously done at workstations. When transactions require human intervention, it routes and queues work for workstations, and then resumes the automated process flow.
As a result, businesses can eliminate permanently many clerical and administrative jobs.
Besides contributing to permanent unemployment, the elmination of these jobs will also diminish the demand for office space and exacerbate the downturn in commecial real estate.
Does anyone have the figures on shoplifting losses experienced by supermarkets and big-box retailers using customer self-service checkouts?
I suppose they could attach a radio tag (RFID) that signals the ow-oogah to sound off when the shopper leaves the store unless the shopper has deactivated it by scanning at the checkout station.
November 16, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't have any information about the in-store self service checkout.
The self-service gas stations have a higher fraud rate than other credit card uses, since a driver can use a fake credit card made by "skimming" the data off of a legitimate card. They try to control this be having the driver enter their zip code or other information, as well as by limiting the dollar value of purchases, looking for patterns of purchases, etc. They also charge a higher fee to the gas station for use of credit cards.
Presumably these techniques can also be applied at in-store self check out.
November 16, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, I don't know how the self service checkouts would add to shoplifting losses. I have had experience with only one (at a Harris Teeter) and I liked it a lot. There was one cashier to oversee 4 checkouts. The bags were on a scale that could tell if you put something in the bag or not - repeated requests for "please place item in the bag" would alert the cashier. And of course the verso - nothing could go in the bag without being scanned - "please remove item from the bag and scan the item". Could people shove the bacon down their pants at the register? Yeah, but they could do that anywhere in the store too.
November 16, 2009 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the little scale thing is pretty effective at theft-thwartation.
Presumably anyone who wants to put an office building anywhere these days will consider somewhere other than the USA?....
November 17, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink