Automation is coming to AP: But it doesn’t mean that our jobs are dead

The makeup of the workforce is changing. Software advances, developments in robotics, AI, and machine learning are bringing a new age of automation, one in which machines will be able to outperform humans in various work tasks. According to McKinsey Global Institute's 2017 report on the future of automation, nearly half of the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technology.

Of those activities, data collection and processing are the most susceptible, leaving much of the finance department worried. Many traditional finance jobs will be automated or redefined within the next 20 years, according to University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne.

Accounts payable is particularly at risk. In fact, the current description of an accounts payable clerk will likely disappear in the next 20 years, threatening to put the AP clerk out of a job!

It may seem like all hope is lost as automation races toward us, but that's not necessarily the case. James Manyika, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, says "more jobs will change than will be automated away in the short to medium term." In McKinsey's words, "People will need to continue working alongside machines to produce the growth in per capita GDP to which countries around the world aspire."

Skilled employees will work alongside software automation and RPA (robotic process automation) to approve data analysis, ...