A group of industry experts gathered at University of St. Thomas on Wednesday, April 10, to talk about the convergence of innovation, intelligent automation and its impact on sourcing.

"With intelligent automation, we see companies enhancing their operations, transforming their businesses, and even creating new businesses,” Dr. Beena George, dean of UST’s Cameron School of Business and UST's new Chief Innovation Officer, said. “The i3 Conference gave our students and community the opportunity to learn about some of these exciting changes.”

Topics of Discussion

Topics explored were the latest trends and innovations in print advertising and an intelligent payment service system developed by the technology company Lucrotec. Intelligent automation is transforming the outsourcing process and ushering in a new era of productivity and innovation.

At this workshop, attendees learned how machine-learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing, when applied to areas such as print management and supplier payments, could drive significant savings, improve efficiency and generate significant new revenue.

Focusing on Impact Sourcing

The ending session's focus was impact sourcing. Impact sourcing is a business process outsourcing model in which jobs or tasks are outsourced to economically disadvantaged areas as a means of improving the situation of the people living there. Through impact sourcing, companies can have a dramatic and positive social impact on the communities they source from by prioritizing suppliers who intentionally hire and provide career development opportunities to people who otherwise have limited prospects for formal employment.

This event serves as a precursor to an Impact Sourcing Conference, which University of St. Thomas hosts on May 24. The global summit’s goal is to have participants experience the real-world impact of global companies that have embraced impact sourcing in Africa.

A ticket to the 2019 Impact Sourcing Summit held in Uganda sponsored by Uganda Munu Technologies was raffled at the April 10 workshop.

Dr. George hosted the workshop event.

“We ended the conference with a discussion on using intelligent automation to support the infrastructure needed for impact sourcing,” Dr. George said. “As a signatory to the UN Global Compact Principles for Responsible Management Education (UNGC PRME), the Cameron School of Business has a particular interest in this practice since impact sourcing addresses two of the UNGC's Sustainable Development Goals that focus on economic development and reducing inequality.”