As Jamaica sets about creating five per cent economic growth within four years, the Business Processing Operations sector has been considered a lynch pin in meeting that goal.

But as the world moves faster towards greater automation, Duncan Tait, director and corporate executive officer for global tech firm Fujitsu, warns that the sector is ripe for automation.

“BPO is completely ripe for being automated,” Taid said.

There are currently about 40 companies in Jamaica’s growing BPO sector , employing some 22,000 workers. There is now an effort to move up the value chain from BPO to Business Process Managment (BPM) which would require employees with a higher level of education and training.

“Where will BPO be in 10 years time?” Tait asked. “It will be completely different.

“The world is going through fundamental change” Tait told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview during his first visit to Jamaica recently.

“We are only at the beginning of this digital revolution,” he said. “Digitalisation is the most profound thing to happen to human communication.” And while many people are becoming concerned about the future of employment, Tait said “Technology is a force for good.”

Traditional blue-chip companies are usually too conservative and too much invested in the status quo to lead disruptive trade in their industries – and lose ground to new and aggressive companies such as AirBnB in the vacation industry and Uber in the taxi space.

But Fujitsu, an 85 year old Japanese company which has been in Jamaica for decades is embracing the technological change and working on being a leader in its own space.

Fujitsu is concentrating on four main areas , Tait said – the internet of things, artificial intelligence, the cloud and cyber security.

Meanwhile, fear about the change that robotics will bring in the future is misplaced, Tait believes, noting “Robotics is already happening.”

“I think we can make the world a better place,” Tait told the Caribbean Business Report, adding that Jamaica is in an ideal position for “leapfrogging” into this new environment.

Moving ahead, Tait said that more people should be encouraged to get into science, technology, energy and mathematics (STEM) in order to prepare themselves for the next wave of digital jobs.

As a result, Fujitsu will be working with the University of the West Indies and the University of Technology to set up some centres of excellence.

Fujitsu is moving fast, as the aim is to have the centres up and running “by the end of June.”

“There is some great raw talent here in Fujitsu” Tait said. “We need to inspire people to get involved in this work.”

In a recent Fujitsu poll of C-suite executives, 98 per cent of respondents said that their businesses were completely changing – but only seven per cent thought their company was leading the change in their industry, Tait said.

Fujitsu employs about 160,000 people, including 100 people in the Jamaican office, 120 in Trinidad and 30 in Barbados. The Jamaican office, led by Mervyn Eyre, “has a track record of getting things done,” Tait said.