This Ramble is one of a series on Deshoring - the deliberate replacement of costly consulting and systems integration services with Agentic AI
*
Self Service was one of the forerunners to automation and AI.
The ATM replaced human bank clerks (or Tellers) - so, instead of planning our trip to the bank to withdraw cash over the counter, interacting with a friendly human, we now interact with an Automated Teller Machine where the conversation involves a 4-digit number and a few beepy button presses.
Self Service checkouts at supermarkets put the onus on you as a customer to scan your own barcodes, weigh your own onions, and make your own payment. The Human observes from a distance checking you’re old enough to buy that Merlot to drink, or sensible enough not to sniff that glue in your basket.
The 2000s saw a flurry of self-service applications. Portals where you did your own thing rather than waiting at the end of a phone line to change your airline ticket, or cancel your Virgin Media broadband.
Self Service is about putting the control back with the consumer, and, at the same time, shifting the overhead of service from the provider to the customer.
You now provide your own customer service.
It amazes me that we’ve worried for decades about robots taking our jobs, meanwhile we’ve effectively all taken on unpaid part-time jobs with the vendors in our lives in order to make our lives easier.
But self service isn’t self-serving.
No.
Self-serving is when you do something that’s entirely beneficial to you.
In its rawest metaphorical sense, self serving is cutting yourself a slice of cake and ignoring everyone else. Or maybe not telling everyone else that there’s even a cake.
When your business involves giving advice, they’re the most dangerous places for self-serving to take place.
Take a care service centre who carries out your annual inspection. The honest ones tell you what you need for your own safety, future maintenance needs and budget. The not-so-honest ones tell you what you need based on their sales targets, personal commissions and how they’re doing against them at the exact time you visit them.
We all have horror stories of self-serving businesses. Con men, rip-off artists - often, they prey on naivety - hoping their customer won’t understand the technical nuances of their advice. They use fear as an accelerant for demand. The unwitting customer takes the bait and bites hard.
These types of businesses don’t grow through recommendations and referrals. They market their business in different ways. Sometimes it’s via networks of referrers (who are also in on the act). Sometimes it’s through provenance of brand (best known for doing what they do) or prominence of position (I pass them on the high street.).
In their world, they value the quick dopamine hit of revenue (or commission) over the slow-release warm buzz of a happy lifetime customer.
Do they get found out by you? Yeah, sometimes.
But they survive because they operate in large markets where there’s a supply and demand imbalance (i.e. there aren’t as many of them) and where they have a status imbalance over their customers (i.e. they know more about the problem so can give advice from a higher status position).
The opposite is honesty, independence and an absence of bias.
This is Principle 5 of my Deshoring Manifesto - Independence & Freedom from Bias over Self-Serving Advice.
Consultancies are hired to give advice. They’re also commercial organisations. This means that the advice they give is sometimes skewed by a self-serving narrative.
They don’t necessarily tell you what you need to know, and what’s best for you.
Instead, the self-serving ones tell you what they want you to know because it creates a follow-on dependency.
I must stress though, this isn’t every consultancy.
It also isn’t defined by scale.
I could lead you to boutique consultancies who have this self-serving ethic down to a fine art. And, I could lead you to big firms who have the smarts to do the right thing by their customers.
Resulting IT is independent, we work business-side, so we try really, really hard to be unbiased and independent. I can’t say hand on heart we get this right 100% of the time, but I am positive that it’s the vast majority of the time. Like you, our people are human, they’re motivated by things that matter to them personally.
But Agentic Consultants like S4SensAI aren’t.
They have no self to serve.
The advice they give isn’t angling for an extension like a contractor. They don’t plant their next proposal as a recommendations report. Agentic Consultants don’t suffer unconscious cognitive bias (especially when you include a cross check in their guardrails).
Their advice is unencumbered.
Pure.
Does it need checking? Yes. Of course it does.
But you don’t need to worry so much about whether the advice is tainted by its own interests.
Agentic Consultants are faster. They’re also cheaper than high-salaried (and bonused) individuals who might have school fees to pay, or a big holiday looming.
And they’re not measured by KPIs that affect their decision making.
What I want you to realise with principle 5 of my Deshoring Manifesto is that it's not only better because it’s more thorough and up to date, but that it’s better because there’s no agenda, subtext or sleight of hand.
Agents don’t even have hands.
Deshoring - Faster, Cheaper, Better SAP delivery.