President Elect, Donald John Trump. That’s going to take some getting used to. For everyone. His campaign told us that he would make America Grate again, and it does indeed Grate on the world’s collective nerves. The Japanese stock market crashed, European markets are down and the Republican candidate who said he would tear apart the Washington establishment, including the Republican party, is now… the Washington establishment. The candidate of Disruption is preparing for his four-year term as the leader of the Free World.

If you are involved in any one of the areas that Trump has campaigned about, your life may soon change. For coal miners, this could be a great thing. For outsourcers?  Maybe not so much. But don’t worry, outsourcers can be 100% compliant with the Trump future. The problem is that big outsourcing has become synonymous with offshoring. But, if you know how to decouple the “out” from the “off”, there are a lot of opportunities you can pursue that will not run afoul of the new order in Washington.

Remember, outsourcing began long before offshoring was popular. The hot issue for this election is the number of jobs lost in the US because corporations sought workers with lower wages, offshore. If Trump keeps his promise to the American people, he will move work back onshore. I believe Trump will do this. The problem is that Trump doesn’t understand that robots are now doing the work that people once performed. If work moves back to the US, workers will compete for jobs with robots. The robots not only work for less, but they work faster and with fewer mistakes.

Need some proof? Let’s say that you had to perform a moderately complex task in a law firm, in this case, a complex email review. You thought you were done, but suddenly another 650,000 emails are identified and must be reviewed for illegal content. In the next 8 days. Is it even humanly possible to review those many emails in that short a period of time? The answer is, “NO”… not if you are a human. However, if you are the latest “smart” e-discovery software, you can do the job with time to spare. That’s right, robots can save the day!      

Get ready for them, because Trumps’ onshore initiative is about to exponentially expand the number of robots in the workplace. If outsourcing is your business, then you need to keep checking back here to learn the secrets of surviving our new age of disruption. At least that’s my Niccolls worth for today!