Direct sales, marketing, or customer service activities
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Direct or coordinate activities of businesses or departments concerned with production, pricing, sales, or distribution of products.
- Plan or direct activities, such as sales promotions, that require coordination with other department managers.
- Coordinate activities of departments, such as sales, graphic arts, media, finance, and research.
- Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.
- Direct and coordinate activities involving sales of manufactured products, services, commodities, real estate, or other subjects of sale.
- Direct activities of external agencies, establishments, or departments that develop and implement communication strategies and information programs.
- Direct activities of external agencies, establishments, or departments that develop and implement fundraising strategies and programs.
- Develop or direct development of offering documents or marketing materials.
- Direct or coordinate production, processing, distribution, or marketing activities of industrial organizations.
- Coordinate clerical, record-keeping, inventory, requisitioning, and marketing activities.
- Direct non-merchandising departments, such as advertising, purchasing, credit, or accounting.
- Direct and coordinate activities of businesses or departments concerned with the production, pricing, sales, or distribution of products.
- Coordinate or participate in promotional activities or trade shows, working with developers, advertisers, or production managers, to market products or services.
- Direct, coordinate, and review sales and service accounting and record-keeping, as well as receiving and shipping.
- Direct non-merchandising departments of businesses, such as advertising or purchasing.
- Direct foreign sales and service outlets of an organization.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Direct organizational operations, activities, or procedures”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.