Meet Dell Automated Full-Time Equivalent — a BPO solution that will revolutionize business processes

Twenty years ago, low-cost labor markets revolutionized the outsourcing industry. Today, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the next frontier. In RPA, software agents or “robots” are programmed to perform repeatable, rules-based tasks in business processes, leading to higher productivity and lower costs. Employees previously performing simple tasks can now be freed up to do higher-value work.

Dell Services today announced an RPA solution—Automated Full-Time Equivalent (AFTE) and the AFTE Command Center—designed to help customers increase speed and accuracy in business processes. Customers are able to monitor the performance of the agents through a real-time dashboard, the AFTE Command Center. Both were developed by solution architects at Dell Services.

Beyond AFTEs—Robotic Personal Assistants

Dell AFTEs perform tasks with a high degree of accuracy but if a particular process requires a higher level of scrutiny (say a high-dollar health claim), Dell’s Personal Robotic Assistants (PRA) kick in and can complete the process with only a final review needed by a human worker. Dell calls these software agents “Robotic Personal Assistants” because they really help teams be more productive. They incorporate machine learning (similar to how a smartphone’s auto-populate function continually learns more words that the user frequently types in sequence.)  

One customer recently reported the time to process a claim decrease from 4.5 minutes to 45 seconds.

Dell is now integrating the AFTE personal assistants into its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solutions. The next-generation of AFTE, currently under development by Dell, will incorporate even more cognitive intelligence: self-healing, self-service, and predictive analytics.

Monitoring the automated assistants through AFTE Command Center

Obviously, watching over the adoption and effectiveness of AFTEs is imperative when defining automation-related savings targets. The new AFTE Command Center is a real-time dashboard that allows enterprises to monitor the performance of their virtual assistants just as they would that of their human employees. The dashboard maintains a fully auditable track of machine-based work and its effectiveness. Tracking provides insight into the overall success of automation initiatives and delivers proactive notifications on any deployment issues, freeing valuable personnel from constant and painstaking manual oversight.

Why Dell?

Dell’s AFTE solution has won the Best Outsourcing Thought Leadership award for BPO innovation from the Outsourcing Institute. As service providers continue to use automation as a labor arbitrage method, Dell stands apart from the competition with the process intelligence and decision support to help any business thrive in this new digital age. Dell AFTEs can help:

  • Provide the building blocks to develop more streamlined end-to-end processes
  • Perform meaningful analytics
  • Reduce reliance on human labor for repetitive tasks

Built on the suggestions of thousands of automation experts, Dell’s AFTEs includes more than 50 vertical-specific, vertical-agnostic and process-agnostic tools—such as web crawlers, batch download management systems, and optical/intelligent character recognition (OCR) tools—that can function as stand-alone in a process or can integrate with any customer platforms. The solution also works hand-in-hand with the Dell Business Process Management Suite (DBPMS) to automate workflow and knowledge management tasks.

To learn more about Dell Automated Full-Time Equivalent and other Dell automation solutions, go to www.dell.com/rpa or contact a Dell Services BPO expert to find out how automating your enterprise can help you achieve your business goals. 

About the Author: Grant Byington