Dexcom Improves Patient Support and Processes with Help from UiPath

Dexcom has been working with automation for some time. It wasn’t until they migrated to UiPath that they could leverage Task Mining and Insights reporting to extract real value from automating business processes. 

Dexcom support relies on UiPath to accelerate support processes so they can serve more patients more efficiently. 

Dexcom became a UiPath customer in December 2020 and within a year they had integrated attended and unattended robots into their customer support operations. By realizing measurable success with the robots, Dexcom expanded their automation program to include UiPath Automation Hub, optical character recognition (OCR), Insights reporting, and Task Mining to automate additional support and business processes. “We would like to apply a holistic approach to automation but initially we need to concentrate on specific areas where we can scale effectively while delivering exceptional service,” said Stephen Sikes, Director of Operational Excellence for Dexcom.  

Sikes is no stranger to robotic process automation (RPA), having used UiPath at two previous companies. When he joined Dexcom, the team already had automation systems in place from another vendor that had originally taken more than six months to stabilize the implementation. Upon completion, they discovered their inability to extract data for meaningful reporting. “We had no visibility into the utilization of our environment,” said Sikes. “We had to manually connect the dots on transaction volume, environment utilization, and overall performance.” 

When their existing automation vendor announced they were planning a major upgrade, Sikes knew they would have to retool 80% of their existing robots. After concluding a detailed assessment of tools and capabilities, it became clear it was time to migrate to UiPath. 

Uncovering New Opportunities with Task Mining

With help from Ashling Partners and an emphasis on maintaining tight control over patient data, the Dexcom operational excellence team was ready to start developing new automations in just a few weeks. 

Ideas for new robots come from multiple sources, ranging from standard business departments like HR and Finance to Quality and others. Some of the most exciting and impacting RPA initiatives were a result of Task Mining.  

Dexcom maintains teams of customer service operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Sikes' team now can identify inefficiencies and processes to automate what they would never be able to find without Task Mining. 

We would never have figured it out manually. You would have to sit down and listen to someone all day long for two weeks, then evaluate everything manually and identify the important steps to automate. When you have objective data from Task Mining, you can make decisions about automating processes you never would have found otherwise.

Stephen Sikes · Director of Operational Excellence at Dexcom

The Dexcom operational excellence team uses both Task Mining and Task Capture. Task Capture is the ideal tool for teams that need to document specific tasks already identified for automation. Task Mining enables process discovery, collecting data from teams, and applying AI to compare their outputs–to then help guide process improvement and automation efforts. 

Changing the Automation Culture 

With Task Mining in place, the Operational Excellence team is charged with choosing the processes to automate and tasks to record. Then, the business analyst steps in as a technical expert. They define the configuration and function of the task. Lastly, everyone collaborates on the output.  

UiPath Task Mining has been beneficial in not only helping us identify the processes we want to go after but also in helping us figure out what not to go after. You can simplify a complicated process to where it makes more sense. That’s extremely helpful.

Stephen Sikes, Director of Operational Excellence for Dexcom 

“Six Sigma has a concept called ‘going to the gemba,’ which means going to the scene of the crime,” said Sikes. “That typically means you're going to walk through the process or see it in action. With Task Mining we have a tool that actually does that for us and does it a lot faster.” 

UiPath also provides specific intelligence about automation performance. Sikes said that before adopting UiPath Insights he couldn’t validate the data. Now he receives utilization reports that show call volume, applied robots, total time savings, etc. Before adopting Insights, it took six to eight hours to calculate total savings. Now it takes one minute.