Back Office Document Process – FTE Calculation Help

Back Office Document Process – FTE Calculation Help

I manage a Document Indexing Process. I need guidance on how to Calculate the right FTE required for my process

Volume Received per month – 10000 documents

Break up of Volumes (Doc Type 1 – 3000, Doc Type 2 – 5000, Doc Type 3 – 2000)

Average Team Throughput per hour (Doc Type 1 – 10 docs/hr, Doc Type 2 – 50 docs/hr, Doc Type 3 – 25 docs/hr)

SLA [Turnaround Time] (Doc Type 1 – 11 minutes, Doc Type 2 – 8 hours, Doc Type 3 – 24 hours)

Operating Time – 7 productive hours per day working for 22 days in a month

Can you guide me how do i calculate my FTE considering the Volume, Throughput, SLA and Operating Time.

Currently my calculation is as follows Volume divided by Throughput further divided by 7×22 which gives me the FTE. (eg., 3000/10/(7×22) = 1.94 FTE) But in this calculation am not factoring the SLA

How do i mathematically incorporate the SLA Turnaround Time like 11 minutes / 8 hours / 24 hours into the FTE calculation model

Just to add more clarity, the SLA Turnaround Time is 11 minutes / 8 hours / 24 hours for each Document from the Time Received in my Queue

Please help

Question asked by Richie

Answer for Back Office Process – FTE Calculation Help

Probably the best approach for all of these is going to be some form of back office Workforce Management Software.

It is possible to do some of this with a spreadsheet or a simulator, but it is not an easy task.

For the 11 minute turnaround you could use an Erlang Calculator with a reporting period of 1 hour. Here is a link to the tool that we have on our web site.

For the 8 hours and 24 hours then the service level is really more about being able to have a small level of over staffing built into the equation. So for example if you were 5% overstaffed then this should meet the service level.

Do not forget that you will need to add in a factor called shrinkage, typically around 35% that covers the time that employees are not able to handle documents due to holidays, meetings, sickness etc.

With thanks to Jonty

Author: Jonty Pearce