Case Management will bring order into the chaos of case files and tremenduously help your knowledge workers to make smarter decisions, well at least you have been told so. But how does it really work?
First off, let’s define what case management is about. A case is a collection of information related to a specific activity, event, or more generally what is called an ‘incident of interest’ (projects, transactions, services, etc.) specific to an organization. The information contained within these case files are extremely valuable and will need to be managed for compliance, audit, and optimized outcomes.
A case is usually extremely complex; involving multiple people, organizations, departments, decisions and processes before it can be resolved and closed. The knowledge workers rely on case management systems to make real-time, complex decisions that take into account the changing nature of information, and are often working interactively with others inside or outside of their organizations to obtain the most effective outcome.
It can also be referred to as Adaptive, advanced, or Dynamic Case Management. Along with Smart Process Applications and Intelligent Business Processes, Case Management has the particularity of belonging to the latest generation of applications (aka “Smart or Intelligent Applications”) which enables the rise of responsive workflows. Meaning that using computer intelligence, these applications pick out data relevant to a peculiar context from the bundle of content linked to a workflow, and analyse them to reshape the steps and structure of the workflow, enabling workers to make the right decisions with the right information at the right time.
What you need to know:
- Maintenance will be the cornerstone to a healthy and effective case management system. Because of extensive complexity of the cases and the importance of the access to the right information at the right time, case management requires continuous learning, teaching, innovation and autonomy from the workers, as well as a comprehensive monitoring and reporting of the actual business processes.
- Analytics are also a primary component of case management and responsive workflows since the management method is driven by specific events, actions, situations that change the context of information. Connecting analytics to relevant actions enable the knowledge workers to always be ahead of the case flow until its resolution.
- Integration is needed since your case management system will require to be interconnected with multiple systems such as capture, emails, and record management. Integration with Line of Businesses (LOB) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is also an important requirement to handle most of your processes.
- Case management is not to be confused with Business Process Management. Case Management focuses on context-relevant information and use it to reshape the workflow as it goes, whereas BPM gives priority to the process, resulting in fixed and inflexible BPM workflows.
What you can expect:
Case management systems deployed across your organization will:
- Empower your knowledge workers by providing them with a 360-degree view of all information, giving them the insight and control they need to reach positive outcomes.
- Provide faster and more consistent customer service thanks to shortened case process time and better collaboration. AIIM’s “Case Management and Smart Process Applications” survey revealed that 58% of the respondents consider their case management system to be vital or very significant to their customer response and customer experience management.
- Increase compliance and transparency, with features such as secured access, activity monitoring, audit trail, and history record enhancing your organization’s visibility. AIIM reports that 67% of the respondent evaluate the case management systems to be vital or very important for legal and regulatory compliance.
- Boost your business agility by enabling you to analyze the situational changes and to adjust your content and processes based on the context, improving both the effectiveness and the value of the information you get.
