Bridging the gap - the requirement for case management

Many organisations have BPM technologies in place designed to improve operational efficiencies.

Yet when capturing data, there is a gap in then prioritising and routing information derived from that data to the right people within the business. And it is here where automated case management can prove especially powerful in managing the end-to-end process.

A simple example: when two financial services organisations merge, this can present a problem for customers, who will have lots of questions regarding the safety and management of their investments, availability and continuence of account products, access to facilities such as ATMs and over the counter services by the new enlarged entity. And, as this is a unique situation for the organisation itself, there will be no ready-made answers available at the fingertips of customer-facing staff.

An integrated, enterprise-wide case management system will enable the business both to automatically route the customer questions to those best placed to figure out suitable responses and then go back to each customer in the most appropriate manner while at the same time creating a knowledge base of queries and appropriate responses

If an enterprise is looking to manage exceptions within a key part of its business, by adopting case management within a rules-based service backbone software solution, such technology can easily be rolled out to capture exceptions in other areas of the business. Without costly and time-consuming development by the IT team, as any change can be managed by the collaboration between business and IT in a uniquely timely and agile manner.

Historically, there's been a widespread lack of understanding and awareness as to the power of case management as part of broader BPM solution, both at a software development and end-user level.

One reason is confusion in the BPM market around the instantiation of a business process - the creation of a version of a business process at a specific point in time. As a result, within traditional BPM, data is typically created that is alive for the duration of an individual process step but cannot follow the whole life-cycle of that process and so be automatically recalled at any other time.

Critically, unless case management is incorporated within the broader BPM technology stack at the outset, it's difficult to engineer it back into the application at a later stage. This goes some way to providing the necessary linkage throughout the process but, because it is written in code rather than adopting the same process rules within a fully-integrated BPM solution, two hurdles remain.

First, the execution problems of two different pieces of software seeking to solve a single business problem will inevitably delay the response. And second, any change to the process requires the code to be rewritten by the IT team rather than being changed easily and 'on demand' by the business.

This presents a significant problem for the end-user business at the point of decision-making, as the individual is not able automatically to see all the appropriate data associated with the process they are executing as a single entity - including the status of that piece of work, its priority, related escalation path and service level.

As a result, this slows down the process as it relies on the relative experience and expertise of the individual to determine and access the relevant information and so delivers in a variable experience for the customer.

With embedded case management, all data flows along the end-to-end process, with full visibility and accessibility.   

This problem faces all businesses, but it's acute when two businesses come together as the result of a merger or acquisition, with the need to assimilate different account structures, its infrastructures and products and services. Inevitably some issues will 'fall through the cracks', as customers find that the way they used to interact with the previous individual business do not now apply.

A strong case management solution allows the new business to create 'baskets' for such exceptions. As these remain visible throughout the process, by setting rules these can be collated with similar issues arising anywhere else in the business and routed rapidly to the right staff to receive effective resolution.

As the visible accumulation and categorisation of these issues grows, so management is able to respond by putting in place new processes and responses to prevent such problems arising in the future.

So what might the ideal solution look like?  By incorporating case management within an intelligent, rules-based BPM infrastructure, the result is both robust yet agile in responding rapidly to change.

Case routing and escalation offer flexible control through skill- and role-based routing. At the same time, automated assignment eliminates cherry-picking. By having a common platform, this supports case-, customer- and product-driven routing and actions, with automatic urgency changes, notifications and re-assignments based on goals and deadlines.

Integrated business rules automate work and enable advanced prioritisation, routing and decisioning. If needed, the system can share cases on the internet using built-in portal support - ensuring one-time access outside the enterprise to perform work.

The result is faster development time, lower cost of ownership and better operational control. At the same time, the work portal provides a secure, browser-based client for case handling, as users have views and permissions specific to their roles.

In this way, integrated case management provides the flexibility for users to view work, display cases by urgency, subject, status and other relevant field and automatically generate correspondence from templates for multiple channels.

At the same time, managers can monitor, control and report on work performed with standard tools and reports. They can view and open individual work items from reports, including extensive standard reports together with an ad-hoc reporting wizard.

This provides a level of business agility not possible in using traditional BPM tools and ensures improved productivity through real work automation, not just 'pushing work around'.

A familiar face

By incorporating case management as an integrated part of a broader BPM solution, this simply adds another 'string to the bow' of the enterprise's customer management capability.

Another advantage is that the outcome is extremely familiar to users across the enterprise. By having embedded case management, staff effectively have access to a set of data management technologies which are directly comparable to the physical case folders they used to operate - and in some cases still do.

Control is key

Most importantly of all, the enterprise gains control of its work. From day one of implementation, it can place work into clearly-defined compartments which is captured immediately and remains visible and safe. For any successful BPM project, this aspect is a critical early milestone.

Once the business has control, decisions can then be taken as to how to deal with that work, applying appropriate service levels and at a speed with which the enterprise is comfortable. The result is a robust automated system in which individuals no longer have to go looking for work or data, but in which work arrives at the right desk at the right time and with all the necessary information to make a quality decision.

This measurably improves both the efficiency and operational effectiveness of the business but also customer service levels. And that is the kind of rapid, provable return on investment to appeal to any enterprise.