Getting things done with Adaptive Case Management
The evolution from railway tracks to guardrails
Modelling an unpredictable business process is impossible. Or is it? Learn more about Adaptive Case Management (ACM) in this article.
Knowledge economies
There is no denying that ‘developed’ countries are increasingly becoming knowledge economies. In these countries the focus is on innovative, knowledge-intensive and services-based offerings, while manufacturing gets relocated to low-wage countries.
At the same time, business process optimisation initiatives have led to the automation of many routine jobs and leave only the hard, unpredictable problems for human processing. These changes have led to a change in the job content of most employees and repeated, routine work is disappearing in favour of ‘knowledge worker’ jobs. Take the example of order processing. In the past, each order was treated manually; nowadays only the exceptions, the unpredictable orders challenging well-established business rules, are handled by an expert knowledge worker.
Unpredictable processes
From a technology perspective, the problem is that evolution towards more unpredictable work processes has not always been mirrored in the IT systems that support knowledge workers. These IT systems are still mostly grounded in traditional Business Process Management (BPM), which indicates that one should start from clearly defined process models. Process models are like railway tracks, because the path one should follow is completely pre-defined, only allowing for some variation at the switches. This rigidity makes traditional BPM a perfect solution for predictable processes, the processes that were part of the routine work that has been automated nowadays.
But when a process is unpredictable, as in the case of knowledge work, workflows can quickly get stuck and cause frustration and loss of efficiency. Notwithstanding the effort of many business analysts, a simple rule states that it is impossible to model a process that is unpredictable in the first place.
360-degree view
So step up Adaptive Case Management (ACM). ACM recycles and combines functionalities of Enterprise Content Management (ECM), BPM and Collaboration.
In ACM, the goal is no longer to try and model complete processes upfront, but rather to offer the knowledge worker a 360-degree view of all relevant information and allow him/her to organise the process as appropriate. The information to guide the knowledge worker’s decision is bundled in the case and may contain documents, data (CRM, ERP, etc.), discussions, analytics and predefined tasks. In addition, the case typically has metadata (case owner, deadline, description, etc.), business rules, policies, a lifecycle and a complete history of case actions for reporting purposes.
The knowledge worker has the freedom to adapt the case: he/she can add new information to the case, create new tasks and involve colleagues. The business rules and policies are the only restrictions: the systems will warn users when these are being broken (e.g. deadlines, required approvals, etc.).
Traditional BPM can be likened to railway tracks, whereas ACM is like the guardrails along a road, guiding the knowledge worker while resolving a case; ACM also stops users from straying off the road in terms of breaking business rules or policies.
Adaptive Case Management has definitely caught on in the ECM and BPM communities in recent years. Several vendors offer frameworks that allow the building of powerful case-management solutions by means of configuration.
The potential market for ACM is huge, as case management is relevant in almost all sectors and industries ranging from government (social benefits applications, licensing and permits management, and immigration application) and financial services (insurance claims processing, loan grant application, and customer onboarding) to very general fields (billing issue resolution, order processing, HR recruitment, legal processes, and helpdesks).
Free seminar on Adaptive Case Management
In our upcoming FREE seminar on Thursday 15 September 2011, we will introduce every aspect of Adaptive Case Management and present three leading case management frameworks. If you are interested in learning more about how ACM might be relevant in your business, please register here.