I stumbled on this linked in discussion on my favourite topic Case Management What is it? and felt complled to respond. I know it's going to get me in trouble but sometimes you've just got to stand up and be counted. I'm repeating my response here for wider viewing and discussion.
I whole heartedly agree with John (Pyke), Case management has been around for donkey's years, the old workflow tools did a reasonable job (if configured correctly) at case management and provided significant improvement to organisational processes.
There is no doubt that the tools we have today are more sophisticated and allow us to deal with ad hoc events within a process. That does not make case management new it means we have better tools available to help us manage the same requirement.
I weary of vendors trying to explain how new this is. I constantly have to remind my clients that a case is still just a way of an organisation dealing with an event insurance claim, complaint, customer on boarding, change of address etc in a consistent manner, to achieve some specified objective. Processes after all are graphical representations of policy and procedure.
Often the customer wants to do something that doesn't fit prescribed rules and policies so and yes dynamic capabilities allow us to capture those actions as part of the process. Olivia Bushe of Singularity states that Dynamic Case Management (DCM) is new because we provide knowledge workers with information, or because DCM solution cross multiple industry sectors. I have implemented Case Management in CRM solutions and knowledge management systems before that and workflow solutions before that.
There is no doubt that the tools we have today are more sophisticated and allow us to deal with ad hoc events within a process. That does not make case management new it means we have better tools available to help us manage the same requirement.
I weary of vendors trying to explain how new this is. I constantly have to remind my clients that a case is still just a way of an organisation dealing with an event insurance claim, complaint, customer on boarding, change of address etc in a consistent manner, to achieve some specified objective. Processes after all are graphical representations of policy and procedure.
Often the customer wants to do something that doesn't fit prescribed rules and policies so and yes dynamic capabilities allow us to capture those actions as part of the process. Olivia Bushe of Singularity states that Dynamic Case Management (DCM) is new because we provide knowledge workers with information, or because DCM solution cross multiple industry sectors. I have implemented Case Management in CRM solutions and knowledge management systems before that and workflow solutions before that.
Just becasue we can apply this solution across industries sectors is a pretty weak argument, i have implemented pre DCM solutions in every sector from Central and local government, utilities, oil and gas as well as in financial services.
Many vendors say that case management is best suited to unstructured ad hoc processes. This is nonsense structured processes like insurance claims have been handled by BPM and workflow tools and CRM applications for decades and they do a great job of bringing the right information to the right person and the right time. DCM I admit adds the capability to deal with the adhoc more elegantly but that is it, everything else about DCM is no different to what went before.
We have been applying process to cases (i.e. a collection of information about an event. for many years using all manner of different solutions. So trying to define adding process to case as a distinction is meaningless.
Pabo Trilles lists a number of must have requirements for a DCM solution ;
all but two of these, management of mandatory tasks and agile creation of additional steps, is absolutely no different to a workflow solution of the 1980's. For example the CAPM project for the national assembly for Wales automated the process of rural farm payments with a workflow solution and a rules engine. Way before PRPC. This was an award winning solution; ground breaking given that it was one of the earliest use cases of using Ilog with Filenet.
In older solutions dealing with adhoc requests meant routing a task to a "knowledge worker" who was empowered to make a decision. They might have to consult other co-workers and get agreement on the resolution in an email but it resolved the issue. Today presumably that knowledgeworker would use the BPM solution to create the steps to route the request for the exception to a colleague instead of using email, making it part of the process, visible, auditable and reusable if this event occurs again in the future.
For those stating that DCM is a fusion of BPM and ECM what do you think the imaging and workflow solutions were doing? Filenet and Documentum and a host of others have been fusing workflow with document management for quite some time.
Many vendors say that case management is best suited to unstructured ad hoc processes. This is nonsense structured processes like insurance claims have been handled by BPM and workflow tools and CRM applications for decades and they do a great job of bringing the right information to the right person and the right time. DCM I admit adds the capability to deal with the adhoc more elegantly but that is it, everything else about DCM is no different to what went before.
We have been applying process to cases (i.e. a collection of information about an event. for many years using all manner of different solutions. So trying to define adding process to case as a distinction is meaningless.
Pabo Trilles lists a number of must have requirements for a DCM solution ;
· Management by BPM Processes
· Business Rules Management (not to be confused with Process Rules)
Agile management of Documents and Web Content
Agile management of Documents and Web Content
· Elements of Information, Communication and Collaboration between employees and with people external to the entity
· Processes with the ability to deviate the flow at any given time, to other processes (with or without return)
· Management of mandatory tasks, both planned and unplanned, with Dynamic Forms capable of appearing and being hidden according to the circumstances
· Agile creation of additional steps for the element control of the cases
· Tools to observe, control and analyze the execution of each case as a whole, as well as analyze the combined results of terminated cases for continuous process improvement
all but two of these, management of mandatory tasks and agile creation of additional steps, is absolutely no different to a workflow solution of the 1980's. For example the CAPM project for the national assembly for Wales automated the process of rural farm payments with a workflow solution and a rules engine. Way before PRPC. This was an award winning solution; ground breaking given that it was one of the earliest use cases of using Ilog with Filenet.
In older solutions dealing with adhoc requests meant routing a task to a "knowledge worker" who was empowered to make a decision. They might have to consult other co-workers and get agreement on the resolution in an email but it resolved the issue. Today presumably that knowledgeworker would use the BPM solution to create the steps to route the request for the exception to a colleague instead of using email, making it part of the process, visible, auditable and reusable if this event occurs again in the future.
For those stating that DCM is a fusion of BPM and ECM what do you think the imaging and workflow solutions were doing? Filenet and Documentum and a host of others have been fusing workflow with document management for quite some time.
No comments:
Post a Comment