Case management is an addition to the stack of business solutions, and is only recently permeating in a growing number of organisations.

Case management is positioned as a knowledge worker enabling tool. It places the knowledge worker at the center of the solution. He decides on the basis of case information on the process to follow. He can interact with the case through the case file or through an inbox presenting tasks generated by the business process underlying the case. Tasks may occur in an unpredictable order in response to evolving situations. At the other side of the process tasks are triggered by either internal or external events.

A well developed case management platform or package should support easy configuration for quick delivery.

With this capability it permits developing solutions for a lower number of cases and for smaller teams.

Compared with BPM solutions which are best suited for well-structure and highly predictable work; there knowledge workers mainly execute tasks that come in high volume and are presented to bigger user groups. Configuration effort is higher as you require to foresee all variants and conditions to be defined in the business process solution. You could compare business process solutions to assembly chains but for administrative work. All actors perform well specified roles fulfilling specific tasks presented to them using the application’s inbox. And like for assembly chains definition (like in the automobile sector), setup and modification or update of the chain requires considerable effort, quality checking and testing so the process does not contain any contradictions.

First and foremost the software solution supporting knowledgeable case workers should support the overall process for handling a case and give them sufficient freedom to make decisions along the way or to invoke case events that can influence the course of action.

The platform should support administrative procedures and should permit to automate clerical work to a maximum so case worker can focus on the content and the decision to make while handling the case.

This also implies that it is possible to interact with the case both via an inbox confronting case actors with tasks to perform but also with the case overview option from where it should be possible to initiate actions at any moment in time or during any phase in the handling of the case. Actions allowed should be governed by the possible actions allowed through the different phases of the case development.

Taking the example of a legal investigation case, where detectives build the file for prosecution, they don’t necessarily know what the sequencing of actions to be taken will be. They interact with the findings they establish. The result of an action may initiate new initiatives that were not foreseen at the onset of the case. Certain actions are strictly regulated and require specific authorisations. Obtaining these authorisation often goes through a fixed hierarchy. These procedures should be implemented as workflows interacting with the standing organisation and when required generate formal documents to be presented to the investigated parties. This digital interaction will speed up the work. The initiative is taken by the investigator.

In the course of the investigation there should be room to add an extensive set of investigative materials to the case. They can hold a variety of information file formats. While working the material conclusions may trigger new actions.

In more client oriented activities like insurance files or complaints cases, regular or ad hoc communication with clients require direct interaction with communication channels as standard mail, customer interaction portals or e-mail. These hooks should be available at any moment and are chosen by the case handler either at the moment of launching the communication or based on the declaration of the preferred interaction channel for the case/customer.

On a global level it should be clear for what business processes, organisational units or business cases, Case Management will be deployed. How does the case management solution positions itself with other applications and solutions and what is the nature of cases to be handled. Whether the majority of the work you do is based on data intensive or documentary information, it will have an important impact on your product or case management solution choice.

In order to be able to quickly deliver case management solutions you should have not only a clear view of your infrastructure requirements but als of the generic services providing information to the cases initiated. Think of user and customer directories, messaging services or common databases containing essential business data. The software providing the necessary information needs to be connected, taking into account global policies such as those dictated by legislation such as GDPR and more general principles as ‘store once’ and data integrity.

Taking into account the setup effort of well developed case management packages, they are candidates for implementing less intensely used business processes or less structured processes requiring knowledge worker initiative and decision taking. One should see them as complementary to BPM, specific or bespoke solutions when they are positioned as supporting exception handling for the main process, on the condition the exception handling is important enough to create an independent case file containing the necessary documentation. Alternatively they are to be used for less structured knowledge intensive work processes requiring longer time to close the case while collecting diverse materials to support the decision process.

When setting up case management a four phase approach is advised: