Case management provides positive customer experiences

Although dynamic case management systems offer some major advantages in terms of productivity, pushback to their use can come from multiple directions. “Skilled knowledge workers who know how to get the job done may feel they don’t need a system to help them do it,” Schuerman says, “or they may even feel that it gets in the way. The key is to build the system in a way that adds value to what they do, such as simplifying their process or automatically sending out an alert to the next person on the task so that the worker does not have to send an e-mail.”

Sometimes the IT department resists buying a system because staff believe they can accomplish the same thing by developing the program themselves.

Specialist solutions

Dynamic case management platforms can be configured for a variety of different processes; specialist solutions provide another option for case management. Those products incorporate best practices and considerable subject matter expertise geared for a specific business application. The specialist solutions have predefined workflows and may have additional related services built in, such as hotlines. However, the rules are not as adaptive and the content management capabilities are more limited.

“For certain processes, such as response to a cybersecurity incident, the required domain expertise points toward a specialist solution rather than a horizontal case management platform,” says Forrester’s Le Clair. “For service, pre-sales and post-sales, the horizontal platform wins.” The dynamic case management platforms are more versatile and more customizable. Especially if a company has multiple processes that can be handled by an adaptive case management system, buying the versatile platform is a good investment.

However, the situation is becoming less clear-cut as the specialist solutions broaden their capabilities and the dynamic case management platforms build out domain-specific solutions. Forrester reports that Appian is developing an incident management solution, and that specialists such as MicroPact and ServiceNow are marketing dynamic case management platforms. That convergence will provide more options but will also introduce more confusion into an already complex market for process solutions.