A Perfect Combination: Case Management and Low Code
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The document discusses the integration of low-code platforms with case management systems to enhance knowledge work through automation and fast application development. It emphasizes that traditional case management methods are manual and often inefficient, but combining them with low-code capabilities enables quicker deployment and flexibility for a variety of use cases. Additionally, it highlights the potential for improved compliance, reduced training times, and better overall management of case-related processes.
A Perfect Combination: Case Management and Low Code
- 1. A Perfect Combination: Low Code and Case Management November 2017 Kemsley Design Ltd. www.kemsleydesign.com www.column2.com
- 2. 1 Overview Increasing automation, including of transactional processes, has enabled a shift to higher value knowledge work performed using case management methods and systems. Embracing low-code case management platforms enables fast development of a broad range of knowledge worker applications to support and automate the type of work that provides a competitive differentiation. About the Author Sandy Kemsley is an independent analyst, consultant and process architect specializing in business process management and the social enterprise. She has founded companies in the area of content management, process management and e-commerce, and held the position of BPM evangelist for a major software vendor. Sandy writes a popular BPM blog at column2.com and is a featured conference speaker on BPM and digital transformation. She is a contributing author to books on social BPM and adaptive case management, and the winner of the 2016 Marvin L. Manheim award for significant contributions in the field of workflow.
- 3. 2 Case Management in Business Case management is a work style for goal- oriented scenarios that don’t have a predefined method of resolution. Centered around a case file that contains all related content, case management relies on knowledge workers to gather information from a variety of sources, guide the work towards a resolution, assign tasks to other participants and make decisions that cannot easily be automated. Each scenario, or case, may follow a different path, since the worker decides what must be accomplished to complete the case. These methods are well-established in fields such as healthcare and law, but have broader business applicability in insurance, social services, customer relations and many others. A case may be initiated directly by a customer (including an internal customer such as an employee or other department) or triggered by an automated process to handle an exception, and is considered closed when the customer issue is resolved. For example, an automobile accident insurance claim is initiated by the policyholder (customer) and requires that the claims adjudicator (employee) gather information from a variety of sources and make a decision on whether to allow or deny the claim. The adjudicator requests information from the policyholder and third parties in the accident, and initiates actions to be performed by other participants, such as a medical examination for an injury sub- claim, or a review of property damage by a field adjudicator. As the adjudicator gathers each piece of information or makes decisions, it is documented in the claim folder, so that the claim folder becomes the auditable record of how the claim was resolved: statements, photos, expert reports and more. Although some portions of the claims handling may be standardized, in general the information, actions and participants are not known in advance, but are decided by the claims adjudicator in their role as the case worker responsible for resolving the claim. Furthermore, the adjudicator relies on their own knowledge of the necessary compliance regulations for dealing with the claim, increasing the business risk and the level of training required for adjudicators. The adjudicator may be able to make a Case Management Examples ➢ Insurance claims ➢ Fraud investigations ➢ Patient medical care plans ➢ Client onboarding ➢ IT service requests ➢ Litigation ➢ Customer service/complaints ➢ Social benefits management ➢ Loan origination ➢ Recruiting ➢ Employee performance management
- 4. 3 near-immediate decision and resolve the claim within hours, or the claim may remain open for years for disability or litigation matters. In paper-based claims environments, a long-term claim folder can extend to several physical file folders of documents plus online electronic documents and emails. Workers in many businesses are spending more of their time on this unpredictable, customer-facing knowledge work, since much of the routine transactional work is becoming increasingly automated or performed by customers through self- service portals. As competing businesses gain similar levels of efficiency through automation, case management becomes a key competitive differentiator since it directly impacts the customer journey, with the potential to improve quality and timeliness of outcomes. This does not mean that every issue can be resolved using a “one size fits all” case management template; rather, that goal- oriented problem-solving becomes embedded in the business culture, regardless of how it is supported by methods and technology. Case Management Systems Case management is still overwhelmingly manual, since packaged software is too inflexible to handle these scenarios, and developing custom code that attempts to cover every possible situation is impractical and stifles business innovation. Case files may be paper documents or electronic files on a shared network drive, with case tasks assigned and completed using email, checklists and spreadsheets based on the knowledge of the case worker, and business rules gleaned from procedures manuals and business folklore. This creates inefficiencies due to little or no automation of routine tasks, and risks noncompliance since each worker must remember to apply the correct business rules. New workers experience significant training time to learn the ad hoc processes and rules: in a complex case management environment, 6- 12 months is typical for a worker to reach full capacity. Customer Information Ad Hoc Tasks & Collaboration Predefined Processes Events Compliance & Rules Analytics & Recommendations
- 5. 4 Vertical case management solutions have succeeded in improving some high-volume applications such as claims processing, but can be inflexible and expensive, making it impossible for them to keep up with fast-moving business requirements or be repurposed for other case management needs. There is a better solution: general- purpose case management platforms that combine content, process, rules, events, integration, mobile support and user experience in an integrated platform for developing a wider variety of case management applications. Simpler case management systems manage electronic case files and provide user interfaces that allow workers to create checklists and ad hoc flows related to those files. This removes email and spreadsheets from the work, but doesn’t completely resolve the noncompliance and training issues, since rules and decisions are still mostly manual. More intelligent case management platforms integrate additional technologies that can support and guide knowledge workers: decision management, analytics, predictions, events, automation and machine learning. These intelligent technologies automate tasks where possible and provide smart recommendations to workers based on historical data, the case context, compliance regulations and broader situational awareness. Returning to our claims management example from the previous section, a case management system reduces risk by directly building procedures and regulations into the case handling. Once this key knowledge is built into the systems, the time to train claims adjudicators typically falls from about 12 months to less than 3 months. It also allows portions of the work on the claim to be easily handed off for less-skilled workers to complete in parallel, reducing the amount of administrative work (and hence costs) done by the adjudicators and shortening the time to resolve the claim. The result: claims are resolved faster at a lower cost, and are more compliant with company and industry regulations. Features of Case Management Systems ➢ Defining of reusable case structure and applications, e.g., work stages, milestones, data models, business rules, integration points, user experience ➢ Integrated end-user environment with a complete view of the case: content, actions, decisions, participants and case data from other systems ➢ Contextual information relevant to the case or task, e.g., aggregate statistics, operating procedures, regulations and industry trends ➢ Case worker ability to select tasks and process to be executed, automate manual steps and reassign work ➢ Enforcement of consistent regulations and procedures ➢ Recommendations on the next best action ➢ Asynchronous inbound event handling, e.g., arrival of new case information
- 6. 5 Case Management Meets Low Code Older case management systems require a high degree of technical skill and product training, and a lengthy development time, to configure them for each application. The challenge is that many workers now use case management methods for most of their work, but it’s not uniform: an organization may have dozens of different types of knowledge work that could be improved by a targeted case management application. This large number of potential applications makes it infeasible for traditional application development resources to build solutions for each of these scenarios, especially for competitive or regulatory applications that must be deployed quickly in response to changing needs. The new generation of case management systems addresses the development resource issue by converging with low- code application development, creating platforms with general-purpose case management frameworks and related technologies as components. This allows semi-technical “citizen developers” with a minimum of training to assemble completely new applications in a matter of hours or days without writing code: they simply configure the frameworks and add the building blocks required for their application. With robust capabilities underlying the platform – content, process, decisions, integration and analytics engines – as well as guardrails to ensure security and performance, these are not prototypes or “shadow IT” applications unsupported by IT, but first- class business applications. Situational applications can be created quickly and deployed for only a matter of weeks to manage a specific event or campaign; while line-of-business applications can involve collaboration between citizen developers creating the case management structure and IT developing custom services that can be used as building blocks in the applications. Low Code Platform Functions ➢ Integrated development environment for creating applications, and an integrated end-user environment for running applications ➢ Data modeling capabilities integrating multiple data sources into a virtual data object model ➢ Visual tools, e.g., forms builder, for creating end user interfaces, including support for mobile platforms ➢ Process modeling capabilities, from simple milestone-based flows to full BPMN models ➢ Event handling, rules and automated decisioning to trigger actions, make recommendations and automate activities ➢ Pluggable services and visual widgets to extend capabilities ➢ Analytics integrated in end-user environment and aggregated for management reporting ➢ DevOps capabilities and governance for fast deployment into production, either directly by the business developers or through an accelerated process that avoids IT bottlenecks, without risking system integrity
- 7. 6 Clearly, low code is a good platform for building many types of case management applications. What is also becoming clear is that case management is often the best paradigm for building low code applications. Here’s why: 1. More understandable to business. The data-centric, goal-driven case management approach is a better fit for knowledge work scenarios. It's more intuitive for business people to specify the data, documents and decisions required to solve a problem than to create a process model showing the specific steps. 2. Faster time to market. A case management application can start small ‒ and fast ‒ and have new features rolled out continuously to enhance capabilities. A starter application may contain only a basic data model, a list of case states, and a checklist of optional and required tasks. Since skilled knowledge workers are using the application, they can determine which functions to add in future versions, and even modify the design themselves. 3. Improved flexibility. Case management relies on knowledge workers to decide what tasks to do next, rather than dictate a specific process. This allows a wide variety of scenarios to be addressed with a single application. 4. Focus on integration. Case management applications gather data from a wide variety of sources to provide a single integrated environment for knowledge workers and call services (including visual widgets) to extend the capabilities. 5. Monitoring relative to goals. Case management tracks each case relative to its goals, e.g., resolving a customer complaint, rather than completing specific process steps. 6. Entire case in one place. Case management systems keep a persistent record of the case (the case folder) during and after completion. Sponsor This white paper was sponsored by TIBCO Software Inc.