Today, as work becomes more unpredictable and complex, collaboration and flexibility are essential. Workers need an intuitive way to manage tasks.
In the following articles, respected industry analyst Neil Ward-Dutton, and DST's Product Manager Judith Morley, discuss the need for case management and how it can transform the way teams collaborate to get work done.
A "case" for change
At the Advance Conference, in Orlando, in March, I had the privilege of taking the stage at the start of the Business Track to talk about case management - to explain what it is, why it is important, and what you need to do about it. Let me give you a little taste of what I covered in my session.
You know how, when you use an iPhone or an iPad (1), it is almost difficult sometimes to work out where the lines between hardware, system software, applications, and services are? This is something that those folks in Cupertino are maniacally focused on. They have realised that to deliver a truly great customer experience, you have to be able to provide an integrated, seamless experience to customers - when customers are using your product, your services, your Web site, your stores, your call centre, by and large, things 'just work' when it comes to interacting with Apple.
Pulling off this kind of ubiquitous brand experience and promise is far from easy. But a seamless experience, delivered across channels and venues, is increasingly the standard by which we judge the companies we work with in our daily lives, across the board.
To deliver superior service effectively means being able to balance many factors: in these kind of environments, it is not easy to point to something simple like cycle time or first-call resolution rates and say: "This is our quality goal." Quality can only be defined through a complicated, dynamic relationship between customer expectations, resources, strategies, policies, customer behaviours, and segmentation. Customer interactions and the processes supporting them do not always fit in a predefined box - they require human empowerment. Empowering your people is a key component to delivering customer satisfaction. Imagine an environment where success is measured by how nimble, adaptive and collaborative your teams are as they deliver exceptional customer service, while cultivating a workplace that inspires and empowers your people to make impactful decisions.
The right technology approach can help your people deliver the right kind of experience to the right people, at the right time, in the right places - while providing guidance and minimising the need for costly activities relating to handovers, information searches, 'swivel chair integration', and so on. That technology approach is case management. Case management helps enable your knowledge workers to be both creative and agile as they handle intricate customer interactions. It works as a catalyst for collaboration and teamwork across your company, translating into the high quality service your customers demand.
Case management and AWD
The phrase "business as usual" no longer applies to many organisations as the nature of work is changing. With a shift to life event processing and less structured work, companies must consider the needs of the knowledge workers in order to effectively serve their customers and meet their expectations.
In 1999, Peter Drucker (2) said this of knowledge work and knowledge workers: "The most important, and indeed the truly unique contribution of management in the 20th century was the 50-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker."
How do we define knowledge work and who are the knowledge workers? Knowledge work is work that is complex, spans time, is content-rich, requires collaboration and has clearly defined goals for completion. Those who do all of this work are the knowledge workers. These associates have a tremendous amount of job knowledge and they know what needs to be done in order to achieve their work goals.
Knowledge work tends to be less structured and more goal-oriented than the types of processes that fit into a traditional business process management (BPM) solution. We think of BPM as repeatable processes that rarely change and that are rigid in their path. These processes have been researched and refined upfront, so that when they are used in the workplace, there is very little question about their path and/or outcome. In contrast, knowledge work is more varied and less predictable, making rigid processes unsuitable. Case management has become the method by which knowledge workers manage their tasks and goals.
There are two ways of thinking about case management. Adaptive case management is completely flexible, with no structure, whereby the knowledge workers design as they work. Production case management exists at the other end of the spectrum. A production case management application is designed, developed, tested and deployed to the knowledge workers. This type of solution provides a certain level of structure within the tasks, however, still allows for the flexibility and unpredictability that is inherent in knowledge work.
In designing the case management workspace for AWD, there were four design imperatives that we took into account:
* Design a system that suggests work rather than dictates work to the user;
* Provide a way to handle content associated with work efficiently and elegantly;
* Introduce the idea of immediate responsibility versus ultimate responsibility; and
* Provide the ability for users to easily re-orient themselves to their work.
The real challenge was how to combine the best of BPM with the flexibility required of a case management solution. With the new case management workspace that is part of the AWD platform, knowledge workers will be able to see the work that they own in such a way that allows them to make the decisions about their workday. The workspace will enhance the collaboration required for these types of cases and provide context to the work. The creation of case teams allows workers to be organised in a way that makes sense whether the team is organisational, functional, or based on expertise.
When users begin their work day, they will be shown a new landing page that presents work to them based on the due date. Tasks and cases that the user owns are displayed to allow the knowledge worker to make decisions on what to do first. We are not pushing work to them, but instead allowing them to use their knowledge about their work and goals to make decisions about their day.
AWD's case management workspace
As goal-oriented processing and knowledge work becomes more mainstream within organisations, technology must provide a framework for collaboration and transparency. Real-time status updates, case teams, and the flexibility introduced with AWD's case management workspace help provide that framework.
(1) iPhone and iPad are trademarks of Apple
(2) Drucker, Peter F Management Challenges of the 21st Century New York: Harper Business, 1999
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