How Adaptive Case Management Can Help Businesses Innovate

By Deb Miller (@DebsG360) Sep 8, 2011

I believe the big breakthrough value with adaptive case management (ACM) will come from people who can’t spell ACM. That is, from executives. Before I get accused of writing an article saying executives can’t spell, let me explain that I see ACM solutions being driven by those who are technology-agnostic, who simply want the business results that adaptive case management can deliver. In this article I explore how forward-thinking business leaders will use adaptive case management, including some of its social business aspects, to help foster knowledge worker innovation and win market share.

A Common Theme of Serving the Customer

As I work with organizations to improve their business outcomes, I get to see firsthand the solutions that are helping them successfully navigate though the current economic and market pressures. I’ve shared some of those case studies in my series on adaptive case management to illustrate where adaptive case management is being used by business leaders who are:

Improving day-to-day operations…the head of supply chain who wants a better way to handle exceptions without affecting his production metrics (How ACM Can Relieve your Supply Chain Stress),
Bringing down costs and cycle time…the insurance executive who streamlines her claims processing to improve customer response and manage risk (How ACM Helped Fix My Car),
Meeting customer and compliance responsibilities…the bank executive who automates “KYC” to better onboard new accounts for increased wallet share while meeting regulatory requirements (How Banks Can Use ACM to Capture and Service New Customers).

One common theme emerges from these process improvement examples. The business executives in these studies do not fixate on the technology or even the methodology; they focus on serving the customer better. Furthermore, these executives are asking “How can you help me differentiate my business to gain new customers and win market share from competitors?” Here is where I think adaptive case management can shine by helping knowledge workers to be better innovators.

Disruptive Innovation and Knowledge Work

Innovation and the role of knowledge work have long been explored in research and a wide variety of books on the subject. We were introduced to the notion of disruptive innovation more than a decade ago by one of my favorite thinkers — scholar, author and speaker Clayton Christensen. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen explained how disruptive innovation occurs when long-standing assumptions in a marketplace are tested and successfully challenged by upstarts. And as far back as the late 60s, Peter Drucker was writing about knowledge work as a disruptive force in The Age of Discontinuity.

The points made by Drucker and Christensen are very much as relevant and current today, especially with the rise in the importance of knowledge workers as business has evolved. In fact, I just read a great article I recommend about Teen Knowledge Work that considers the coming innovative disruption from the youngest influx to our “workforce.”