Full RSS Feed
Receive
the Free CMSWire Newsletter
When was the last time your work day went as anticipated? A predictable day with all data found on the first try, and a series of activities that occurred in a predefined well-mannered order? A day with no problems, no errors, no surprises? Not recently is my answer, maybe never! The reality is as knowledge workers we all need to deal with uncertainty in business.
A perfect day then is one where we’ve adapted to the unexpected, overcome the challenges, and managed the unpredictable nature of our business activities to accomplish our goals. I think that case management might be just the right technology to achieve this perfect day. Here is the first in my series of articles on adaptive case management and the role it can play to improve knowledge worker performance.
The Ascendance of Knowledge Work
As market forces continue to change, business leaders are searching for the best ways to deal with uncertainty and deliver improved performance. Most leaders are realizing that human capital represents one of their most important assets. In many cases, people are the organization’s best competitive advantage, whether the focus is continuous product innovation, superior service or faster response time. The book Mastering the Unpredictable references that knowledge work now accounts for 25% to 50% of all work, with the percentage growing. Businesses are taking a hard look at strategies to better serve knowledge work requirements, reaching beyond traditional technology and mindset to be more dynamic and collaborative.
In a March 2009 essay by McKinsey’s worldwide managing director Ian Davis entitled The New Normal, he wrote
The new normal will be shaped by a confluence of powerful forces — some arising directly from the financial crisis and some that were at work long before it began. Through it all, technological innovation will continue, and the value of increasing human knowledge will remain undiminished.”
Many believe we are experiencing not merely another turn of the business cycle, but a restructuring of the economic order. The question is, “What will normal look like?” McKinsey suggests that while no one can say how long the financial turbulence will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.
Business Challenges in the New Normal
As a result, adapting and improving mission critical processes has become increasingly important to survive and thrive in the new normal. Case management will prove essential to those efforts.
In their research report Dynamic Case Management – An Old Idea Catches New Fire, Forrester Research, Inc. describes major business drivers behind case management:
- Increased need to manage the costs and risks of servicing customer requests — like loans, claims and benefits
- Greater emphasis on automating and tracking inconsistent “incidents” that do not follow a well-defined process
- New pressure on government agencies to respond to a higher number of citizen requests
- New demands that regulators, auditors and litigants place on businesses to respond to external regulations
- Increased use of collaboration and social media to support unstructured business processes
All of these drivers reveal the increasing need for organizations to adapt to the unpredictable nature of business as it happens.
For banking and insurance, increasing compliance demands from federal, state and other regulatory bodies require more agile processes that can evolve and adapt on a continuous basis. Process improvements are needed that leverage the capabilities of existing personnel and applications, gathering and presenting information from disparate data sources for optimum decision-making to retain profitable customers and attract new customers through a myriad of distribution channels.
For the public sector, there are increasing demands to improve service delivery under tightening budget constraints. This is particularly difficult where the service requires the ability to adjust guidance in context based on events that occur as the service experience progresses, particularly in the justice or social services arena.
Continue reading this article:
Email It
