Adaptive Case Management – In Other Words

Recently there has been a TweetJam about Adaptive Case Management with the authors of the most authoritative book on the topic, “Mastering the Unpredictable”. This event is just another indication of the growing momentum and impact of adaptive processes on the notion how to manage knowledge work–that is, opportunistic and unpredictable activities emerging from daily practice–in modern workplaces with the help of innovative IT solutions.

For those who have missed this interesting discussion we have collected some of the highlights:

• frijswijk: One important observation i made last 2 weeks. The Business User doesn´t care about models, finds it way to complex. #acmjam
• maxjpucher: ACM needs adaptive models at runtime: DATA – CONTENT – RULES – GOALS – ACTORS #acmjam
• ronaldrotteveel: @maxjpucher I think it’s mainly out of fear. ACM requires you to give your workforce more or even total empowerment. #acmjam
• swensonkeith: @passion4process – need to understand the connection and the difference between ACM and BPM. Let’s make it clear if we can #acmjam
• maxjpucher: @nathanielpalmer ACM is a consolidation of ECM, CRM, BPM, BRM and some BI. #acmjam
• cmooreforrester: the established human-centric vendors that focus on structured work NEED to embrace ACM, because that is how work really gets done #acmjam
• JoshuaWaldman:  @piewords so it’s a people first approach to processes. I dig it. #acmjam
• cmooreforrester: my pet peeve about process is when work is carved into little bitty pieces and passed around like a factory automation line #acmjam #bpm
• maxjpucher: @swensonkeith Disagree, compliance in ACM does need the OPTION for control. If X is not Y then set status ‘Not compliant’ #acmjam
• maxjpucher: @passion4process No methodology needed. Just the right technology that supports adaptive models and adaptive execution. #acmjam

While these tweets are just a synopsis to give a short flavor of what ACM is about you may want to learn more about it by either reading the book mentioned earlier or visiting the blog of Max J. Pucher, Chief Architect of ISIS Papyrus, who frequently addresses ACM issues and has done so even before the term or acronym were coined. For more information on real-world solutions to ACM you may also visit the ISIS Papyrus homepage.

New Open Standard for Enterprise Content Management

The OASIS international consortium recently announced the approval of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) version 1.0, a new open standard that enables information to be shared across Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories from different vendors. In collaboration with other major ECM solution providers worldwide, ISIS Papyrus, an OASIS Foundational Sponsor, contributed to CMIS becoming an official OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification.

“The OASIS CMIS 1.0 ratification is an important first step to enable businesses to freely make important solution choices for ECM, BPM and CRM applications without being limited to the functionality of the underlying archive system vendor,” says Max J. Pucher, Chief Architect of ISIS Papyrus. “We hope that subsequent releases will reach beyond access to content and metadata, and we are positive that this emerging standard – which Papyrus Platform already supports – will be widely adopted and increase motivation for continuous expansion to full content interoperability in process-oriented environments.”

Using Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces, CMIS dramatically reduces the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Companies no longer need to maintain custom code and one-off integrations in order to share information across their various ECM systems. CMIS also enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems.

Adaptive Case Management at AG Insurance

ISIS Papyrus announced that AG Insurance, a subsidiary of ageas (formerly Fortis SA/NV) has selected the ISIS Papyrus Platform for adaptive case management (ACM) to enhance Insurance services (claims, underwriting and general services) and resolution in several business lines.

AG Insurance is implementing the Papyrus Business Communications and Process Platform, with rollout beginning in summer 2010, to support a company-wide project.

“The Papyrus approach to fully integrated customer communications aligns perfectly with our business and technology requirements,” said the program sponsor of AG Insurance. “We look forward to rolling out an advanced case management solution that will meet our operational goals and lead to both enhanced performance and increased customer satisfaction.”

Ideal for implementing an integrated solution for communications across different systems on several platforms, the Papyrus Platform will help AG Insurance drive the consolidation of current platforms to reduce complexity and cost and improve time-to-market.

“AG Insurance and its parent company ageas are known for being progressive and innovative organizations in the financial sector that have achieved success by maintaining a focus on creating the best experience for their customers,” said Annemarie Pucher, CEO of ISIS Papyrus Software. “The Papyrus Platform offers a win-win for AG Insurance, ensuring that the Insurance staff and system can respond, react and adapt efficiently to meet the diverse and changing needs of customers without sacrificing on quality, speed or compliance.”

As the implementation is completed in each business unit, AG Insurance will use the Papyrus Business Communications and Process Platform to optimize processes, tasks, communications and documents across a wide range of insurance activities.

Adaptive Case Management for User Empowerment

Many organizations these days strive to cut the costs of their IT operations while maintaining their customer service quality. This may seem hard to achieve at first sight but the solution is to shift the control of business-relevant processes from IT to business users without giving up the integrity of the core systems.

This is a key idea behind the concept of the Adaptive Case Management concept from ISIS Papyrus which empowers expert business users. In fact they are enabled to adapt processes as necessary with complete independence of the underlying application logic. This allows them to fulfill strategic business goals without relying on a rigid and complex custom-coded IT infrastructure.

The approach behind this is not to restrict business users in their execution but to guide them collaboratively by process definitions, monitored by business rules and measured by goal fulfillment without the need for integrating different product fragments of one or multiple software vendors. Papyrus provides seamless consolidation of freely-definable processes, rules, GUI, forms, and inbound and outbound content objects.

ISIS Papyrus CEO Receives Honors

Annemarie Pucher, CEO of ISIS Papyrus, has received another recognition of the distinctive role she plays in the international business world. Leading industry platform OutputLinks have included her in their Women of Distinction program, which honors women in the global print, document and high volume transaction output industries.

This recognition underlines not only the achievements of Ms. Pucher but also reflects the succuss of ISIS Papyrus. Ms. Pucher launched ISIS with partner Max Pucher in a basement home office more than 20 years ago. Today, ISIS Papyrus has more than 250 employees in 16 offices and the Papyrus Business Communications and Process Platform is used by more than 2,000 organizations worldwide to improve enterprise customer service, quality and communication. Under Ms. Pucher’s operational direction, ISIS Papyrus has expanded to issue more than half of the United States credit cards and produce more financial and telecom documents than any other vendor in the European Union.

New Book On Adaptive Case Management

Under the title “Mastering the Unpredictable” a recently published book deals with the aspects of how IT can support knowledge work, or unstructured processes, in typical modern workplace settings. For this purpose the book describes how case management is to be seen apart from conventional notions of business process management.

Max J. Pucher, Chief Architect of ISIS Papyrus, has contributed to this landmark publication with a chapter called “The Elements of Adaptive Case Management”. At the center of his considerations lies the fact that many current implementations of process and case management solutions are at odds with modern management concepts. While that applies to all workers, it is especially relevant for highly skilled knowledge workers. Motivation is achieved by empowering people to be valuable team members rather than through command-and-control-oriented process implementations. Adaptive case management sits at the center of gravity for process, content, and customer relationship management and therefore plays a key role for effective execution toward business goals.

While ACM is about bringing the benefits of adaptability to existing knowledge workers, Mr Pucher proposes to expand that into “Adaptive Process” that combined with an empowerment management paradigm turns more production workers into knowledge workers rather than just automating the production workers’ work. Adaptive process technology exposes structured (business data) and unstructured (content) information to the members of structured (business) and unstructured (social) organizations to securely execute—and continuously adapt with knowledge interactively gathered during execution—structured (process) and unstructured (case) work in a transparent and auditable manner.

More about this interesting topic can be heard at the 2010 ISIS Papyrus Open House and User Conference in Vienna, Southlake, TX, and Kingsclere, UK, where Max J. Pucher will talk about “Adaptive Process and Empowerment” in his keynote address.

Speeding Claims to Closure with Papyrus

The primary benefits of the Papyrus Platform are gained from empowering business users to serve customers as individuals while conforming to business rules and process requirements. In a recently implemented insurance claims handling application one business user described the improvements this way:

“To handle an insurance claim is not a simple straight line from start to finish. It involves various documents, communication with the customer, the claim assessment, contract data, and many others. We have all of those data and incoming documents in business applications since a number of years but I had to access multiple systems, write letters and emails and keep track of deadlines in my calender. Collaborating with colleagues and partners was not supported in any way.”

“In recent years there have been discussions to create predefined business process templates but those efforts failed because of the complexity of claims handling.”

“With the claims handling case management created in Papyrus I have the best of all worlds. I have access to all the contract data and documents in existing systems, as well as my emails, outgoing documents, claims handling rules, calender dates, collaboration with others are all in one place. There is no rigid process I have to follow, but the system guides me to complete certain activities and checks for completeness of all data and documents. I can collaborate with anyone including dynamic assignment of work items. Papyrus keeps a complete track of all communication threads, emails, notes and memorandums. All outgoing documents are stored as templates that automatically pull in the necessary business data from our insurance system. That is completely transparent to me and I do not have to know how this works.”

“If I have the need for more functionality, I can create new text elements for my documents at any time and have them verified by the responsible department. My letters are countersigned by the department head before they are sent to the customer by either letter, fax or email. Before I had to type the letter in MS-Word and print it myself. Other documents were done in two different insurance applications. Now they are all in one place!”

“The administrator of our department can add new case handling rules, create new data entry forms, new work activities and assign them to our library when we need them. My workplace look and feel I can define myself without needing anyone from the IT department.”

One of the most effective features is the global INBOX that I use to manage all my work. All reminders from the insurance system, my emails, requests from colleagues, calender events, and the outstanding activities of the claims handling are in one place only.

“The case management application we created with Papyrus saves me a substantial amount if time and I can service our customers substantially faster. Most of all there is much less danger of necessary activities being missed or delayed.”

Background of Adaptive Case Management

Business Process Management (BPM) has come to be viewed from several angles. The overwhelming force of IT and technology has led to the notion that BPM is merely a tool for automatic processing where human interaction is to be avoided at all cost and is at best regarded as a necessary evil. But the complexity of the underlying rigidity of this approach has by far outgrown its benefits. The processes set up on hard-coded models after lengthy upfront analysis have proven to be inadequate for real-world business cases and the inherent dependencies have proven prone to quick adaptation and smooth maintenance.

Yet initially business processes have been all about human activity and completely separate from technology. A business process is simply a sequence of activities followed by individuals in a business to achieve some business goal. This sort of business processes has been around as long as businesses have existed and long before computers or information technology were invented. The fundamental problem now is that most IT models are based on well-defined goals in rather static work settings. In reality, most business users have to deal with ill-defined problems and dynamic, if not to say, chaotic environments. They often have to improvise and to cope with shifting conditions and need to learn about the goals while going through the process.

Therefore it appears logical to shift process ownership back from IT to business to add true business value. Again, the approaches are manifold and the existing terminology adds more to confusion than to clarification. With this in mind the term “Adaptive Case Management” has been coined as a starting point for discussions about concepts of self-learning systems that can adapt to user input in real time. Some initial considerations can be found here and here. There will also be an exciting opportunity to hear more about “Adaptive Process and Empowerment” at this year’s ISIS Papyrus Open House and User Conference, where Chief Architect Max J. Pucher will elaborate more on this topic in one of his famously pronounced addresses.

Invitation to ISIS Open House 2010

ISIS Papyrus invites once again to its well-respected Open House and User Conferences. These events are held in Vienna (AT), Dallas (US), Kingsclere (UK), and Ivrea (IT). As usual there will be several ways to participate: speeches, workshops, hands-on demos, case studies and group discussions. Dates and more information can be found on the ISIS Website.

Chief Architect Max J. Pucher will hold the keynote address on adaptive processes and empowerment of business users. This will certainly be a highlight as it gives an in-depth explanation of some of the key concepts of the Papyrus Platform. It will also outline how businesses can use Case Management in an environment with predominantly unstructured and dynamic processes to improve their performance and efficiency.

Together with the other amazing Papyrus features like Papyrus EYE widgets, wizards, Content Compare or the WebArchive for iPhone visitors will enjoy exciting presentations and unique opportunities to meet like-minded document professionals and to discuss pragmatic solutions to real-life challenges in a special ambience.

ISIS Papyrus Confirmed In AFPC Leadership Role

In a recently held election to the Board of Directors of the AFP Consortium (AFPC) ISIS Papyrus representative Roberto Anzola, Manager R&D, has been confirmed to serve another term.

The AFPC is an incorporated non-profit organization focusing on creating an optimum architecture for production variable-data printing and advancing the AFP (Advanced Function Presentation) standards. It consists of 30-plus industry leading software and hardware vendors cooperating to facilitate interoperability and innovation. One of the direct results of this cooperation is the widely acclaimed Papyrus AFP Viewer, which has been released as freeware late last year.

AFP is a presentation architecture that provides for document and information presentation independent of specific applications and devices. It provides powerful advantages over other print architectures like PostScript as it supports very high print speeds, output integrity, and centralized, automated server-based management. AFP plays a major role in new industry initiatives like TransPromo and in the creation of mission-critical documents such as bills, statements, and policies, and in other areas where ISIS Papyrus has also traditionally held a leading edge.

WebArchive Goes Mobile With iPhone

The powerful WebArchive solution from ISIS Papyrus for short and long-term archiving and easy retrieval has now joined top perfomance for high-quality, on-the-go customer communications and response with the mobility and convenience of the iPhone.

This recent development is part of the new strategy of ISIS Papyrus to support mobile applications and will be followed up by support for Windows Mobile 7 and Symbian.

We have investigated the benefits of the Papyrus iPhone app and asked people who already employ it in their everyday business. A senior product manager at a major telecommunications provider put it like this:

“We want to offer this app both to our customer service reps as well as to a very well-defined target group of customers as a value proposition. Our staff will now have a huge amount of documents available to service their clients instantly without the need of opening and connecting their notebook first or even the need of having their notebooks with them. On the customer’s request and with proper authorization they can edit or annotate those documents and the changes will be reflected throughout the entire organization. Customers are given access to their documents without any intermediary and at any given time. But this is only part of the story. However well designed a customer offering may be, it will fail when poorly executed. We use the advantages of the Papyrus Platform in its entirety to provide a unified experience for the customer. First we enable and promote the collaboration of cross-functional teams from sales and marketing to logistics and supplies in our own organization and with partners and we highly value any communication with our customers as a precious resource. Because it is not so much data mining and other statistic guesswork that tells you what your customers want, they will rather tell you personally if you are ready to listen to them. And we certainly are!”

On asking if they were just jumping the bandwagon to capitalize on the popularity of the iPhone he adds the following:

“This all is not just a new random offering but part of an integrated strategy of providing a service platform for highly targeted individuals. Papyrus allows everyone in the organization to understand, subscribe to and fulfill the importance of the customer experience and our commitment to make it valuable and pleasant. This is not a one-off effort but a an ongoing process which we couldn’t manage without an integrated communications platform.”

At this point he is assisted by the VP of Costumer Services who had joined our conversation earlier and points out:

“By integrating the whole communication with the customer at each touchpoint we can focus on the entire customer experience. Each interaction of the customer with different departments of our company is equally important and Papyrus gives us the complete transparency to track these interactions by providing all of our staff with access to all customer-related communications together with real-time data in a single view.”

To find out how the WebArchive iPhone app can help you in fulfilling your organization’s strategic goals read a detailed description and a list of features here or get it at the Apple Appstore.

ISIS Becomes OASIS Foundational Sponsor

We are proud to announce that ISIS Papyrus has become a foundational sponsor of OASIS – the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. OASIS is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of standards for Web infrastructure and e-business. It produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

With this move ISIS Papyrus joins only a few but some of the most notable organizations in the global IT world. As a worldwide leader in its own right when it comes to consolidating inbound and outbound business communications and related processes in a single platform, ISIS Papyrus is certainly poised to contribute substantially to the efforts of the non-profit body. The technological edge developed by ISIS over the years and its ongoing commitment to promote benefits for business users match perfectly with the user-oriented approach and transparent governance advocated by OASIS.

It will be of great interest how this cooperation brings about synergies for the broader IT community and for users and businesses around the world. Another focus will be on how open standards can provide for more flexibility in application development as the latter has been the major concern behind the unique Papyrus technology. We hope to offer some exciting news in the future as they develop.

Major Remake of ISIS Website

For those who haven’t already noticed the ISIS Papyrus website is currently undergoing a major remake with exciting new features and brand new content highlighting the scope of ISIS Papyrus products and solutions.

First of all, the site displays new graphical and multimedia content for enhanced navigation and a more appealing user experience. Now you can not only read of what amazing applications the Papyrus Platform is capable of, you can also view first-hand presentations delivered by the experts from ISIS Papyrus.

But it just doesn’t stop there. As the ISIS Times has successfully shown there is a growing demand for multilingual content. To satisfy the trend towards localization in an increasingly globalized world the ISIS Papyrus website will soon be available in several other languages. This will cater for a continuously growing audience around the world eager to discover the technological edge of ISIS Papyrus.