In a loose series about advanced solutions for high-value business processes and innovation-driven markets we present the Adaptive Case Management Framework from ISIS Papyrus. The need for adaptive capabilities for the modern user-interactive enterprise has been repeatedly confirmed by research into how companies organize themselves and by the limitations and shortcomings observed in conventional approaches and tools to manage the business ecosystem. They can be summarized as follows: Business Process Management (BPM) is focused on repetitive processes with strict workflows. The necessary abstractions, however, make it impossible to handle more complex tasks. Pure case management, on the other hand, offers much higher flexibility but fails to give guidance to business users and makes it difficult to enforce compliance with policies and regulations. The inherent simplification of case management solutions will furthermore lead to inaccuracies in the underlying model.
In contrast, Adaptive Case Management provides both flexibility and guidance. It focuses on case information, not on the process. A case gathers all the necessary information required to handle it: These are performers (users/roles participating in the case), data/content, rules and of course processes and tasks. Adaptive Case Management is designed to empower knowledge workers by giving them the power to make autonomous decisions within the constraints of the overall business strategy. The management defines achievable business and process goals and communicates them transparently while business users themselves add tasks to achieve these goals. This leads to a “design-by-doing” approach enabling users to create, modify, and analyze processes on the fly. Adaptive processes, despite lacking a predictable and repeatable progression, nevertheless go from a less ordered to a more ordered state through user action. Decisions taken by business users are furthermore shared by storing them in templates and making them available to other actors within the company as suggested actions.
Adaptive Case Management is well suited for arbitrary document content, collaborative decision-making and a high level of customer interaction. It can be used in every service-oriented and customer-focused operation of a company dealing with complex, event-driven activities from customer claims management and contract management to new accounts, purchase-to-pay, fraud investigations, and many other applications across a broad range of domains.
