Implementing new technology brings a range of challenges and this is equally true when the technology in question is a BPMS. These challenges become even greater when the BPMS is to support case management processes. Within this article I outline additional complexities case management processes exhibit, and suggest six features a BPMS should offer before being used to manage these processes.

Challenges of Case Management Processes

Risk Management and Business Process Management have long been acknowledged as distinct disciplines. They seem to be getting more comfortable with one another. Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN) has emerged in the past decade as a powerful tool for visualizing and even operationalizing business processes.

We’ve all heard this one:  “Don’t automate a process until you optimize it.”  That’s sound advice to avoid automating unnecessary steps or, worse, institutionalizing a completely broken process.

Rethinking how we manage the process. The problem is big. The developed world is aging. Japan went through it first and everyone will follow by 2050. During this time, a much larger population will depend on their own investments or investments made by their employers and governments as their primary sources of income. Also, the number of working people compared to the number of people beyond retirement age will decrease significantly. This number, called the support ratio, is a key indicator for social services agencies and the trend reveals a big problem.   

Over the last year much of my thinking and conversations with colleagues have involved an examination of corporate culture and how it affects various initiatives and attempts to make organizational changes. Enter “corporate culture” in a search engine and you see millions of links to classes, articles, academic papers. All of them discussing, explaining, or positing about corporate culture.