Approaching BPM vs Case Management

Both Business Process Management (BPM) and Case Management solutions entail workflow-driven activities, business rules, forms, data models, document handling, and system integration. They can also use the same infrastructure and overall architecture. As a result, there is some confusion in the marketplace about which product to use and when to streamline and automate specific processes.

Below I try to define each:

BPM

The overarching objective of BPM is to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. Organizations use BPM Suites to build composite applications that streamline and automate targeted human and system-driven work. Activities are generally defined, but may include ad-hoc interactions and/or dynamic collaboration. Applications combine business rules (e.g., policies, procedures, roles, responsibilities, routing, escalations, deadlines, SLAs), forms (e.g., layouts, data capture, data validations, dynamic questions), data models, content handling, data repositories, system integration, and user interfaces to enable user access and system administration. They also provide visibility into all work-related objects (i.e., activities, data, documents, responses, correspondence) to enable ongoing process improvement, change management, and compliance.

Case Management

The overarching objective of Case Management is to better organize work (i.e., actions, decisions) and associated content (i.e., data, documents, correspondence) to successfully complete a specific business outcome (i.e., settlement in legal investigation, response to service request, payment to claim). Work efficiency and effectiveness are secondary to making the right decision. Work activities are more context-driven. They range from highly defined to completely dynamic based who is asking, why are they asking it, what are they asking for, who can make a decision, and what materials are needed to make the decision. Rules may often change due to new regulation (e.g., tax codes) and market fluctuations (e.g., interest rates). As a result, relationships among work objectives evolve more over time. Work activities may have many discrete options and require intense collaboration. Like BPM, Case Management applications provide visibility into group work and associated content. Content may need to be changed/edited as decisions are made.

Leveraging BPM Suites for Case Management

If you have a BPM Suite, you can use it to design and build both BPM and Case Management applications if it supports both structured (highly defined) and dynamic (unstructured, non-routine, unexpected, situational) work interactions, the attachment of various content types (i.e., structured data such as name and date of birth, unstructured data such as scanned documents and video files), and commentary/collaboration amongst users. Often BPM Suites need to be integrated with EDMS to support version control of documents.