These 10 “things you need to know” about Case Management/BPM and Smart Process Applications are drawn from a survey of 301 information professionals conducted earlier this year. Survey respondents represent organizations of all sizes. Larger organizations over 5,000 employees represent 33%, with mid-sized organizations of 500 to 5,000 employees at 38%. Small-to-mid sized organizations with 10 to 500 employees constitute 25%. 64% of the participants were from North America, and 25% from Europe.
For 51% of the organizations polled, half or more of their business processes are not straightforward or predictable. For 62%, half or more processes involve assembling a case folder, claim file, project folder, proposal, etc.
Increasing customer expectations for speed of response is the biggest pain point for those surveyed (44%). Dealing with unstructured inputs and connecting to key business systems was the next biggest issue (42%).
58% consider their case handling system to be vital or very important to their customer experience management. For 67%, it is vital or very important for legal and regulatory compliance.
37% have a case-capable support system, whereas 28% need to use customizations, workarounds, and add-ons to handle case scenarios. 18% use an entirely manual process, and 17% don’t really manage cases as processes.
32% feel that a better system would also improve productivity, and 22% feel that the successful outcome of their cases is being limited by poor IT support.
7% are live with adaptive and intelligent workflows, with a further 12% experimenting. 45% are more likely to be using fixed workflows, and 36% have very few computer-driven processes.
Of those using smart applications, 41% have achieved successful outcomes, and 52% feel the results are promising, but it is early days. The biggest deployment issues are setting up the rules and handling difficult exceptions.
The biggest benefits cited by users are faster and more consistent customer response and faster end-to-end process times. Staff appreciates the flexibility, and adaptive systems make it much easier to respond to regulatory change.
For 67% of respondents, half or more of their main LOB processes involve connecting multi-channel inbound content to one managed process. One third considers this to be their biggest single problem in managing cases.
23% admit that their management of inbound emails and faxes is somewhat ad hoc or even “chaotic.”