A Study in Case Management vs BPM

When talking to clients, one of the commonly asked questions is how do we decide between case management or business process management system?

The answer is pretty simple. Case management to BPM is what Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Watson. They are both integral to each other but have incredibly different working styles.

Sherlock Holmes follows unorthodox approach while solving a murder case. He likes to make decisions on the fly and carries his investigation according to the demand of the situation. Give him linear tasks and he’ll scramble them up within seconds. Sherlock Holmes, by our industry definition, falls into the agile and dynamic process category. Can you imagine Sherlock Holmes being able to follow a structured process? No. Because for him, each case is unique, and he needs to use a different approach to solve it.

Now Watson on the hand is a man of textbook science. He is clinical and methodical. He has processes and structured ways of doing everything. He is most efficient when he follows a clearly defined and well thought of plan. He is a great believer of planning what needs to be done and then methodically executing the work. Doctor Watson by our industry’s standards will fall into well-structured process category. Meaning, Watson would love a BPM platform.

So how do you make a choice between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson? The short answer is don’t. While pop culture always favors the quirky protagonist, it is important to note that there would never be a Sherlock Holmes without a Watson. Let’s take your organization as an example, your knowledge workers may love the freedom of Sherlock Holmes, but your managers may not be comfortable with the risks that it poses. Since we’re not in Victorian London, no organization or regulator can allow complete ad-hoc work and flexibility for most types of work. In any organization even collaborative work requires controls and processes. So, like you need a Sherlock and Watson to work together in every case, your organization needs a strong integration of dynamic and structured processes to streamline the work seamlessly.

This is the point where case management platform is introduced. A robust case management platform ensures you don’t have to choose between BPM solution and case management. It combines the agility of case management within the structures and controls of BPM system.

So now that you have Sherlock’s unorthodox approach and Watson’s clinical methods. What we now need is the deductive reasoning to solve the case. Your Case Management platform’s analytics engine can help you “observe than just see.” Add to those capabilities for big data, mobile, social and others and you have a 21st century detective for an application.