What Is Useful Case Management Software?
With the likes of Gartner Research and Forrester Research delivering copious quantities of advice on best practice in case management it is time for software producers and information technology departments to get up to speed and join the race!
Case management is employed in corporate legal firms, local and regional government departments, companies whose main focus is customer service and those who handle complaints proceedures and enquiries, for example Local Authorities and by any company where assessment of risk is a prime objective. Case management is chiefly the progression whereby highly proficient knowledge workers drive a case towards a particular goal, e.g. nurses and doctors working with a patient with multifarious medical needs where medical experts for that particular patient may be separated geographically or a legal expert doing the groundwork for a case for the law courts where there are multiple social service departments to contact, as well as the client.
The ability to collaborate with colleagues and outside agencies is critical in many business processes. Any software dashboard that does not fulfill this need does not deserve a glance!
These knowledgeable information workers are managed by their professional societies, internal auditors and external government guidelines. It becomes more and more necessary that as these exterior bodies make changes to their requirements, the knowledge workers can efficiently adapt their practise to the new atmosphere. Whatever case management software systems they install must be sufficiently adaptable to permit alterations, archiving (so that cases can be investigated at a later date) and compliance requirements to be fullfilled. It must also provide experts and/or their management with excellent visibility into the stage reached in a case. Why were decisions made? At which stage is the case today? Who needs to provide support before the case can progress?
Knowledge workers need instant access to case information in order to be able to deal with a case competently. Time and money is lost if professionals are pressed to search in various locations for photos or letters, records of phone calls or court bundles. A reasonable case management system will simplify content management and data capture and combine it to make it accessible.
Forrester Research’s senior analyst, Clay Richardson, recommends the following minimum requirements for a case management system.
Case Management Software Requirements
Business process management (BPM) – an essential element
Content management – so that varying streams of content can be combined in a central location
Collaboration – the software must allow collaboration between peers
Compliance and archiving functionality – these capabilities should be automated whenever possible
Intelligent data capture – changing paper documents into digital copies
Customer communications management – so that all documentation, call logs and interactions can be inspected later on to follow the development of the case
Monitoring and reporting – the platform ought to permit a significant level of visibility into the position of cases, the amount of cases being taken care of and permit for moving cases around to raise levels of case handling and quality.
It is interesting that this set of bullet points does not incorporate time recording software. A lot of professionals grapple with recording billable hours. Legal professionals are notorious for not charging all the hours due and inability to collect fees yields even more possibilities for inaccuracies in accounts! One has to inquire, how should professional workers charge for their time? Some are shifting to a fixed fee service. This may explain why Clay Richardson omits time recording from his “Key elements of case management” list. For many companies though, time tracking software continues to be vital to the way they work, so, although not actually associated with the result of the case, the vast majority of case management software companies add time recording as an element in their platforms.
And so, if you are a professional, fed up with trying to cope with diverse IT systems, if you are spending too much time hunting for information and are not being able to easily see where each case has got to, then trial a case management system. It can literally be configured to satisfy your company’s needs. Make sure that comprehensive company training is on hand from your case management company and ensure that they take on board everything that you say at each stage of design and implementation.
For all your case management software needs visit us at http://www.iken.biz
Author: Jane Chamberlayne
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