Best Practices for Knowledge Workers (Digital Edition)

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ACM Methodology: Best practices to design and implement solutions for knowledge workers

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Best Practices for Knowledge Workers describes Adaptive Case Management (ACM) in the current era of digitization, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), intelligent BPMS and BPM Everywhere.

Best Practices for Knowledge Workers describes ACM in the current era of digitization, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), intelligent BPMS and BPM Everywhere. You will learn how support of adaptive, data-driven processes empowers knowledge workers to know in real-time what is happening at the edge points, and to take actions through the combination of rule-driven guidance and their own know-how. It is not a traditionally-automated system but intelligent automation, where technology doesn’t replace human decision-making but extends the reach of the knowledge worker; making IoT data actionable.

As Sandy Kemsley points out in her foreword:

As adaptive case management (ACM) systems mature, we are moving beyond simple systems that allow knowledge workers to define ad hoc processes, to creating more intelligent systems that support and guide them. .... To drive innovation and maintain operational efficiencies, we need to augment case work – typically seen as relying primarily on human intelligence – with machine intelligence. In other words, we need intelligent ACM.

Highly predictable work is easy to support using traditional programming techniques, while unpredictable work cannot be accurately scripted in advance, and thus requires the involvement of the knowledge workers themselves. The core element of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) is the support for real-time decision-making by knowledge workers.

In award-winning case studies covering industries as a diverse as law enforcement, transportation, insurance, banking, state services, and healthcare, you will find instructive examples for how to transform your own organization.

This important book follows these ground-breaking best-sellers on ACM; Thriving on Adaptability, Empowering Knowledge Workers, Taming the Unpredictable, How Knowledge Workers Get Things Done, and Mastering the Unpredictable and provides important papers by thought-leaders in this field, together with practical examples, detailed ACM case studies and product reviews. 

Part 1: Knowledge Work and Case Management

Case Management in Industry 4.0: ACM and IoT

Nathaniel Palmer, WfMC, USA

The theme of the World Economic Forum (WEF) recently held in Davos, Switzerland was "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution" – recognizing the massive transformation currently underway, centered on what has been labeled “Industry 4.0" and addressing the confluence of ubiquitous computing through cloud, big data, and other emergent technologies, but primarily Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). The term Industry 4.0 and the concept of the fourth industrial revolution originates, as illustrated in this chapter, from the notion that the industrial revolution represented man’s first large-scale leverage of mechanical power as a force multiplier in performing work.

Knowledge Workers are the Emerging Heroes of the Digital World

Jim Sinur, Flueresque, USA

Organizations will be asking much more of the knowledge worker as the 21^st century progresses. Routine work will be highly automated and optimized leaving the difficult work for knowledge workers to sort out. This work will consist of dealing with demanding interfacing with customers that are on their own journey with fickle loyalty, looking at emerging patterns, making wise decisions in context while predicting reactions to potential actions and taking efficient actions while satisfying customers at faster speeds than ever in a dynamic environment. This makes the knowledge worker at the operational, tactical and strategic levels the super heroes of the digital world.

Self-Managed Agile Organizations

Keith D Swenson, Fujitsu America

Sociocracy is growing in popularity as a way to structure an organization to be agile and adaptive. Sociocracy achieves this by employing a formal set of rules and procedures that allow each part of the organization to be self-managed. Adaptive case management (ACM) is an approach to supporting knowledge workers that fits well with self-managed teams. This chapter explores the space, considers which technology could be useful in supporting such an organization, and introduces Weaver, an open-source project designed to deliver this capability.

Digital Transformation Competency Centers

Dr. Setrag Khoshafian and Paul Roeck, Pegasystems Inc., USA

Digitization is often characterized through a number of key technologies such as Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, and Internet of Things (IoT, IoE, M2M, IIoT) with related, but different, connotations).

However, the real impact of digitization is echoed in the corridors of small, medium and especially large enterprises through Digital Transformation (DX).

In the next few years the impact of Digital Transformation will accelerate, giving rise to the DX economy as predicted by analyst firm IDC. In this era of digitization, automation has become pervasive. A recent study by McKinsey identified four fundamentals of workplace automation: automation of activities, redefinition of jobs and business processes; the impact of high wage of occupations; and the future of creativity and meaning.

Cloud-Enabled ACM for the Age of the Customer

Linus Chow and Casey Conner, Salesforce; Sherry Comes, Genpact; Jin-Lin Mei and Tom Bullotta, Acumen Solutions

We live in a customer-driven era where technology is evolving around the way consumers think, communicate, work and purchase. In this digital world, customers expect all of their technology to be easy-to-use, modern, and connected. Customers expect consistent and high-value in-person and digital experiences. They value a deep understanding of who they are and the anticipation of their needs.

Adaptive Case Management (ACM) use cases are driven to meet this higher expectation. Organizations are forced to transform their legacy systems and processes to a knowledge-based architecture that can be dynamic, variable and unstructured. Successful transformation is the difference between a thriving business or extinction. Thankfully, the same forces changing the customer's expectations have also produced new cloud capabilities that can provide a system of engagement layer to keep pace with customer demands. Welcome to the Age of the Customer!

The Agile and Strategic Human Resources Office

William A. Brantley, University of Maryland, United States

“Human Resources] is under increasing pressure from business leaders to drive innovative talent solutions, improve alignment with business imperatives, and turn data into actionable insights.” (Deloitte 2016)

According to the Deloitte 2016 Human Capital Trends report, HR is becoming more strategic and innovative. Even so, there is still much more work to be done. The greatest imperative for organizations today is being agile as their environment becomes more Volatile, Uncertain, Ambiguous, and Complex (VUAC).

This chapter explains that, by adopting adaptive case management (ACM) and Social Business Process Management (SBPM), HR will become more agile and strategic in its functions and processes. Adopting ACM and SBPM can greatly help the overall organization become agile and better confront the challenges of a VUAC environment.

Value Streams Empowering the Knowledge Worker

Kerry Finn, Stephanie Ramsay and J. Bryan Lail, Raytheon, U.S.

Improving profit margins in a globally-competitive environment is tied explicitly to the challenge of managing knowledge workers. Over the past two decades, intentional management of knowledge has played an important role in designing products and services line that have fundamentally changed the industry (e.g. academia, defense, banking, and publishing). Many companies failed to realize the full benefits, however, because they focused too narrowly on functionally-siloed tools and methods to make decisions and transfer information while lacking key social, organizational, purpose, processes, innovation and context needed to enable and support knowledge workers.

We will address a local business example and an enterprise-wide example in our company of this living value-stream approach. The work has the potential to build off value stream and capability standards just published by the Business Architecture Guild to provide a case study for the Aerospace and Defense industry.

Decisions: Where Processes Meet Capabilities in Court PCM Requirements

John T. Matthias, National Center for State Courts, United States

Most efforts to development requirements for court case management fail to incorporate the laws, court rules, procedures and policies which define the framework of legal authority that drives processes with outcomes of decisions, powered by the capabilities that courts must have; a remedy is proposed to remedy that deficiency.

Court case management is a species of Production Case Management (PCM). This author has written about the definitions and relationship of capabilities and processes, and proposed a method of developing case management system (CMS) requirements. (Matthias 2015). This chapter recognizes the importance of incorporating process goals into task performance, and proposes a formulation for achieving this through identifying operational decisions and specifying functional and process mechanisms.

Adaptive Case Management and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

Kay Winkler, NSI Soluciones, Panama

There are staggering amounts of new regulatory requirements each year that threaten the very operability of many businesses. The question of how to turn these challenges into real business opportunities becomes ever more existential for companies in a globalized and fiercely competitive market. That is where successful companies increase their reliance on modern technologies and where, in practice, Adaptive Case Management (ACM) stands out.

The financial industry, typically being among the most mature verticals when it comes to business process management disciplines, has faced, since 2013, an especially pressing compliance requirement which in many instances not only required banks, wealth management organizations and insurance companies to completely revamp their current “Know Your Customer” (KYC) approach but to also envision a thoroughly new way to conduct customer management and origination.

Change Resistance

David Gomez, Jr., Datum Solutions, United States

Ever wonder why a project fails? Was it the technology platform? Was it the project team? Was it the business unit? What was it?

The author shares his experience in implementing case management solutions for the past four-plus years and IT projects for the past 17, it’s yes to all of them. The logical question is, “Why bother?”

In this chapter, he covers these areas and give you some guidance on how to avoid the project pitfalls you may encounter. Each topic, however, has an element of change resistance to it which will be further explained in this chapter.

Still not sure if this book is right for you? Scroll down to get two free chapters in one PDF special edition mini-book.

Learn from Real-World Case Studies

African Reinsurance, Africa

Nominated by Newgen Software Technologies Ltd, India

African Reinsurance Corporation is a leading player in the reinsurance sector in African region. At present the client has the membership from African Development Bank, 41 member countries of the African union, 107 African insurance and reinsurance companies and four non-African Development Finance Institutions. The client has spread its operations across seven regions including the Head Office at Lagos, Nigeria. The solution combined BPM, ECM and has Case Management functionality baked into it and hence each participant within the process flow was empowered as a Knowledge worker. The Users could easily take on ad-hoc developments on each document.

Eaton Vance Investment Managers, USA

Nominated by EMC Corporation, USA

Founded in 1924 and one of the oldest investment management firms in the United States, Eaton Vance offers individuals and institutions a broad array of investment strategies and wealth management solutions.

Eaton Vance has a long-standing reputation as a leading developer of creative strategies with strong investment merit. The ability to anticipate the evolving needs of investors and meet them with timely innovations continues to be a hallmark of the organization. The company deployed an automated technology solution to streamline and accelerate its new account opening and account change processes. Spearheaded by the legal and investment operations groups, the solution aimed to increase efficiency, reduce costs, ensure compliance with industry regulations, and increase revenue.

EDP Renewables, United States

Nominated by Appian, United States

EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA), a developer, owner, and operator of wind farms and solar parks, is one of the largest renewable energy companies in the United States. The company decided that embracing Dynamic Case Management would give it a competitive advantage in overall process management against its industry competitors. EDPR NA designed the COBRA (short for “COllaBoRAtion”) system using a Business Process Management (BPM) platform comprised of process, rules, events and analytics capabilities, combined with native mobility and social business collaboration.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), USA

Nominated by OpenText Corporation, Canada

As part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is responsible for biomedical research on infectious diseases. Much of NIAID’s research budget is used to fund research by external organizations. To support rapid modernization across the organization—not just isolated, department-level solutions—NIAID implemented a platform for electronic document management and process automation. NIAID has successfully used its platform in more than 50 projects, building and reusing application components to quickly streamline varied processes across the institute. As a result, NIAID has significantly increased the efficiency of its grants and awards processes as well as its internal operations. Reviews and approvals that once took weeks to complete are now finished in just a few days.

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, USA

Nominated by Vega ECM Solutions, USA

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created by Congress in 1974 to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials while protecting both people as well as the environment. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements.

The NRC designed and developed an Adaptive Case Management framework that could be utilized agency wide to harmonize information and business processes.  The framework that was developed is called the Business Process Automation Stack (BPAS) and is used across the NRC for a variety of different Case Management use cases by a diverse user community.

Pediatric Hospital “Bambino Gesù” Kidney Transplant Integrated Care Pathway

Nominated by Openwork Srl, Italy

More than 20 kidney transplants are performed every year at Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital (OPBG), the largest pediatric hospital and research center in Europe and one of the highest-qualified pediatric centers in the world, with over 200 patients to be monitored with a rigorous post-transplant Integrated Clinical Pathway (ICP) managed by a multidisciplinary clinical team. In the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital context, we are dealing with children, a vulnerable population that require a range of additional, coordinated, high-quality, child- and family-centered support services. The project uses a BPM platform to develop and deploy the ICP for transplanted children by “mapping” the ICP onto BPM platform to support the implementation of best practice already successful adopted at Kidney Transplant Department at OPBG.

PENSCO Trust Company, USA

Nominated by PENSCO Trust Company, USA

Many individual investors would love to use their retirement savings to purchase non-publicly traded, alternative assets in today’s economic environment, but the complexity of administering these assets has caused many financial institutions to opt out of offering them as part of their investment platform. As a regulated banking company since 1989, PENSCO Trust has been one of a relatively small number of leading retirement account custodians that permit financially savvy, self-directed individual retirement account (IRA) owners to invest in alternative assets.

In this case study, we share the story of our production case management implementation of what is known at PENSCO as the Alternative Assets Deal Console, the foundation of a constellation of systems that work together to support the critical work of the Alternative Assets Deal Consultant.

BONUS CHAPTER, DIGITAL EDITION ONLY

ACM Methodology:
Best practices to design and implement solutions for knowledge workers

Jürgen Kress, Oracle Corporation, Germany; Ricardo Puttini, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Danilo Schmiedel, Opitz Consulting, Germany

BPM-based solutions have brought major advances to work organization and automation. However, given BPM’s strong basis on formal workflow definition, oftentimes BPM solutions are not well suited for work scenarios where a precise workflow cannot be strictly defined. Work in such scenarios is highly dependent on knowledge-based decisions about activities and outcomes, leading to multiple work paths and business rules that can become quite complex or even unfeasible to model and completely automate. In these cases, a different technology support approach is required. The focus is not to isolate and automate decisions and rules, but rather to deliver opportunistic information support to the knowledge worker to accomplish them. Adaptive Case Management (ACM) rises as a successful design pattern for this.

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Win an Award for your Case Management project

The WfMC Awards for Excellence in Case Management are the ideal way to be recognized by the industry worldwide, to publicly acknowledge and recognize the efforts of your team and to inject passion into your case management projects.

Get recognized for your vision and your team's superb efforts by entering the annual Global Excellence Awards

Co-sponsored by WfMC and BPM.com, these prestigious awards recognize user organizations worldwide that have demonstrably excelled in implementing innovative Case Management solutions. These awards are designed to highlight the best examples of technology to support knowledge workers. We work with leading industry analysts such as Forrester and Gartner who use these case studies to analyze ACM technology users and suppliers, illustrate trends, industry growth, ROI and more.

Read more about the Awards here: http://adaptivecasemanagement.org/

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Still not sure if this book is right for you?
Download this free SPECIAL EDITION mini-book in PDF (44 pages) containing the complete Foreword by Sandy Kemsley and chapters by thought-leaders Nathaniel Palmer and Setrag Khoshafian. 

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