Case Management -- What’s in a Name?

For people in the fields of law enforcement, legal or social work, the word “case” is in common use, and it’s natural to speak of managing a case. Even for people outside of those fields, there is a good understanding of what is meant by “Case Management”. Now the term Case Management is being used in a stretch role as a label for an information technology offering.

In its new mission, Case Management refers to a next stage in the evolution of offerings known previously by workflow, business process management(BPM), and business process automation(BPA). Case Management offerings integrate the workflow-BPM-BPA heritage with an agnostic presentation of structured and unstructured information. Elements from offerings known as Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management are sometimes included in Case Management.

History has no shortage of information technology labels that produced more confusion than communication. As old as it is, and in spite of significant resources having been expended, the term Knowledge Management can still ignite pointless debates about its meaning. Although there’s much less at stake, I have even recently continued to see twitter dialog questioning the significance of the term Business Process Automation versus Business Process Management. (In my mind, no significance worth discussing.)

I spoke with Tom Davenport about Case Management, and we agreed that there is a problem reconciling the common usage of Case Management in law enforcement, legal, and social work with the new use to refer to an information technology offering. We concluded that although it’s not perfect, Case Management is better than other available terms to represent the new field of information technology.

Case Management has something going for it. With early returns in, people who need or want do make the cognitive leap from the common usage to the information technology meaning of Case Management. They can make the leap in a matter of minutes without a lot of hand holding or debate. That’s powerful. In terms of communication, that’s what will make Case Management a communication success.