DM1803

Dm OPINION: PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Combining content and process
In a recent blog post, analyst and systems architect Sandy Kemsley explored five of
the primary use cases for combining content and process: document-driven
processes, case management, document lifecycle processes, exception handling, and
non-document classification processes
Although I've spent the last couple of
decades focused on process, my
roots are in that most basic overlap
of digital content and process: the
"imaging and workflow" systems of the
1980s and 1990s, where a paper
document captured by a scanner would
trigger a process that routed the document
image to a person for manual processing.
Process automation has become a lot more
sophisticated since then, and is often
driven purely by data rather than
documents, but I still see a lot of
applications where unstructured content is
an essential part of a process.
Here are some of the main use cases for
content in the context of a process:
Document-driven processes. This is the
closest to those imaging and workflow
systems of old, where the creation or
capture of a document initiates a
process, and the purpose of the
process is to perform actions related to
that document. In most cases, the
document itself is unchangeable once
created: think of it as the instructions
for the process. An example is a loan
application, where a customer fills out
a form at the bank (or online), and
that triggers an approval process
inside the bank.
The process may execute steps to capture
the application data from paper, request
more information, or escalate to a senior
loans officer before the final steps of
making a decision on the loan and issuing
the funds. The original loan application is
never changed, and there is typically a
regulatory requirement to retain it for a
specific period of time.
Case management. A cross between
document-driven and data-driven,
case management focuses on
resolving cases rather than executing a
single process, and gathers all content
related to that resolution in an
electronic "case folder". The case folder
and its contents, which includes a
record of the processes and decisions
applied to complete the case, is
managed as per corporate content
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@DMMagAndAwards
March/April 2018
www.document-manager.com