Adaptive Case Management, ACM
ACM (Adaptive Case Management, Dynamic Case Management, Advanced Case Management) is the concept of dynamic enterprise business process management.
The ACM system allows managing all current corporate projects and employees involved in them, fully controlling the execution of the project at each stage, and creating a library of "best practices" in the process of real work.
Some experts believe that the concept of ACM is an alternative to the concept of BPM. That is, it solves the same problem of the effective organization of business processes, but by other means. They characterize the differences in approaches as follows: BPM comes from the structure of the process, the composition of steps that must be taken to achieve the goal. Data arise during the process execution, being completely dependent on it. ACM comes from information and business data arising from work and is necessary to consider the result achieved. That is, processes arise in the context of data, and not vice versa.
Other experts believe that ACM is just a simplified version of BPM that solves the same tasks as BPM. The third one believes that ACM is an addition to the BPM system that does not have the means to download files, user photos, discussion tools, etc., while these tools are considered standard for any ACM.
Fourth experts believe that ACM is "social BPM", in which the next step of the process is determined by the decision of a person in a social environment. And this is exactly what the traditional BPM systems lack. With this approach, BPM and ACM complement each other, allowing automating both structured, well-established business processes of the enterprise and the daily collaboration of employees.
The following attractive features of adaptive case management should be noted.
- The ACM system provides the ability to accumulate corporate knowledge for reuse. A successfully completed case containing the experience of the collective work of employees is corrected and refined (to ensure universality) and stored in the template library. Then, if necessary, a new case on this topic can be created "with one mouse click".
- Adaptability and flexibility of ACM allow automating business processes of the enterprise in the way that is usual for employees. New cases are formed by the users themselves as lists of tasks that need to be performed and are adjusted and supplemented as the process progresses.
- The simplicity and sociality of the ACM system allow automating the current processes of the enterprise without a detailed survey of business processes and time-consuming customization and programming. Instead of complex descriptions of business processes, ACM actually uses an analog of checklists, which are the list of tasks that need to be performed. As the process completes, this list is updated and supplemented.
- The ACM system can be used almost immediately after installation, gradually creating and improving cases (sequences of tasks and assignments) on any topic.