Case Management: A Better Way

In the face of a turbulent economy and increasing competition, optimizing the process by which you engage new customers has become paramount. Improving this process—often referred to as new account opening (NAO) or customer on-boarding—can help to ensure customer satisfaction and increase the revenue that flows from high customer retention. Getting the process wrong can have dramatic negative consequences.

Consider this example: A global currency exchange trading firm experiencing exponential growth found it difficult to streamline the NAO process because of several business and technology impediments. Manual processes that involved multiple databases were struggling to handle increased volumes, resulting in system downtime, poor productivity and declining customer satisfaction.

The firm operated in silos across the major currency hubs, creating an inefficient, inconsistent client experience from product to product and from country to country. The firm's process also lacked transparency into the status of NAO, resulting in the inability to monitor account progress, balance workloads and meet regulatory reporting requirements.

The firm experienced high customer attrition rates and was unsuccessful in implementing cross-sell initiatives to retain client assets.

To get NAO right, this firm employed a process by which errors were prevented, customer needs were handled quickly and consistently, and communications occurred smoothly. The result was new customers who were happy with the experience and became active and engaged, opening opportunities to introduce additional products through targeted communications.

To provide this kind of fluid customer experience and improve efficiency in dealing with each customer case, NAO requires a malleable approach that uses processes, people and information. The methodology emerging as a best practice is based on a business process management pattern called case management.

The Case for Case Management

Case management uses a case-based (rather than a process-based) approach that can help achieve an optimal NAO process, prompting customer behaviors that drive critical revenue and retention goals. Customer relationships are enhanced through human involvement and knowledge sharing in addition to automation. The approach brings together all points that touch customers and the information about them, including data capture, content management, business process management (BPM), process monitoring and analytics, collaboration, customer communications, and records management. This combination of technological and human factors yields greater customer focus and ultimately a greater share of their business from increased retention and cross-sell/upsell.

Case management establishes visibility across all the data and content pertinent to an account. Customer relationships can be managed across an enterprise rather than at a departmental level, so moving between departments (e.g., when opening additional accounts) becomes transparent to customers, reducing the chance of drop-off during these crucial transitions.

A secure virtual case folder is the cornerstone of case processing. Within this folder, workers easily collaborate with other business users, independent of geographic location. The folder includes tasks, rules and policies, events, history, reporting, documents, people, and even other processes, providing the necessary context to make the most accurate decisions possible.

Case processing combines linear, structured processes—typically following a predictable path for automating repetitive and routine tasks—with nonlinear and unstructured processes for handling unpredictable and exceptional aspects of a case. A case management framework brings rigor and automation to these unstructured processes, which have not been handled well—or at all—by traditional BPM systems. The progression of these unstructured processes is driven by the unique circumstances of the case itself. In these instances, it is the decisions, the people and the information that drive the case forward.

Within the virtual case environment, users have easy access to case information that is up to date, tracked and visible across the organization. With all information and its context aggregated into a single folder, workers can consult internal and external resources, review possible actions, and make better decisions regarding each customer. Managers can easily track progress toward milestones, productivity goals, and service-level agreements. A virtual case folder that orchestrates multiple processes also enables tasks and discrete processes to be run in parallel, increasing efficiency. 

Case Management In Action

Let's see what case management did for the currency exchange trading firm described in this article. The firm adopted EMC Documentum xCP to implement a consolidated global NAO process. Documentum xCP is an end-to-end case management solution that combines powerful application development features with state-of-the-art process management, enterprise content management, analytics, data capture, customer communications and compliance, effectively covering all stages of the case management lifecycle.

With case folders built on Documentum xCP's document repository and with tight integration across all the required technologies as well as to back-end trading and customer relationship management systems, the solution consolidated and automated all of the firm's NAO processes to improve efficiency and compliance. Available to users worldwide, 24x7, the application provided a portal into customer accounts and helped the firm adhere to regulatory requirements with the following results:

• The average account opening cycle time was reduced from 4.3 days to less than 24 hours.
• The average acquisition cost was reduced by 48%.
• The client attrition rate during the first six months dropped 37%.
• End-to-end transparency to account status was enabled with automated capture, routing and approval of account documents within a single platform.
• Compliance oversight and regulatory compliance were enhanced.
• The client achieved a positive return on investment within 18 months while scaling to support the firm's exponential growth as a world-class financial services organization.

The NAO process sets the tone for customers' ultimate satisfaction with your products and services. By bringing together people, processes and information in the right balance to achieve decisive outcomes, a case management approach can maximize the effectiveness of the NAO process.

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To learn more about how your organization can benefit from a case management application built on Documentum xCP, visit www.EMC.com/xcp or call 800-607-9546 (outside the United States: 1-925-600-5802).