Case management systems

A case without an owner has nobody waiting for it to be done. It shows as open in the list, but it is on nobody’s desk.

When is a shared inbox no longer enough?

When you can no longer say how many cases are open right now. A shared inbox can work for a long time, as long as the people sharing it know who takes what. It stops working the day two people answer the same question, or nobody does because each thought the other had it.

Another sign is that the answer to a question depends on who happens to reply. Then it is worth looking at where the history lives: in the system, or in the head of whoever answered last time.

What should a case management system do?

• Statuses and ownership that reflect how you actually work, not a ready-made template with steps you never use.
• Response times and escalation tied to the SLAs you have signed.
• A history for each case, visible to the people who need to answer, and to nobody else.
• Intake from email, web forms and the systems where the cases start.

Build or buy?

Buy, if a standard product covers your process. There are good ones, and if one of them covers what you need there is no reason to build it again. Build when the case is tied to your own business logic: when a case triggers an order, an inspection or a payment in other systems. Then the customisations of the standard product can grow larger than a system of your own would have been. We will tell you when we think you should buy, and would rather help with the integration.