Critical Capabilities for BPMPlatformBased
Case Management Frameworks
12 August 2015 ID:G00258617 Analyst(s): Janelle B. Hill, Rob Dunie, Kenneth Chin VIEW SUMMARY Case management frameworks built on business process management platforms help solution architects deploy casehandling applications and offer an alternative to specialized case management applications and custom coding. We evaluate 12 vendors against nine critical capabilities in four use cases.Overview
Key Findings
For years, the complex architecture required to support case management has relegated it to the status of a niche application, typically addressed by specialist, commercial offtheshelf application providers and system integrators. Case management frameworks based on business process platforms provide an alternative approach. Compared with COTS applications, BPMplatformbased CMFs are easier to change and extend by altering visual metadata via models. Case management as a process style is being applied in many sectors beyond government, legal and insurance, including healthcare, banking, higher education and retail. Industry and crossindustry case management frameworks are now available. "Adaptive case management" hype exceeds the reality of what buyers need. Many solutions enable case workers to dynamically initiate ad hoc actions on a case directly in the production environment. EVIDENCE 1 In our view, the market for BPMplatformbased CMFs is an emerging opportunity under the broad, umbrella "BPM" market, and we have chosen to represent this segment. 2 From our "Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2015": "BPMplatformbased case management frameworks are commercial (ideally licensed) software that leverage a BPM platform to provide outofthebox architectural guidance and executable components (such as case folders, content indexing, rolebased UIs, business rules and milestones) to be configured, integrated, interoperable and extended by buyers. They reduce the complexity of creating a unique solution by providing enough functionality to accelerate development, yet not trying to be a complete packaged application." 3 On 21 May 2015, Kofax was acquired by Perceptive Software, the software division of Lexmark. 4 In the social and health program domain, cases are often guided by evidencebased practice models. 5 Providers use many of the same terms — such as "ad hoc" — to mean very different things. Our research finds that there are no universally adoptedHowever, determining exactly who can do what and when demands that the details be closely studied.
Recommendations
Solution architects: Consider potential requirements for "adaptive" behavior in case work. Identify appropriate guardrails to contain chaos while also empowering case workers to exploit their judgment and expertise. Consider BPMplatformbased CMFs, such as those reviewed in this report, when COTS solutions are not suitable (due to lack of fitness to requirements, cost, inappropriate platforms or inflexibility). Use this report to establish your own weighted criteria to shortlist providers for consideration.What You Need to Know
Today, many technology buyers are thinking about their work as caseoriented, rather than simply transactional, even in industries outside of those in which work traditionally has been handled as a case (such as government, legal and insurance). As business becomes more complex, with greater demands for operational oversight, Gartner has seen growing interest in case management as a process style to address complex solution requirements. Case work is highly variable. Typically, each work item — aka "case" — is a unique situation involving complex (and often difficulttoplan) interactions between content, people, business, evidence and regulatory policies with the aim of achieving an optimal outcome. It is an unstructured process. Often, the workflow cannot be prescribed, and the business logic behind potential actions is determined by complex interrelationships among the case, its content, related roles and individual responsibilities within roles. Thus, designing a software application to address this unstructured process style — case management — is challenging. This complexity has relegated it to a specialized software application area for years. Case management frameworks represent a new approach to addressing these requirements. They are configurable "apps" meant to help solution architects accelerate the delivery of unique and flexible case management solutions. In this report, we evaluate case management frameworks (CMFs) that execute on a business process management (BPM) platform of some type (see "Select the Right Type of BPM Platform to Achieve Your Application Development, Business Transformation or Digital Business Goals"). We chose this subset of CMFs because these modeldriven platforms hold the greatest potential for easier development and moreflexible solutions. Furthermore, this report evaluates CMF solutions from BPMplatformbased CMF providers, based on nine critical capabilities that any casehandling solution should reflect. We evaluate the products for four common use cases that we have observed across multiple industries: definitions yet specific to the concept of "adaptive case management." We find terms such as "ad hoc," "discretionary," "dynamic," "improvisational" and "emergent." The Case Management Model and Notation 1.0 specification describes "discretionary" behavior as follows: "A case has two distinct phases, the designtime phase and the runtime phase. During the design time phase, business analysts engage in modeling, which includes defining Tasks that are always part of predefined segments in the Case model, and "discretionary" Tasks that are available to the Case worker, to be applied in addition, to his/her discretion. In the runtime phase, Case workers execute the plan, particularly by performing Tasks as planned, while the plan may continuously evolve, due to the same or other Case workers being engaged in planning, i.e., adding discretionary Tasks to the plan of the Case instance in runtime." In essence, discretionary tasks are planned options, dynamically invoked on a casebycase basis. 6 See "Systems of Differentiation and Innovation Require Different Types of ModelDriven Application Platforms" and "Three Types of ModelDriven Composition: What's Lost in Translation?" 7 "Coinnovation" means that both the buyers (consumers) of the BPMplatformbased CMF and the provider can innovate the framework simultaneously and independently in such a way that neither steps on the other's changes in upgrades. The upgrade procedures respect the separate innovations and protect buyer customizations in such a way as to minimize manual reconciliation of the changes. 8 An unstructured process is one in which the activities, resource interactions (man, machine and information) and decisions are not easily prescribed as a repeatable workflow. Rather, they are tailored to the individual unit of work. Successful work handling requires interpretation, collaboration, judgment and expertise. 9 In Gartner's view, adaptive case management is a subset of case management as a process style, in which case handling needs to be extremely flexible. Instead of modeling the case flow, many adaptiveInvestigative cases Incident management cases Service request cases Process to decision cases In this analysis, we specifically evaluated the architectural elements of the CMF, the breadth and depth of business domain functionality included, and the interrelationship between the framework and its dependent execution environment. BPMplatformbased CMFs are delivered by using layered conceptual models, with the following required and optional layers for providers reflected in this report. Layers start at the bottom at the platform (Layer A) and extend up to the highest value of business functionality provided (Layer E): Layer A (BPM platform layer) — A basic BPM platform, business process management suite (BPMS) or intelligent BPMS (iBPMS) Layer B (a basic CMF) — A generalpurpose, architectural pattern for case work handling Layer C (business domain logic) — Horizontal, crossindustry, business domain logic Layer D (business domain logic) — Verticalindustry business domain logic Layer E (implementationspecific logic) — Complete, executing solution This report should be read as a companion piece to "Magic Quadrant for BPMPlatformBased Case Management Frameworks," which analyzes the overall market. Here, we provide deeper evaluations of the CMF solutions offered by vendors participating in that market. The vendors included within the two reports overlap (see the Vendors Added or Dropped section in this report). Many BPM vendors have recently expanded their focus to add casecentric features into their platform and case solutions to capitalize on this market opportunity, in competition with industryspecific case management application specialists, enterprise content management (ECM) suite vendors, CRM application vendors and consulting and system integrations (C&SIs), which offer prebuilt or custom developed solutions. Some providers market "adaptive case management" as a concept that requires a unique product, to distance themselves from traditional BPMS providers, and to emphasize the importance of the case as the primary object to be managed to a positive outcome, rather than the workflow (the sequencing of prescribed activities). BPMplatformbased vendors offering CMFs differ from traditional COTS specialty applications in that they are easier to extend via visual models (such as flow models, integration models, rule models and data models) — not just at design time, but also potentially at execution time (in production).1 BPMplatformbased CMFs provide a hybrid, alternative approach to COTS applications and homegrown, custombuilt development to meet case management solution needs (see "Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2015"). These frameworks are partial solutions, meant to accelerate the time to case management solutions focus on modeling interim goals or milestones as critical determinants of case progression toward the desired outcome. Providers emphasize modeling the data and relationships across the resources participating in the case rather than modeling the workflow. 10 An example of persontomachine collaboration is incorporating a virtual personal assistant into a process or a smart machine that assists the person in driving or parking a car. Robotic vacuums and manufacturing robots can collaborate with humans to get a job done. 11 There are many types of fraud detection and prevention domains. For more on this topic, see other Gartner research specific to industries or domains by searching on "fraud detection." 12 The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is a standardized approach to incident management developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. These standards prescribe "best practices" for dealing with anticipated types of incidents. 13 Scoring for the critical capabilities was derived from recent independent Gartner research on the BPM platformbased CMF market. Each vendor responded in detail to an extensive primaryresearch questionnaire covering its business and the technical features of its BPMplatformbased CMF offering. Gartner analysts reviewed and validated this information via requested live product demonstrations and discussion, corresponded with the vendors through the evaluation period, and conducted research checks with customers of these products. Gartner has also conducted more than 550 client inquiries with prospective and current enduser and consultant clients interested in case management solutions during 2014 and 2015. CRITICAL CAPABILITIES METHODOLOGY This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical
solution and also be extended and tailored for unique requirements by the buyer.2 When available COTS solutions are not suitable (due to lack of fitness to requirements, cost, inappropriate platforms or inflexibility), consider BPMplatformbased CMFs, such as those reviewed in this report. This analysis provides a detailed evaluation of case management solutions from 12 BPMplatformbased CMF providers against nine critical capabilities, and across four common use cases. This analysis can help solution architects narrow their shortlists of providers for case management solutions. They can also leverage this research to create their own weighted criteria for evaluating BPMplatformbased CMF providers.
Analysis
Critical Capabilities UseCase Graphics
Figure 1. Vendors' Product Scores for the Investigative Cases Use Case capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each product/service. "Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions. In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end users looking to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases. The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized groups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Each capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated. Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers each capability, on a fivepoint scale. These ratings are displayed sidebyside for all vendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features. Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor or Absent: most or all defined requirements for a capability are not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are multiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any product; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision.Source: Gartner (August 2015)
Source: Gartner (August 2015)
Source: Gartner (August 2015)
Source: Gartner (August 2015)
Vendors
AINS
Offering Evaluated: AINS eCase platform, Version 9.0, 2014 The AINS eCase platform is a Microsoft .NET, Webbased workflowdriven case management system. The platform's core features — including forms, intelligent capture, content management, collaboration, reporting, workflow, integration and security — enable it to address all four case management patterns well. AINS also offers a number of solution frameworks built atop its BPM platform. Its solutions are primarily at Layer D of our conceptual architecture. They include eCase Audit, eCase Investigations, eCaseLeads and Opportunities Management, eCase HR (onboarding, compensation, performance management, dispute resolution, employee relations, labor relations and learning management), FOIAXpress for Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and Privacy Act requests, and ATIPXpress (for FOI requests in Canada). eCase is primarily used within the U.S. and Canadian federal governments. It is available as a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)certified SaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) solution as well as onpremises implementations. eCase can manage a wide variety of process styles using its proprietary eFlow notation. eFlow allows the process designer to model the more structured workflows seen in service requests while also enabling the flexible execution of ad hoc task assignments and process snippets in investigative cases. While the eFlow syntax may be somewhat unfamiliar to those who have been exposed to standard notations like Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) or Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN), its relatively simple syntax is easily understood by citizen developers. This simplicity can be enhanced by the eCase rule engine to automate highly data and ruledriven processes. eCase enables content to be managed both natively and through external content management systems. It also provides the ability to interact with the content. The platform can intelligently capture unstructured data and index the text of images to make it searchable. Using the integrated redaction capability, case workers can remove sensitive information from electronic documents. Its mobile capabilities also allow the case worker to capture photos and videos directly from the device. eCase allows case workers to collaborate around case working using socialmediastyle chatting as well as email for notifications. All interactions related to the case are captured in the case folder. eCase also offers outofthebox support for Yammer, which enables case workers to collaborate with partners and external users. The platform has a number of connectors for widely used ERP and CRM applications (such as Salesforce CRM for contacts and PeopleSoft HRMS, a connector for the HR solution framework). AINS' eCase is a very capable case management platform. While the current solution frameworks are primarily focused on the U.S. and Canadian federal government, the platform can be used to address a wide variety of case management needs.
Appian
Offering Evaluated: Appian BPM Suite with Case Management Framework v.7.9 Appian BPM Suite's core strengths as an iBPMS allow it to address some more complex case management scenarios, although it has only a limited amount of horizontal and vertical solution content of its own. Many of its case management capabilities are a fundamental part of the platform, and are exposed in its horizontal (crossindustry) CMF to provide design guidance to implementers. The CMF is available as an Appian framework application as part of the iBPMS platform. Buyers of the iBPMS platform are given access to the CMF (Layer B). Access to domainspecific CMFs (Layers C, D and E) is licensed separately.We reviewed its Appian Case Management Framework and its three CMFs: Acquisition Business Management, Onboarding and Security Processing, and Site and Facility Inspections. Appian's CMF (Layer B) is an application package that contains design templates for casehandling rules, user interfaces, records and workflows, and also includes user stories and other documentation. These assets are samples, recommended to accelerate development through easy reuse. Although conceptually similar to code libraries, these objects are explicit models — metadata — that can be easily adapted using the visual authoring tools and executed immediately. One of Appian's best capabilities is its ability to support case orchestration that ranges from highly structured to highly unstructured flows. Appian leverages the BPMN 2.0 specification for authoring. BPMN's ad hoc activity is used to enable dynamic and some nonprescribed behavior in the runtime environment. Social tasks address ad hoc human actions. Appian's CMF also allows the process architect to configure a case's life cycle at both design and runtime — by defining milestones and tasks that contribute to the completion of those milestones. The knowledge worker is able to adjust the tasks as required by that unique case instance. Appian Records allows a case worker to quickly obtain a complete view of all data related to a particular case. Federated data is retrieved in real time from the appropriate system of record, allowing the knowledge worker to make better decisions regarding what action to perform next. Another distinguishing area for Appian is its understanding of the user experience, not just the user interface. Its Tempo layer provides a social experience that enables case workers to navigate across and monitor a wide variety of data objects, including event streams. Mobility is seamlessly integrated, supporting outoftheoffice and field experiences. Case workers can tailor Tempo to their personal interests and preferences as often as they want, through visual configuration, directly in the production environment. This is particularly valuable for investigative cases in which key information is not yet known and in which a highly adaptive experience is desirable. Appian's capabilities to support human collaboration and datadriven actions contribute to its higher scores for investigative and incident management cases than others in this evaluation. For buyers who do not have an ECM repository, Appian offers its own lightweight content repository. Appian largely uses partnerships and repackaged technology to provide interactions within lessstructured content (such as "view," "redact," "comment" or "search"), as well as intelligent data capture and output management. These capabilities are weaker than those offered by other vendors included in this report. For example, AnyDoc from Hyland Software is integrated for scan and metadata capture. Optical character recognition (OCR) capability and automated correspondence are also not native to Appian. Overall, Appian provides an easytolearn and easytouse environment for solution architects and developers, as well as business analysts and business professionals collaborating throughout the entire process management life cycle.
AWPL
Offering Evaluated: Dotsphere Case Manager Pro, v.7.4 and Pencil v.2.0 — multipleindustry frameworks AWPL's approach to this market segment differs from the other products we evaluate in this research: It offers solution frameworks on top of a BPM platform that others provide. Dotsphere Case Manager has a unique multilayered server architecture that enables the federation of heterogeneous enterprise content management (ECM) suites and BPM suites. AWPL has worked with IBM's FileNet ECM and all of IBM's BPM products, and other BPMS products. Its default BPMS is now Red Hat's, including its Drools rule engine, which strengthened its ability to handle service requests and processtodecision use cases. Its default ECM environment is its own product named Casepedia. Federation across heterogeneous BPM engines extends down to the activity level, thus providing good interoperability. It also uses a Java/XML plugin architecture to extend its case tracker with domainspecific business logic. AWPL itself offers multiple CMFs, branded as Pencils, which plug into this backbone. We reviewed its Pencils for insurance and banking (Layer D). The federated approach means that Dotsphere Case Manager can talk to multiple engines and in a single user interface, present the case worker with the information available across different engines. This helps organizations to still maintain multiple ECM and BPM engines and need not spend additional dollars in migration from one engine to another. Dotsphere Case Manager inherits much of the capabilities of the underlying BPM and ECM engines. For example, reports from Dotsphere are simple and quick to extract, and reports in the underlying BPMS are also available. Case workflow design is primarily done in the designer associated with the underlying BPMS. At the initial setup, IT professionals determine what aspects of the solution will be configurable by business roles, including integrated systems and databases, dashboards and UIs, human tasks and access to associated content. Dotsphere's own designer is more of a configuration layer, appropriate for business subject matter experts and case workers. Customers and partners create their own solutions or their own extensions to Pencil by exploiting the plugin architecture. This layered architecture reflects a clean separation of concerns, enabling a good level of flexibility controlled by business roles. It also builds on the growing base of BPMN and Java/XML skills available in the market. Widgets present different, contextualized views of cases. AWPL's interwidget communication enables changes made in one widget to be immediately reflected in associated widgets. One layer of the architecture provides an events framework that unifies the event streams coming from the underlying environments. Through a design user interface, customers define the events they want to capture and what should be done with these events. A middle tier in the architecture — Dotsphere Server Extensions at Layer C — enables customers to extend the functionality of the ECM or BPM environments. This unique architecture enables customers to define a case by its relationships. The business user layer — the topmost tier — is the case interface that unifies the underlying ECM and BPM engines, as well as lineofbusiness applications (such as core banking or insurance applications). All the unification done at this level is contextual to the case. This capability of bringing in contextual data and screens is an inherent strength of Dotsphere Case Manager, enabling it to peacefully coexist with and caseenable existing applications.Historically, AWPL has sold products in the imaging and workflow technology markets. It has been providing Dotshpere Case Manager solutions since 2001 in the Asian markets. Consequently, it also offers additional modules for case and document capture, tracking, monitoring and reporting. Today, it primarily goes to market with casecentric industry solution accelerators named Pencil and is actively recruiting partners to build additional solutions for Pencil. To date, it has just a few partners spread across Asia and Africa. AWPL is a company in India with offices in Asia and subSaharan Africa. Dotsphere's growing customer base is primarily located in the Asia/Pacific region and is now expanding into the Africa region. AWPL is building its ability to enable worker collaboration and to integrate content beyond legacy systems and documents. Support for mobility and integration is weaker than most vendors in this evaluation. Integration of both custom applications and COTS applications that are built on a traditional thick client will likely need significant programming effort, while integrating thinclient (browserbased) applications is easier to configure. Organizations that are looking for a quick timetovalue case management platform should consider Dotsphere. It is relatively inexpensive compared to the other products in this evaluation, and the company is eager to expand into the U.S. and Canada as well as Europe.
Eccentex
Offering Evaluated: AppBase 5.2 With DCM Framework 3.0 and MyCaseRecords Framework Eccentex combines a basic BPM platform and a basic CMF (Layer B) called Dynamic Case Management (DCM) Framework 3.0, which it offers as a hosted managed service. It also offers an AppLibrary of ready touse applications for specific verticals that it has developed on its own and with partners, addressing needs at Layers C and D. Its customers are primarily midmarket organizations in the finance, utility, public sector and healthcare industries. Eccentex and its partners offer solutions based on the DCM framework (as well as additional solutions built on the platform). As a platform, Eccentex is purposebuilt for case handling. It uses an eventdriven architecture and rules to advance cases to completion. (It is not based on BPMN, although the latest version includes workflow visualization in a BPMNlike notation.) The platform is largely a .NET 3.5 core with some Java and an Oracle RDBMS and PL/SQL capabilities. DCM is a generalpurpose CMF that provides a hierarchy of case related objects, including cases, tasks, reports, people and dictionaries for developers to leverage. Eccentex itself leverages DCM to create application solutions, such as MyCaseRecords (Layer C). Thus, it is highly extensible. DCM customization happens on three levels: Developers can extend, integrate and configure the core case objects using the integrated design studio. Business analysts can further configure aspects that developers have set up. Case workers can add ad hoc tasks, which are human tasks only.This is the basis for change governance and likely meets most buyer requirements. Its dictionary feature is unique and useful. Dictionaries are sources of information that, like a law dictionary, support case workers by providing critical reference information. Gartner also likes the organization chart, which can be synchronized with Active Directory and used for rules dependent on the organizational structure, including escalation rules, decision rules and dynamic task assignments. In addition, since this environment is cloudbased and built for case handling, administrators can control access to data and functionality at a very finegrained level, which improves security. Also, its architecture separates content flow from task flow, enhancing performance for contentheavy case work (such as tax fraud cases or mortgage origination). Overall, it has good content interaction capabilities. Despite the list of solutions available on AppLibrary, few are actually built by Eccentex. Solutions are from partners who have not been certified in any way. The breadth and depth of business domain logic varies considerably across AppLibrary solutions. Nevertheless, AppLibrary offers many productized horizontal and vertical applications for specific markets, which have then been bundled into an integrated suite of applications that are integrated between each other, and have a unified inbox, calendar, master data management and collaboration. In 2014, Eccentex shifted its business model away from targeting solution partners and toward more direct sales and delivery to enduser organizations in order to become an application solution provider. Thus, after initial deployment, buyers will most likely bear the burden of reconciling their customizations with new capability (if any) from the provider. In addition, most customers have not yet "pushed the envelope" in exploiting the capabilities of the platform. The environment reflects a good governance model (with the three layers of extensibility and finegrained control over access to components) which should make it easier to reconcile vendorprovided changes with subscriberowned changes. However, the upgrade process is not yet fully automated or intelligent. Still, because Eccentex is a cloud service provider, it should perform upgrades itself as a service. Buyers who decide to deploy the solution onpremises or in a private cloud should expect to take a semimanual approach to reconciling their own changes with those from the provider.
EMC
Offering Evaluated: EMC Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP) 2.0 EMC Documentum's xCelerated Composition Platform is a BPMS that features a balance of content and process management functionality, and supports case management solutions and development. Documentum xCP is a fully integrated component of the Documentum Platform 7, which includes core content management with a repository and other components, such as intelligent capture (Captiva) and customer communications management (Document Sciences). Documentum xCP 2.0 is a specialized BPMS that uses a configuration approach to case management solutions, rather than coding, to provide quicker delivery time. EMC has a number of industry case management solutions at Layer C, along with more than 100 certified partnerdeveloped solutions at Layers C and D. Documentum xCP can also be deployed as a managedservice, private cloud option using EMC OnDemand. For onpremises private clouddeployments, an automated provisioning and policybased deployment option called xCelerated Management System (xMS) is available to deploy Documentum xCP software and applications into the VMware private cloud infrastructure. One of Documentum xCP's strongest capabilities for case management is its ability to support a broad range of content types and content interactions, ranging from unstructured content to structured data. It provides for management and storage of the content as part of the Documentum platform. In addition, Documentum xCP provides a serviceoriented architecture (SOA), handling inbound and outbound messaging and events with standardsbased integration adapters and connectors. It also supports Case Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) for accessing other content repositories. Documentum xCP offers only basic collaboration services to facilitate individual and group interactions among case participants. The Documentum platform with EMC Captiva and EMC Document Sciences provides good data capture and output management capabilities. EMC Captiva provides intelligent classification and data extraction for highvolume capture and casebased capture applications for Documentum xCP processes. EMC Document Sciences automates the creation of personalized customer communications and correspondence with multichannel delivery as part of the casebased workflow processes in Documentum xCP. The adaptability of Document xCP is on par with other case management products in this evaluation. Documentum xCP implements case management patterns to enable runtime configuration in flight by process workers based on their role, and users can override templated processes with parameters and initiate ad hoc workflows. In addition, xCP includes a dynamic datamodeling mechanism — type fragments — that enables the case model to be enhanced after design time without having to redefine it. Type fragments include new information model and event behavior, and can be consumed at runtime. Business users have the opportunity to enrich the case by attaching different fragments, which could include tasks and additional business changes, to the case. Solution designers have to incorporate type fragments into the initial design to be exposed through configuration at runtime in order for workers to leverage them and adapt to unanticipated case work changes. Documentum xCP offers some businessrolefriendly dashboards, metrics and reporting functionality, but does not address ondemand analytics and would require a thirdparty product. Overall, Documentum xCP provides a robust case management platform with a number of frameworks and developed solutions. With a strong partner ecosystem to develop certified case management solutions for various industries and business domains, and tight integration with Documentum for content management functionality, Documentum xCP can deliver outofthebox case management and ROI.
Hyland
Offering Evaluated: Hyland OnBase v.14 and Dynamic Checklists for Process ControlHyland offers a single, integrated content and process management platform (OnBase) that leverages Microsoft's .NET component model. Its product incorporates componentized capabilities that are inherently designed to work together and leverage a common code base and repository. Gartner considers OnBase a basic BPM platform for its visual designer and builtin rules. Hyland offers two other process frameworks that are not casecentric: Accelerated Financial Reporting Management (AFRM) and Electronic Plan Review (EPR). OnBase v.14 offers seamless integration with various Microsoft technologies — including the .NET Office suite for editing content in Word and PDF from the Hyland client — using Web parts to expose specific OnBase functionality in a SharePoint portal user experience (UX), and exposing WorkViewbased case management applications via a Microsoft Office Outlook client. Dynamic Checklists for Process Control is a very simple framework at Layer B that is appropriate for creating a human task queue where there is no prescribed sequence to the tasks. An order can be suggested, but the worker is not required to follow the suggested sequence. The checklist owner (aka designer) defines the list of possible actions in the Dynamic Checklist template. The runtime engine assigns tasks as requested, based on events or to a shared queue. The simplicity of this framework makes it workable for a broad variety of data and contentdriven applications. This platform and template combination is very mature and is used extensively by many midsize customers and departments within larger enterprises. Hyland has three "solutions" that are licensed CMFs. Many "solutions" listed on its website reflect real world deployments based on sample code ("accelerators") and delivered with professional services. Customers who extend these solutions beyond OnBase will retain responsibility for maintaining their own customized application. Architecturally, this framework is really a codedriven solution, albeit using visual models to hide the programming details. Ad hoc behavior is limited to human actions. Collaboration capabilities — both in design and runtime — and integration with assets beyond content are weak. Hyland resells BizTalk from Microsoft to strengthen its integration capabilities.
IBM
Offering Evaluated: IBM Case Manager (ICM) v.5.2 ICM is a crossindustry CMF at Layer B. This framework runs on top of IBM Case Foundation (the original FileNet BPM P8 BPM and ECM platform) and includes a FileNet Content Manager entitlement. IBM and its partners offer many industryspecific and domainspecific solutions that leverage the ICM framework at Layer C and above. ICM is one of the stronger products in this evaluation, with betterthanaverage capabilities in all critical areas. However, with that strength comes complexity. The complexity of implementing solutions based on ICM derives from two issues: The infrastructure under ICM includes multiple IBM technologies as well as many acquiredtechnologies — for example, Cognos (for analytics), Datacap (for content capture and integration with thirdparty repositories) and Content Navigator (although now included in version 5.2.1). This makes system administration and management of the environment complex. The richness of capabilities offered in the ICM framework makes developing solutions for more sophisticated case handling quite challenging and requires advanced programming skills. Consequently, nearly all customers with whom we have spoken have engaged IBM or partner professional services to lead the development of their solutions (contributing to a high initial investment required to get started). IBM has started to address this issue with a wizardlike front end meant to enable highlevel designs for the simplest of cases to be done by less technically inclined individuals. In addition, to address the price and complexity issue, IBM has released a bundle called IBM Content Foundation that is a simpler, lowercost content management capability that competes with SharePoint. It has the same core content engine, plus the newer Content Navigator UI architecture. The best capabilities of ICM are its strong content management and content interaction services. ICM not only leverages the IBM ECM repository underneath, but can also easily work with many thirdparty repositories via the CMIS standard or by leveraging the capabilities of Datacap. The list of interactions with content — not only documents — is extensive (as would be expected of any provider from a strong ECM heritage). These interactions include search, collaborate, revise, tag, scan, view and more. Content Navigator (available during our evaluation phase as version 5.2.02) also extends the interactions with other content and is a much better UI framework than the original Business Space and form UIs. (Migration from the older UIs to Content Navigator requires redoing widget wiring and custom widgets.) Mobility is enhanced also with Content Navigator. The growing list of industryspecific solutions built using ICM also distinguishes IBM in this analysis. IBM offers some of its own, including its Intelligent Investigation Manager, based on another acquisition. This solution, which includes i2 forensic analysis, strengthens ICM for investigative cases, an area where many of the vendors in this analysis are somewhat weak. Solutions built in ICM are adaptable to the extent that solution designers anticipate needs for adaptability. ICM's models are essentially configuration models — and there are many possibilities. For example, at runtime, workers can add ad hoc human tasks and take ad hoc actions at their discretion. However, this is possible only if the solution designer grants them this privilege, and if this custom task capability was included in the solution design. Thus, solution behavior is adaptable to the extent that designers anticipate needs for adaptability. Under the covers of ICM is the FileNet Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflow engine, which has been merged with the content engine. JavaScript is also used in places. Although the overall solution meets Gartner's definition of a direct, modeldriven application framework, execution behavior is not quite as "adaptive" as a few other products are.
Lexmark (Kofax)
Offering Evaluated: Kofax TotalAgility 7.1Kofax3 TotalAgility is an iBPMS with strong support for contentcentric case management solutions. TotalAgility addresses a wide spectrum of processrelated needs, ranging from highly structured and predictable sequences of activities to more dynamic, ad hoc and unpredictable use cases. Its iBPMS provides a combination of predictable and unpredictable eventprocessing capability and supports a broad range of applications and use cases. TotalAgility also provides visual models that enable both business and technical users to easily modify the case management solutions and make dynamic changes to work in flight in response to both predictable and unpredictable events. Kofax currently has eight solutions at Layer C built using TotalAgility for a variety of industries. It can be deployed as an onpremises or cloud BPM platform as a service (bpmPaaS) solution in dedicated or multitenant configurations. TotalAgility includes data capture and output capabilities. It can ingest content in multiple formats and from multiple channels, making images and data available to the case management processes. TotalAgility integrates with Kofax's Communication Server and Customer Communication Manager product for output management. Its integration with SMTP servers provides for easy email integration and use of Microsoft Office for latebinding document composition and distribution. TotalAgility also integrates to Kofax esignature products to support use cases where signature gathering and verification is important. TotalAgility provides integration through several methods, including industry standards such as CMIS, technology adapters such as Web services, and platformspecific adapters for products such as Microsoft SharePoint. TotalAgility leverages thirdparty collaboration tools with Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint for internal and external (businesstobusiness and businesstoconsumer) collaboration. Case management applications can route processes based on availability, security level and skill level, and can use SharePoint for wikis, shared calendar management and collaboration workspaces. This dependence requires release coordination on the part of system administrators across these platforms. TotalAgility provides extensive process auditing, analytics and dashboards. Process map analytics enable users to rapidly identify hot spots and to understand how to effectively optimize cost or time with a process or activity. Inflight changes to the process can then be made by the user or automatically invoked based on specific conditions. SLA indicators can be specified for any activity, allowing for quick visualization of process issues. Predefined dashboards and mobile dashboards provide realtime business intelligence. TotalAgility also integrates with Kofax Insight, an analytics software product acquired by Kofax, for cases when broaderbased business activity monitoring and analytics capabilities are required. Although it is built for cooperation in heterogeneous technical environments, TotalAgility is bestsuited for Microsoft shops, which can leverage its native integration to many of the Microsoft infrastructure platforms. Service requests and process to decision represent strong use cases for TotalAgility.
MicroPact
Offering Evaluated: entellitrak Case Management Framework v.2MicroPact is one of the smaller and more specialized providers in this analysis. Originally, a contractor to the U.S. federal government, MicroPact shifted its business model in 2002 to become a software product provider and launched entellitrak in 2006. This product is purposebuilt to address the complexity of case handling. Although the core platform meets Gartner's definition of a BPMS, it is a specialized platform meant for casemanagementstyle processes. Data (rather than workflow) is treated as the primary, first class object. Thus, modeling begins with the data model. Data (both structured and unstructured) and policies (rules) are elevated over procedures (structured and unstructured flows), all driven by content and event states. The CMF is bundled with the entellitrak platform but is not part of the platform. It is a crossindustry preconfiguration at Layer B that adds common case management functionality over and above the features of the platform. The framework provides basic outofthebox design patterns and executable software components, such as case detail folders, workflow elements, document repositories, contacts (listings of individuals related to a case) and form letters. The platform itself includes rolebased security models, user management, searching, reporting, interfaces and interoperability that are common to most case management scenarios. On top of the core framework, MicroPact offers 22 preconfigurations (such as Alternative Dispute Resolution, Equal Employment Opportunity Management, Press and Media Relations Management, Background Investigations, and Workers Compensation Case Processing) at Layer C. With a strong focus on case data, entellitrak's best capabilities are its support for structured and unstructured data. This strengthens its rating in the investigative use case. Beyond documents, unstructured content support includes video, audio, email, scanned documents and reports. Case workers can collaborate and comment on all types of data that exist in the system pursuant to their roles and permissions. In addition, via the optional document management module, participants can interact further with the content, performing actions such as annotating, commenting, redacting and collaborating on textbased document data. As a Java platform, entellitrak also can interoperate well with external assets via open Web services standards and APIs. Entellitrak's other strength is its proven usage in largescale deployments. MicroPact has large deployments in U.S. federal government agencies and has expanded its sales focus into the private sector, initially targeting primarily healthcare enterprises. Although MicroPact has good capabilities in other critical areas, many of these capabilities are not part of the CMF. For example, domainspecific adapters that are not part of the CMF are supplied upon request at no additional cost. In addition, mobile, direct scanning, fax and OCR (escan), and portals for constituents external to the organization (efile) are provided in addon modules that aren't included in the base CMF. Parts of the business intelligence (BI) or analytics capabilities are also an optional module. The execution behavior of solutions can be as adaptable as designers deem appropriate for the workforce. Entellitrak uses a combination of parametric, configuration and explicit models. Control over solution behavior is based on design approach and permissions. With permission, workers can alter models, which
are highly configurable and easy to use. However, they are not very visual. They are data and text oriented. As a platform purposebuilt for case handling, entellitrak is better at unstructured flows than traditional structured workflows. A weakness for entellitrak is its UI capabilities and user experience. The UIs are mostly forms. There are few other choices of UI styles. The user experience is very dependent on role. Individual users may have to have multiple roles within a system — each role giving that user a different view, data presentation, functionality and workflow. Additionally, users can make their own realtime dashboard reports and metrics (and choose to share those reports), and they can choose what to expose and to hide on their dashboards.
Newgen Software
Offering Evaluated: Newgen OmniFlow for Case Management 10.0 SP5 Newgen OmniFlow for Case Management is a CMF at Layer B built on the OmniFlow suite, an iBPMS product. The CMF includes both core BPM capabilities and "solution accelerators." Newgen's outofthe box solution frameworks at Layer C — including accelerators for service request management, correspondence management, legal case management, customer onboarding and loan origination — have been developed for OmniFlow for Case Management to support rapid deployments. However, the maturity of the solution accelerators is inconsistent. As such, customers' experiences will vary according to which accelerator is used. Through Newgen's partners, several industry and crossindustry case management solutions are available to help customers accelerate their time to solution (although not all are licensed software). Collectively, these address some needs at Layers C and D. OmniFlow for Case Management has strong BPM and ECM capabilities, including support for managing a broad range of data types, with an underlying repository that is platformneutral with regard to the format of documents. It provides the ability to associate different types of objects with a case. These objects include processes, documents and structured data attributes, with capabilities such as view or read, comment or redline, highlight, update or change, and append. The product has good data capture and output management capabilities with strong content capture functionality from multiple sources, including mobile capture, and integrated output management for outbound content such as correspondence and reports. OmniFlow for Case Management provides a broad range of case orchestration for structured and unstructured flows. It supports case work that is eventdriven, using Esper for complexevent processing (CEP), or that requires support for ad hoc responsiveness within specific contexts. Using its process engine, the product can leverage business rules as it accesses structured data, unstructured content and repositories of process models. It can then use analytics to provide reporting and case status, and maintain context throughout a case cycle. One of the strengths of OmniFlow for Case Management is its user personalization and graphical UI (GUI) support. The GUI architecture is based on a component model where a container called OmniApp isprovided. Administrators can configure different desktops and dashboards for different sets of users and applications. The product provides default processing desktops for all standard use cases, which can be further configured. An HTML5based mobile app for content and workflow management is also available for users with features such as viewing, searching, imaging, downloading and emailing of case documents on their mobile devices. Overall, OmniFlow for Case Management provides a strong flexible and configurable platform for case management, with industry solution accelerators for quick deployments. Newgen's multiproduct approach is architecturally designed on the same core software platform, which will lower the integration complexities, risks and costs.
OpenText
Offering Evaluated: OpenText Process Suite v.10.6 OpenText Process Suite includes casehandling capabilities and packages Process Suite platform v.10.6 (the OpenText Cordys BPM engine), Process Component Library v.10.6, Process Experience v.10.6, Process Intelligence v.10.6 and BPM Everywhere v.10.6 into one bundle. OpenText's basic CMF is an assembly of crossindustry componentlevel assets in its Process Component Library. Process support uses CMMN and BPMN standards. Checklists, services and templates allow for structured componentized processes, executed as defined or as options for knowledge specialistsroles based. OpenText Process Suite is a BPMS that provides strong content services as well as integration to a broad range of content management systems and cloudbased filesharing solutions. The platform includes additional crossindustry capabilities (such as project management, SLAs, checklists and a shopping cart). OpenText's content management products also complement the Process Suite. Another part of the Process Suite is BPM Everywhere, a cloudbased social collaboration service that facilitates user collaboration on topics, cases and processes. The open interface also allows integration with clientspecific platforms. The Process Suite is a multitenant solution that is offered in multiple configurations, including public cloud, private cloud and managed services, at an attractive price point. The OpenText Process Suite platform includes Jackrabbit, an embedded open source content repository for basic content management. It also includes a standard JSR170compliant interface to external ECM and DCM solutions, along with integration for OpenText Content Server. SOA services and enterprise service bus (ESB) functionality are provided for service development and more complex integrations. OpenText is neither industry nor horizontalbusinesssolutionfocused. It is more of a platform provider with some solutions offered partly as a result of its acquisitions. It has recently released a Digital Media Supply Chain app and a Contracts Management app. Like many other cloud platform providers, OpenText is trying to attract solution providers to its Enterprise App Store. Its Process Component Library contains software components organized by business logic, technical functionality and UI components, for example. Some are configurable, and some are not. These assets provide architectural guidance at a component level, but not at a solution level. OpenText has leveraged some of these components to createits own basic CMF (Layer B). Process Component Library assets are licensed as part of the BPMS platform. The Process Suite has limited capabilities for handling structured content for case management domains. OpenText typically promotes its Process Suite as a platform particularly wellsuited for contentheavy process domains (such as incidents and investigations). It also adheres to the industry standard definition of Service Request and Request Fulfillment: Service Request (ITIL V3). Many customers have leveraged this standard to create their own service request casehandling solutions.
Pegasystems
Offering Evaluated: Pega 7 As an iBPMS market leader with a platform that supports many process styles very well, Pegasystems is the highestrated provider in this evaluation. Pega 7 is an application infrastructure platform that uses an eventstatebased architecture. It combines process flow definitions, rule processing, data handling, crossplatform UIs (mobile and other), predictive analytics, business activity monitoring (BAM), content management, application integration and other functions in one direct, modeldriven development and runtime architecture. It is a functionally rich and sophisticated Java platform. Pegasystems does not offer a separate generalpurpose CMF (at Layer B). Rather, it offers more than 20 crossindustry and verticalindustryspecific solution frameworks for many solution domains, some of which are caseoriented. These solutions are additional, licensed, feebased solutions on top of the platform at Layers C and D. Pega 7 scored well in many areas. This is a mature product, with strong balanced functionality across all of our nine defined capabilities. Much of this strength derives from its unified architecture and integrated technologies. There is no repackaged technology here; Pegasystems owns it all. When Pegasystems acquires technologies (for example, its recent acquisition of Antenna Software to enhance its mobile capabilities), it reimplements the capabilities to tightly integrate them into the platform. Internally, Pega 7 is a multilayered set of models and modules, with many APIs, Web services and other interfaces (such as RESTful ones) that can be used to integrate external business applications into the solution. Another major strength of Pega 7 is its declarative rules language. Rules are the primary mechanism by which solution behavior is controlled, at very finegrained levels of restriction or freedom. For example, the user experience and UIs are controlled through rules. Rules are also used to control and automate upgrades. Rules are used to intelligently capture content from various data captures, as well as to customize correspondence for output managements. Rules also enable Pega 7 to handle complex, nested case hierarchies very well. Rules enable Pega 7 to support a very wide range of solution behavior, from very prescriptive and controlled to very dynamic and ad hoc, should the designers wish to grant that degree of freedom to individuals or groups of workers. In this way, solutions built in Pega 7 have the potential to be more adaptive than those offered by most other providers in this evaluation (although few organizations fully exploit its power).Although most of the critical capabilities we define in this report have been in the platform for years, they were not readily obvious to solution architects. In Pega 7, Pegasystems introduced a new visual designer, referred to as its "stagebased" case designer, meant to simplify the visualization and management of the case life cycle and introduce case types and stages. Stages in the new designer reflect the major actions for case handling and represent milestones. Conceptually, milestones are relevant to many types of cases. Similar to project work, many types of cases have dependent tasks or workflows that have to sync up at certain points — milestones. Cases are often reassessed at these points to determine the next most appropriate actions. (Healthcare claims offer an example of case handling that often utilizes this concept.) Furthermore, changes in one case can have a ripple effect on other cases. The new designer is meant to help move customers from linear workflow thinking to context and outcome thinking. Nevertheless, we did not find this new designer that helpful for achieving these goals. Although somewhat intuitive for business roles, its chevron shapes aggregate actions into "stages" — milestones — in a list view, visually conveying linear, predictable flow rather than multiple, dependent and potentially parallel flows. Designing dependent, parallel flows is a critical architectural requirement for case management. Thus, we do not find this new designer that helpful for solution architects. Specifically, there is no guidance in the product that helps an architect decide: Is my problem caselike? If it is caselike, should I use the stagebased designer or the traditional designer? Are there consequences to my choice? Similar to IBM and EMC, Pega 7's sophistication comes at a high price in licensing costs and desirable professional services. Pegasystems' solution content is strong and often competes effectively with full COTS applications. Unlike traditional COTS applications, Pegasystems' "build for change" solution frameworks are more easily extended, integrated and configured to meet specific buyer needs. However, most buyers desire professional services assistance to do this work, at least initially, because the development paradigm of Pega 7 is so different from other environments they've used previously. Thus, there is a learning curve. In addition, customization of the solution frameworks requires a solid understanding of the outofthebox functionality. Pegasystems has many trained and certified partners to deliver these services, as well as a smaller professional services group of its own.
Context
Our analysis of these offerings suggests that BPMplatformbased providers represent a market segment4 with considerable promise, but one that also has several areas of immaturity and room for improvement. Based on the capabilities of these offerings, "adaptive case management" is still more hype than reality. The "adaptive" behavior enabled in these frameworks is typically limited by predetermined options, human tasks only and rolebased privileges. Many use configuration and parametric models that expose predetermined options rather than incorporating techniques and technologies that enable unplanned solution behavior at execution time (aka in production mode). Vendors that scored higher in our adaptivecasehandling capability enable more behavioral changes than others. In some of these solutions, case workers can initiate an ad hoc (discretionary) human action on a case, altering the execution behavior directly. This is particularly useful to empower case workers to create an action specific to an individual case such as request additional data, route the case to be reviewed with someone outside of the defined participants, repeat a prior action and delay until some time frame or event. Vendors incorporate various techniques to do this, and the implementation details are revealing. Some use techniques that establish constraints — guardrails — around the types of actions that are possible, but without prescribing every possible action. In others, the action is openended, with metadata captured in the execution history that describes its context, giving the case worker more freedom to take more dynamic action. "Ad hoc action" is a crucial concept to adaptive case management, yet there is no universal definition of what exactly this means.5 The idea is to essentially empower the worker to alter the flow and the activity, based on context, judgment, data and policies, rather than following a prescribed set of actions and flow. The CMMN 1.0 specification gets closer than BPMN 2.0 to describing such behavior. Enabling unplanned actions and unplanned sequences in this way requires enterprises to maintain a fine line between chaos and control. Enterprises interested in this capability should examine tools closely, leveraging our scores in the adaptive casehandling capability, to see how well the product enables them to establish that fine line. Currently, buyer demand for truly dynamic and ad hoc adaptation at the individual case level remains relatively rare. For most users, predefined and userselected options for case handling are sufficient. (Buyers who do not want solutions that offer adaptive behavior should consider a more traditional case management specialized COTS application, rather than a CMF.) We recommend that clients consider their potential requirements for "adaptive" behavior in casestyle work and identify appropriate guardrails to contain chaos while also empowering case workers to exploit their judgment and expertise. Accordingly, they should evaluate COTS compared with CMFs based on the degree of adaptability of the solution and how that adaptability is achieved. In general, the client reference examples we reviewed demonstrated adaptability in conjunction with data and process integrity. These modeldriven CMFs offer greater short and longterm flexibility for case management use cases compared with traditional coded COTS specialty applications for case management domains. The use of visual models (including configuration, parametric and explicit models), declarative languages, heuristics (based on rules), as well as XML event and statedriven runtime engines are the main contributors to this greater level of adaptability. Many of the solutions reviewed here provide outofthebox configuration and parametric models,6 which are valuable for accelerating implementation time, given how difficult it can be to design and architect case management solutions from scratch. However, configuration and parametric models are not as easily extended and modified as explicit metadata models.
