Business process management (BPM) and case management software runs a piece of work, called a case, from the moment it arrives, through its checks, to a decision. A loan application, an insurance claim, a customer complaint and a new supplier's registration are all cases. The software makes sure that every case goes through the right steps, in the right order, by the right deadline, and it records who did what.
The two names mean slightly different things. Business process management handles work that follows the same fixed path every time, such as approving a purchase request: the manager approves, then finance approves, then the order is raised. Case management handles work in which the path depends on the case. An officer looks at what has arrived and decides what to do next, such as asking for one more document. Most products now do both.
Take, for example, a home loan of ₹35 lakh at a cooperative bank in Nashik. The applicant fills in the form on the bank's website, and a new case is opened. The software creates the list of steps for a home loan. The applicant's PAN card, salary slips and property papers are read by intelligent document processing, which fills in the case's fields. The software runs the KYC checks, and asks a credit bureau for the applicant's credit score, which is 762. The bank's rules say that a loan above ₹30 lakh needs a property valuation. So the software assigns a valuer and gives him five working days. On day four, the valuer uploads his report. A credit officer reviews the whole case on one screen, and approves it. The software then asks the core banking system to open the loan account, and files every document in enterprise content management (ECM). If any step had passed its deadline, the software would have sent the case to a manager.
Every action is recorded with a time stamp. When an RBI inspector or an auditor asks why a loan was approved, the bank can show each step. Many banks buy a ready-made loan origination system for this one process. Others build it on a BPM platform, often with little hand-written code, on a low-code platform.
Later, process mining can read the case history and show where cases wait longest. A software robot may do single steps inside a case, such as copying data from an old system.