5 Powerful Benefits of More Efficient Case Management

Inefficient case management can cost your company millions. One McDonald’s franchise in the Southwest recently agreed to pay almost $2 million to settle an EEOC sexual harassment lawsuit involving many young workers. According to the EEOC, the franchise “failed to adequately address the complaints of sexual harassment, many workers found the working conditions so intolerable that they had no choice but to quit.”

In addition to the settlement, the franchise has agreed to make changes to their operations, including implementing “a centralized tracking system for discrimination, harassment, and retaliation complaints” that will help them address issues faster and more effectively. If they had an efficient case management process from the start, they could have saved time, money and stress.

In a recent poll, i-Sight found that 63% of case managers’ time was spent on manual tasks, taking them away from key responsibilities of their roles. That means nearly two-thirds of the day is spent on inefficient work, which is costing you money.

Want to save time and money but you’re not sure where to start? You need robust case management software. Read on to learn five benefits you’ll reap when you switch to a more efficient case management system.

1. Close Cases Faster

With spreadsheets, email inboxes, homegrown tools and file folders, creating and updating cases require extra administrative steps. For instance:

• Organizing case information and keeping spreadsheets up to date is time consuming and error prone.
• Drafting documents by hand is inefficient and often leads to longer review or approval times.
• Ensuring privacy and confidentiality is difficult in sensitive scenarios or when collaboration is required.
• Poor visibility into past cases and a reliance on institutional knowledge lives in people’s heads.

The more steps that are required to complete a task, the longer cases have to stay open. A more efficient case management process not only speeds up resolution times, but can also:

• Increase trust with employees or other case subjects
• Reduce your risk of non-compliance penalties for time-sensitive investigations (i.e. data breaches or Title IX complaints)
• Decrease the chance of incidents escalating

By helping you close cases faster, case management software decreases risk and saves you time and money.

2. Make Investigators’ Jobs Easier

When your case management process is inefficient, you put unnecessary strain on investigators and managers. First, too much time spent on manual tasks limits the team’s bandwidth to proactively support the organization on other initiatives.

Important case information also becomes siloed, causing management to miss patterns and double their efforts. Finally, sharing institutional knowledge with new hires or across departments is more difficult due to the lack of electronic records showing past precedents or process.

However, on a secure, centralized case management platform, your team can easily collaborate with internal or external partners while maintaining confidentiality and data privacy. Automated case intake and assignment, as well as one-click reports, give you time back for other tasks. An easy-to-use tool plus less paperwork means happier, less-stressed case managers.

3. Maintain a Single Source of Truth

Have you ever been looking for a file or piece of evidence and it’s nowhere to be found? You could spend hours tracking down an essential document, and that’s time better spent investigating.

Similarly, does each team member, department or office work on cases using slightly different processes? This can cause inefficiencies at best and put you at risk if you’re challenged by regulators or lawyers at worst.

With one centralized case management tool, though, everything related to your cases is in one place and workflows are streamlined and consistent. Easy-to-fill forms, a workflow-guided process, task reminders and auto-filled case templates improve the team’s productivity and reduce your risk. Suggested case linking helps you find case connections for better prevention, while an advanced search tool also make it easy to follow precedent set.

4. Integrate With Your Tech Stack

Using too many different tools for case management can cause confusion and information silos. Even worse, more platforms mean more opportunities for issues and outages and needs for maintenance.

Instead, choose a case management system that can integrate with your tools. Built-in email templates, automated assignment rules and HRIS integrations streamline each step. When you don’t have to leave the platform to complete a case task, you save time, reduce errors and improve oversight.

5. Keep Your Data Secure

Protecting sensitive case information should be your number-one priority. However, with outdated platforms, spreadsheets and paper files, that data is at risk.

Case management software offers a secure place to store this information. Plus, user-based permissions help you control who can access and work on each case. Detailed audit logs also show the time and date of each action taken on a case file. This feature not only keeps your team on track but can also serve as proof of your process if you’re challenged in court or by a regulatory body.

Want to learn more benefits of case management software? Next week, we share how a robust platform can help you manage the risks that come with inconsistent case management.