Customization

The system must be able to be adapted to a particular business process. Organizations should not have to reorganize the way they do business to adapt to a technology. If you have a mental health program, the case management system should be able to respect the clinical assessments that you perform and have the ability to have those assessments built into the framework. If you have an employment assistance program, or a clinical counselling program, or a shelter, a sufficiently well designed case management system should be readily customizable to all those programs and enable the transfer of information on unique clients between those organizations. It is less efficient and more prone to error if you are having to use more than one system to account for client activities.

The addition of features: assessments, business rules, new data collection forms, and changes to existing fields and forms should be a primary consideration in the purchase of a case management application. The social services field is undergoing significant changes and will continue to undergo changes as public sector reform initiatives continue to play out throughout governments and these changes will effect the processes, policies, accountability and the reporting requirements of agencies involved. A hard coded application that is not straightforward to change will be out of date far in advance of its amortization.