Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

Enterprise Decision Management and the future of application development

(Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) I read an interesting paper by Joseph Feiman of Gartner today - Prepare for a Paradigm Shift to Automated Application Development. This is described as "maverick" research but I thought it was pretty compelling....

BEA on Event Driven Architecture Sounds a lot like EDM

Yesterday BEA Systems released a white paper summarizing their findings of a customer study regarding Business Process Management (BPM). The paper is titled “The State of the BPM Market – Business and IT: Solving Process Problems Together.” BEA also culled through numerous analyst and other industry expert insights to narrow in on the key trends driving adoption of BPM related technologies. There were two especially notable items in the report that show an Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) approach to operational decision automation, connection and improvement is becoming an increasingly mainstream concept – even if the term EDM isn’t the label.

Call for Presentations - the new EDM Summit

How are you integrating business rules and analytics? How are you adding intelligence to your business processes? How are you putting analytics to work in your operational systems? How, in other words, are you using Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) to...

Adaptive Business Applications with EDM

(Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) I have been thinking about adaptive applications recently and about what makes an application adaptive (see my twitter stream for instance). This seems like an important topic as people throw "business agility" and "agile...

Some thoughts on BI and analytics in retail banking

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Late last year the folks at Datamonitor published Business Intelligence in Retail Banking (Review Report). I finally got to read it today and it is, overall, a very interesting paper and I recommend it...

Customer Interaction Management needs EDM

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) It seems to be customer interaction week (month) on my blogs. Today I finished reading an article that prompted this post - Service-Oriented Customer Interaction Management by Ashutosh Roy of eGain. There was a...

Using EDM to deliver event-based marketing

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Adam Sarner at Gartner published Five Steps to Successful Event-Triggered Marketing last week. The abstract of this paper says: Successful event-triggered marketing is a process of identification, categorization, monitoring, optimizing and executing. Marketers that...

Process Management and Decision Management

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I posted a little piece on the potential unification of business processes and business rules on my other blog recently - Please don't just unify rules and process. This prompted some very interesting comments...

Insightful Hindsight on Forrester's 3 “Bs” Points to Need for EDM

While reading recent news in the Process Management section of Intelligent Enterprise today, I noticed a September 27, 2007 post by Sandy Kemsley titled “Forrester: Why BI, BPM and Rules Technologies Will Converge.” Sandy was part of a panel discussion at Forrester Research’s Technology Leadership Forum (Sept. 24-27) focused, in part, on the contents of a Forrester report issued to coincide with the event. I previously blogged about that report, titled “The Dynamic Business Applications Imperative,” by John Rymer and Connie Moore.

Decision Management at the Heart of Future Enterprise Applications, so Says Forrester Research

Respected technology prognosticators John Rymer and Connie Moore of Forrester Research just published a new paper titled, “The Dynamic Business Application Imperative” (September 24, 2007, For CIOs). Rymer and Moore envision a new generation of enterprise application that some IT organizations today are cobbling together in order to meet ever changing business, technical and marketplace requirements.

The Three Dimensions of Intelligent Business Processes

Today I read a September 21 Gartner Research note by Gareth Herschel titled, “The Role of Analytics in Adding Value to Business Processes.” As someone expert in analytics more so than Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Rules Management (BRMS), Gareth raises some important points to remember when discussing the role of analytics in business processes.

Live from ITARC - Empower Developers with Feature-Driven Development

Continuing at the IASA ITARC event in Atlanta I listened to Don Browning, Principal Architect at Turner Broadcasting, talk about Feature Driven Development. Turner considered XP, SCRUM and FDD sometime ago and found that FDD fit their waterfall-based mindset. Don...

Enterprise decision management and delivering agility

Mike Kavis had a post today "Built to change, Architected to last" in which he discussed a nice new concept from the folks over at BEA - Dynamic Business Applications. These, he says, have four characteristics: Built to change (flexible)...

Using EDM to win with operational automation

Charlie Bess over on the EDS Next Big Thing Blog had a great post on Operational Automation will Always Win Out in the End in which he argues that a focus on low cost locations is never going to work...

"Taking off" with enterprise decsion management

Ajay Kelkar had a comment on - Live from Teradata (almost) - Improving Customer Experience with EDM. Ajay made the point that a business entering "take off" stage is particularly interesting as there is a belief that you should get...

Analysis and creativity in decision-making

Scott Thurm recently wrote a piece in the WSJ Marketplace section - Now, It's Business By Data, but Numbers Still Can't Tell Future. He talked about the growing trend of trying to run companies more analytically, more "by the numbers",...

Decisions and the potential for agile services

I saw this post over on the Web Gambit today - How Agile is your Architecture? - where Karthik emphasizes the Agile Manifesto's Responding to change over following a plan. He is talking about architecture agility and says "After a...

Using decision management to complement ERP

Aberdeen just published this nice little report - Aligning IT to Business Processes: How BPM is Complementing ERP and Custom Applications (sponsored so free in return for your email address) - which makes for interesting reading in terms of how...

Remember: Don’t Crush ‘Em, Restore ‘Em

The title of this posting is taken from a saying repeated at the conclusion of a cable television show about classic cars, and aptly summarizes the focus of this newsbit I saw today on DM Review’s website: “Major Software AG Customer Survey Reveals New Priorities for Legacy Systems”. Software AG, an infrastructure software provider, surveyed 180 of its clients to understand their views on legacy systems. The results cited in the article parallel the value of Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) to legacy systems; all good news for Software AG and BRMS vendors, maybe less good news for application vendors trying to sell their latest wares.

Yahoo's senior marketer tells you to use EDM (kinda)

I was reading this interesting McKinsey report - Confronting proliferation ... in online media: An interview with Yahoo!’s senior marketer. In this report Cammie Dunaway, CMO for Yahoo, talks about how Yahoo is coping with the explosion of choices and...

Got MDM? You know EDM Better than you think

For some time now, I have recognized analogies between Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) and Master Data Management (EDM). They both share attributes such as the separation/abstraction of “inputs” from operational or analytical systems and recognition of these inputs as assets to be managed and available for reuse across the enterprise. It’s interesting to note also that both have impacts on analytical and operational systems, yet originated from different points of view. In the case of EDM, high volume operational decisions have historically been the focus, while MDM stems from problems in managing consistency in data warehouses.

“Smart Enough”…Processes

The June 2007 issue of DM Review features an interview with business process management (BPM) vendor Metastorm CEO Bob Farrell, titled “Process Intelligence.” Given Metastorm’s focus on BPM it isn’t surprising that Mr. Farrell has a process centric view of the world. Rather surprisingly though, it seems their business is experiencing trends similar to those developing around Enterprise Decision Management (EDM).

Live from EBRC - Business Rules Approach Applied

Next EBRC session is Business Rules Approach Applied with Alcedo Coenen, formerly of ING. He was talking about knowledge analysis and how it can contribute to process optimization. Within banks, and other organizations, there is much to be gained from...

Live from EBRC - Agility and Compliance

Last session at EBRC before today's high point (that would be my session), is Agility and Compliance require a combination of BPM/SOA, EDA and BRA by Jan Vanthienen, Leo Hermans and Wilfreid Lemahieu. They were missing Leo but got started...

Live from EBRC - Applying business rules to gain competitive advantage

Blogging live from EBRC again - Applying Business Rules to Gain Competitive Advantage. A multi-channel retail case study by Qusai Sarraf, CEO of IVIS Group. Presentation is about Tesco. Qusai emphasized that competitive advantage is all about agility today -...

Using EDM to respond to trends in Financial Services

Guillermo Kopp over at Tower Group wrote this piece - Top 10 Trends in Financial Services: New Approaches in a Changing World (subscription required). It is an interesting paper, though I hope he will write some follow-up pieces as there...

Customer service, websites and decision automation

I got a great example today of the value of automating decisions in a flexible way. A major retailer, that I know to be a user of business rules, had finally got some Nintendo Wiis in stock. Like many of...

Metrics, metrics, metrics

Akash recently posted a comment and asked me a question - what metrics to consider to see how the use of business process management systems (BPMS) and business rules management systems (BRMS) can help the insurance industry compared to non-BPMS/BRMS....

Lean application development and maintenance - some thoughts

I recently came across this McKinsey paper - Applying lean to application development and maintenance (subscription required). The abstract has a few key bullets: Lean techniques, originally developed to reduce waste in manufacturing, are boosting performance in more and more...

Continuous Optimization

In a piece of curious timing, I saw this new report by Jim Sinur and Bill Gassman of Gartner - "Continuous Optimization: A Primer". It's curious timing as I just finished a series on adaptive control. This is an interesting...

Are business rules a bridge or a ferry?

James Governer had a great post today - On Agile, IT-Business Alignment, Martin Fowler and The Yawning Crevasse of Doom talking about a presentation by Martin Fowler and Dan North. There were some wonderful comments in it: The biggest problem...

Business Rules, Business Decisions, Intelligent Processes, Enterprise Decision Management

Two analyst reports and an article came together today to reinforce both the core concepts of enterprise decision management - EDM - and its timeliness. First there was When Rules Go Inside Out With BPM (subscription required) by Jim Sinur...

Business rules, flexibility and rigor

Saw this post on the EDS blog - Does the rigor of business rules free you up to be innovative? Charlie Bess refers to a piece by Ron Ross called Business Rules: When is a Door Not a Door? Like...

What you need to know about Decision Services

A key tenet of Enterprise Decision Management is the automation of the operational decisions that drive your business. You need to identify operational decisions and automate them; you also need to separate them out from the rest of your applications...

InterACT Lisbon - Models to Rules

Next up were Carole-Ann Matignon and Andy Flint presenting on how analytic models and business rules can and should be combined. Carole-Ann and Andy are product managers for Model Builder and Blaze Advisor, Fair Isaac's products for analytic model development...

Mitigating the risks of reuse with business rules

Dian over at BPM Enterprise had this post that led me to this piece on The RIsks and Rewards of Reuse by Marcia Kaufman of Hurwitz & Associates. Dian highlighted the problem of "Poor Process" as an issue from a...

Does everyone even WANT to write software?

Like many of you, I suspect, I found Awaiting the Day When Everyone Writes Software (you may need to register) in the New York Times interesting. While I hate to criticize someone like Charles Simonyi (who has brought to market...

Using business rules to write maintainable code

Reddit pointed me to this post on "Writing Maintainable Code" by Jeremy D. Miller over on CodeBetter.com. It's a nice article and I look forward to reading the rest of his posts on this topic.There's lots of good stuff but...

Book Review: The World Is Flat

I have just finished reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. Firstly a health warning - it's a REALLY long book. Even skimming some sections it took me a long while to read it. Overall it is a good...

Using business rules to avoid "Write-only" code

I found out about this post about 20 rules for a software project by reading a post about it on the Tyner Blain blog. There was a great expression in the second posting where they talk about "write-only" code or...

Here's how one company is using business rules to manage advertising pricing

One of the challenges for a newspaper, magazine or TV channel is how to generate precise ad prices quickly in high volume and extremely complex situations. In many of these situations the volume and contractual complexity makes it hard, if...