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...

EDM Helps Minimize Trade Offs Between Application Maintenance and Strategic Initiatives – So Says Forrester Research

While Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) is not called out specifically in Forrester Research’s January 28 report, “The State Of Enterprise Software Adoption: 2007 To 2008,” it describes issues top of mind among technology executives addressable with EDM technologies, such as Business Rules Management Systems (BRMSs). The report is based on results of a survey of 1,017 IT decision-makers in North American- and European-based enterprises.

Business rules are core to the BPM/SOA value proposition

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Butler Group released a really well written report on BPM last year - Business Process Management: Building End-to-end Process Solutions for the Agile Business (December 2007) and I took a look at it after...

How should business rules and business process interact?

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) We got a comment this week from Paul Haley, founder of the eponymous business rules technology vendor. Commenting on Gib's post “Gartner’s 2008 Predictions Include Bright Future for Enterprise Decision Management” he asked about...

Banks need more than workflow

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I was pointed to a new site this week - Gonzo Banker - and in particular to this article on Workflow: The Killer App. While I enjoyed the article, I do think that the...

Gartner’s 2008 Predictions Include Bright Future for Enterprise Decision Management

Gartner recently issued two “Predicts: 2008” reports highlighting their expectations for Enterprise Architecture and the Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) Market. Both recognize noteworthy and highly complementary trends reflecting the value of Enterprise Decision Management (EDM), particularly Business Rules Management Systems (BRMSs) supporting EDM principles.

Standardizing Decision-based Approaches

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I attended a meeting of the OMG this week and we had some good discussions that both showed the value of externalizing decisions and pointed the way for decisions to become a solid part...

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...

SAP, business rules and decision management

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) As anyone watching the business rules space will have noticed, SAP recently bought Yasu, one of the small rules vendors. Gartner wrote about this here and made a couple of useful comments on the...

While Forrester Envisions Consolidation for the 3 "Bs", it's Happening for Apps and BI Vendors

Cognos and Microstrategy are the two remaining independent Business Intelligence (BI) software giants following today’s news that SAP was purchasing Business Objects. Speculation was building online last week that a deal was in the works and in fact for much of this year since Oracle purchased Hyperion, such rumors have been the case.

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.

PerformancePoint Points the Way Toward Mainstream EDM

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint points the way toward mainstream adoption of EDM.

Live from the Gartner BPM Summit in Orlando – The EDM Opportunity Zone

Live report from the Gartner BPM Summit in Orlando, FL.

Process transformation and decision management

Roeland Loggen had a nice post over on his blog today - BPM Suite as a component in a logical architecture. I liked his architecture except that I think the Decision Platform he identifies also needs to be able to...

Coming this Fall (actually sooner): Law and Order EDM

Acronyms are way of life it seems for both crime drama television shows, as well as business rules technology. Just as you have CSI, SVU and probably others I can’t recall in TV land, you have numerous terms such as BRE, BRM, and BRMS to describe variations on rules management concepts. What spurred me to think about this was the August 3 Gartner research paper titled “Hype Cycle for Business Process Management (BPM), 2007.”

Using decision management to transform claims

Karen Pauli of Tower Group recently wrote Technology Direction in US P&C Insurance Claims Operations: Transforming a People Business (subscription required). This is a great paper and highly recommended for those of you thinking about how to improve your claims...

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...

EDM-Enabled Web Self Service Better be Top of Mind for Financial Services Firms

On June 25 (2007), I saw this news posting on DM Review’s website – “IBM and KANA Study Shows Untapped Potential for US Financial Services Web Sites to Better Serve Clients,” and was intrigued to see to what extent Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) concepts were mentioned. It’s been a long time now that web-based customer service capabilities have been promoted as a timelier, lower cost method of maintaining and growing customer relationships than other options, but what is interesting is that the study, titled "Service Done Right: Why Great Online Customer Service Matters More than Ever," shows cultural and generational factors driving many financial institutions to take web based customer service much more seriously.

“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 - 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...

SOA, BPM (and EDM) for Enterprise Applications

Bill Swanton and Ian Finley at AMR Research recently published "SOA and BPM for Enterprise Applications: A Dose of Reality" (subscription required). This paper considered the value of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and how it is to be found in business...

Another opinion on Embedded Analytics

(Posted by Guest Blogger, Gib Bassett) This morning on DMReview.com, there appeared under Industry News an article titled “InforSense Expands to Meet Customer Demand for Embedded Enterprise Analytics”, which sounded interesting given that Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) includes the concept...

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....

More on BPM - what about Decision Services?

Tulu Tanrikorur of New York Life wrote Business Process Management 101: The Basics of BPM and How to Choose the Right Suite over on Intelligent Enterprise. It's a nice summary of various approaches to considering BPM and related software. However,...

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...

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...

Microsoft BPM adds decision management

Some of you will no doubt have seen today's announcement of a Business Process Alliance by Microsoft (their press release is here). Fair Isaac is one of the 10 companies in this alliance (see the Fair Isaac press release here)....

Why your offshore IT provider doesn't need domain knowledge

I saw this post yesterday on the Infosys blog - Is IT-Business/Domain Knowledge overrated? - and it made me wonder - does an offshore IT provider need domain knowledge at all? Are there ways to build systems that take much...

BI, BRMS, BPMS and don't forget Decisions...

I saw this post on BI, BPMS and BRMS and this one similarly and it seemed to me that there is a crucial hole in these discussions - where are the decisions? I took a quick stab at a graphic...

SOA, BPM and business users

Joe McKendrick's blog had an interesting post today on getting business users involved in application development. The problem is the difference perspectives needed for business and IT folks. Business people don't want to assemble applications, they want to run their...

Shameless Commerce - new eBook on Intelligent Enterprise

There is a new Fair Isaac eBook on Intelligent Enterprise (registration required) with a nice article on BPM and rules, a study of webMethods' new product Fabric 7 and an overview of anti-fraud software. Enjoy. Technorati Tags: BPMS, BRMS, business...

Doug Henschen and Intelligent Enterprise

I had a chat with Doug Henschen over at Intelligent Enterprise the other day and today he blogged about turning insight into action. If you are interested in this you will find lots on this blog (and my other one)...

business process and business rules

At the NY Brainstorm BPM Conference, we had an interesting panel on the relationship (current and changing) between "business process" and "business rules." The answers were intriguing. Before revealing the answers, it would be interesting to pose some of the...

Enterprise Decision Management and important IT trends

I saw this article in Baseline - The 30 Most Important IT Trends for 2007 - and it struck me how many of them pointed out the need for an enterprise decision management approach. Highlights included: Needing to focus on...