Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

Live from InterACT - Bernhard Nann's Keynote

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Back to this blog for a session on Fair Isaac's product road map presented by Bernhard Nann, Fair Isaac's CTO. Fair Isaac is in the middle of a major evolution in their decision management...

Using EDM to build effective sales scripts

Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) CRM Daily had an interesting piece on the power of scripting sales. The article's main focus was on how to disqualify bad prospects quickly but it made me think about the power of Enterprise...

A chance to win a camera by talking about rule bases

Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) Valentin Zacharias is conducting an online survey on the development of rule bases and would really appreciate your opinion! The survey is very short and should only require a few minutes to complete. Any...

Right here, right now with EDM

(Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) Richard Higginbotham wrote a nice little post over on mycustomer.com called "Right here, right now: Event-triggered marketing". The use of enterprise decision management or EDM to deliver on this kind of customer-centric, event-based marketing...

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....

Many business trends lead to EDM

(Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) Mike Schaffner had an interesting post this week on 8 Business Technology Trends. I was struck by the power of Enterprise Decision Management to deliver on the promise of no less than half of...

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...

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...

Using EDM to make your ATMs into a sales channel

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) My friends over at the Analytical Engine had an interesting post this week - ATM Machines As A Sales Channel. Their focus was on pre-approved offers and the possibility of loading them onto the...

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...

Making it actionable with EDM

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) The Performance Guys had a post today titled "But is it "Actionable?" in which they discuss the general trend towards what is called "pervasive Business Intelligence" - that is, BI everywhere and for everyone....

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...

Getting Started with Adaptive Control

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) As I talk to more companies adopting EDM (and more companies delivering it), it is increasingly clear that the role of adaptive control cannot be understated. Simply put, adaptive control is the systematic testing...

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...

A survey for you to take

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) A contact of mine (Nimish Shah) is currently doing a Masters in Computing in the U.K. His research project deals with software tools used to mange business rules and he is looking for some...

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...

The future of BI had better include EDM

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) A number of posts on what the future of BI is likely to bring caught my eye this morning and I thought I should add my thoughts on how I see BI evolving into...

Progressive Financial Services Firms Demonstrate the Value of Predictive Analytics; Decision Services Offer a Path for Others to Follow

Yesterday an article I wrote about Decision Services appeared in the online edition of DM Review’s December 2007 issue ("Decision Services: Pragmatic Real-Time Analytics"). In it, I describe how Decision Services, by providing a framework for managing both business rules and analytics, can pave the way toward adopting predictive analytics.

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...

It’s OK to “ignore the man behind the (predictive analytics) curtain” with EDM

The title of this post includes a quote from the film, “The Wizard of Oz,” when Dorothy’s dog Toto draws back a curtain revealing the “real” wizard (a man) pulling levers and pushing buttons to illuminate a frightening hologram of a smoky and not too nice false wizard. The jig is up, and the wizard is exposed for what he is, just a man. If only the same could be said of the experts driving data mining and predictive analytic software in today’s leading companies.

From business rules to enterprise decisioning

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Ron Ross recently gave his keynote from the Business Rules Forum as a webinar. You can access the recording (free registration required) here. It's a great overview and well worth your time. Visit my...

What's old is new - personalization is back

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) One of the most common reasons for discussing enterprise decision management, and one of the most common ways in which people want to make their systems smarter, is in personalizing them. Making a system...

The need for automated decisioning in healthcare

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Regular readers of the blog will know that I am fairly cynical about the power of electronic health records to be more than a building block for better healthcare. I do not believe that...

The Future of EDM - some notes from Business Rules Forum

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) At the Business Rules Forum last week the organizers assembled an illustrious panel - me, Mark Proctor (Drools, open source business rules), John Elder (well known data mining and analytic expert), Don Ames (CTO...

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...

A report from the 10th Business Rules Forum

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I have just got back from the 10th Annual Business Rules Forum. This is a show I attend regularly but this was the best ever for me. Not only were the logistics great with...

Using business rules to prevent software spoiling

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) One of my favorite sites on software development - Coding Horror - had a great post today on how software spoils. Jeff's focus in his post was on how feature bloat can kill commercial...

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.