Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

Live from InterACT - Mark Greene's Keynote

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) As Mark is the CEO of Fair Isaac I thought I would blog this one over on this blog rather than on the Smart (enough) Systems blog where the rest are going to be....

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...

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.

Decisions, information, decoupling and automation

Andrew McAfee posted The Great Decoupling last week and Ross Mayfield followed up with Decoupling Decision Rights and Decentralization. These posts discussed the decoupling of information from decision-making. They assert that the decreasing cost of getting information around an organization...

Book Review: IT Risk

I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage by George Westerman and Richard Hunter. The book approaches IT risk not as a technical issue but as a business and management...

Live from EBRC - AML Business Rules

Blogging live again from EBRC - this session is on AML Business Rules at PostFinance (part of Swiss Post) by Oliver K. Burnand who heads up compliance for PostFinance, the FSI within Swiss Post. Provides transaction processing as a public...

Using decisioning to build the healthcare payment of the future

I saw this report from McKinsey - Overhauling the US health care payment system (subscription required). Their summary has three key points: The hugely inefficient US health care payment system is ripe for transformation. The inefficiency is concentrated in the...

Using EDM to achieve Straight Through Processing in Insurance

A colleague passed me this link - Straight Shooter on National Underwriter. Robert Regis Hyle does a nice job discussing the idea of having policies pass through the underwriting process untouched by human hands - Straight Through Processing. He talks...

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...

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...

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...

Using EDM to succeed in automating the life underwriting process

I saw this article in Insurance Networking News today - Survey: Carriers Struggle to Automate Underwriting Process about a Tower Group survey. What struck me is how relevant enterprise decision management or EDM is to solving some of the challenges...

Book Review: The Joy of SOX

How can you resist a book with a title like "The Joy of SOX"? To give you some idea of the content it is sub-titled "Why Sarbanes-Oxley and Service-Oriented Architecture may be the best thing that ever happened to you"...

Eligibility management - a perfect opportunity for business rules

One of the most common uses of decisioning technology in Government is the management of eligibility. As you will see this is mostly a rules and compliance issue, though there may be a role for analytics in deriving some of...

Self-regulation and decision automation

I got an interesting comment the other day from Craig Cameron about the potential for self regulation - the fact that some businesses want not only to comply with government enforced regulations but also to "comply" with the wishes of...

Identity Theft - some stats and suggestions

I got a comment from the folks at Metrics 2.0 asking about stats on Identify Theft (something about which I have blogged a couple of times - here and here). I asked around and got some information. According to Javelin...

Compliance, business process and business rules

I wrote a short article on the use of Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) and Business Rules Management Systems in compliance over at BPM Institute recently. There's more on this blog on compliance and Business Process Management as well as...

The future of Insurance needs EDM

I saw this report on the IBM site the other day - Insurance 2020: Innovating beyond old models. It had some interesting predictions in it, especially since it took a longer time horizon than is typical in these kinds of...

Eliminating bias with decision automation

The reporting of this study Study: Blacks, Latinos pay more for mortgages was distressing for me and others in this industry. After all the introduction of credit scoring back in the 50s was in part designed to eliminate bias by...

What are the legal issues in using predictive analytics?

Many countries and industries have legal restrictions on data use, sharing and privacy. Some also have restrictions on how to segment customers for marketing treatment to prevent preferential treatment or discrimination. US lenders, for example, cannot use race or gender...

CIO Insight and some thoughts from yours truly

I was "quoted" in a recent CIO Insight column CIO Insight: Techtalk: Fair Isaac Corp.'s James Taylor on automating the decision process. The article set was around new rules for information management and discussed some of the issues around data...

Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) and EDM

Aite Group recently published a new report - Anti-Money Laundering Technology: Automating the Haystack Search. Sadly I don't have access to the report but I wanted to take a moment to discuss AML. In the interests of full disclosure I...

No wonder insurance is so expensive....

ake I saw this today - Ark. Reminds Insurers of Anti-Money Laundering Responsibilities. The article had a key piece about what insurance companies should do: At a minimum, insurance companies subject to the rule requiring an anti-money laundering program must...

If only they had used rules...

Ian Graham (of Trireme) pointed out a great example of a government project that should have used business rules - Jobcentre Plus misses deadline. This story, courtesy of the British Government, tells of a simple increase in an allowance that...

Enterprise Decision Management and the Payments process

Interesting article on the payments process in Bank Technology News - Collapsing the Payments Process for an Enterprise-Wide View of the Business. One of the key approaches identified is "Process automation and support driven by a dynamic rules engine", with...

Getting benefits from compliance

Laurie Sullivan wrote on TechWeb that Compliance Spending To Reach $28 Billion By 2007. She noted that: Companies that treat compliance as more than just a necessary budget item see unexpected benefits. Survey respondents ranked the top business benefits of...

If you need a policy manual, do you need a rules engine too?

Interesting article on policy manuals by Tim Bryce on ITToolbox - Why we need policy manuals. I saw this thanks to Lucas Rodríguez Cervera who commented about it on his blog. The original post makes the point that implementation is...

EDM and healthcare claims

This article on b-eye network caught my eye this morning - Using Healthcare Business Intelligence to Improve Revenue Management. In it Scott Wanless makes some great points about why the healthcare claims arena is a mess. Among the issues he...

CIO Insight and EDM

Saw this interesting piece in CIO Insight - Top 30 Trends - and a number of them caught my eye. Trend 2: Necessity Is the Mother of Velocity talks about teal-time decisions and change and improved agility for business processes....

If an automated compliance framework is the problem, business rules may be the solution

Interesting post by Mitch Irsfeld in the CMP compliance blog. He discusses the need for sustainable compliance: Sustainable compliance can mean the ability of a tool to easily integrate changing requirements and add new policies and controls processes, and add...

Compliance, OMG and business rules

Attending an OMG event today I participated in some sessions on Compliance. OMG is getting more active in compliance, both with the OMG Regulatory Compliance Alliance and with a Domain SIG. Lots of interesting discussions about how to turn regulations...

Automating compliance with business rules

Interesting entry on SOX compliance in the "compliance pipeline" today - Prediction No. 2: Manpower Reductions. In it Mitch says: That can only mean one thing: Companies are substituting sustainable automated processes for manual approaches to compliance management. And the...

Still little technology use in Risk Management

Technology is clearly underused in risk management, based on this recent survey.

Real-time risk management

EDM brings real-time risk management to the enterprise.

Sarbannes-Oxley Ideas and Suggestions

Recent surveys by AMR on SOX compliance as we enter year 2 put the focus on automation. Business rules is a key technology in this approach.

Basel IT Cost Higher Than Projected - Computerworld

BASEL II is more expensive than people think, becuase they are not adopting the right technology.

Automating Compliance Is Priority in Year Two of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

Executives are starting to realize that SOx compliance is best automated. Time for business rules methinks.

Compliance and Integration - Is Business Agility an Oxymoron? - ebizQ

Companies must increase company-wide agility while facing increasing compliance. This article examines the dichotomy of being flexible while working within regulatory compliance.