Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

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.

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.

How can your decision services get new experiences?

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I recently started reading an interesting new blog - the Decision Strategist - and saw a post titled New Experiences Improve Decision Making. It was an interesting (if short) post that made the critical...

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.

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....

Live from InterACT: How to Calculate Your Decision Yield

(Posted by Guest Blogger, Ian Turvill. Given that I have so far posted nothing, and James has been posting like a madman, he pointed out to me last night that I was lagging dramatically behind. So here's a small step...

Adaptive Control: Decision Analysis

Continuing (and completing) the series on Adaptive Control: Why do you need Adaptive Control? What's a basic technology approach for Adaptive Control? What is Champion/Challenger? What is Experimental Design? How do I do Decision Analysis? - This Post Decision analysis...

InterACT Lisbon - Decision Yield (and an EDM Methodology)

John Sandifer, Joe LaLuzerne and Ian Turvill presented on both the EDM methodology that Fair Isaac has assembled from its experience and the concept of Decision Yield. Joe went first walking through the methodology. He emphasized the need for upfront...

Business Intelligence: What Are You Thinking?

(Posted by Guest Blogger, and BI Skeptic, Ian Turvill.) I'm working in London today, ahead of next week's InterACT Conference in Lisbon, and I've been so busy juggling responsibilities across time zones that, first of all, I deleted my daily...

A Short History of Bad Decisions

(Posted by the most mischievous elf of all, Ian Turvill.) James just informed me that he had DECIDED to make me a full guest author on his blog. Apparently he thinks that I've been well enough behaved that he doesn't...

Book Review: Making Robust Decisions

I just finished reading Dr David Ullman's new book, "Making Robust Decisions". The book is a discussion of the challenges of making complex decisions, especially those with alternatives and uncertainty, and a methodology/software platform for approaching these kinds of decisions....

Live from Teradata (almost) - Improving Customer Experience with EDM

I presented at Teradata Partners today on the topic of using enterprise decision management to improve the customer experience. Essentially I proposed that using technology like business rules and analytics to improve the moments of decision when interacting with a...

Operationalizing Decision Yield - selecting between investments

A number of previous examples introduced Decision Yield, discussed how to develop questions to measure it and then how to operationalize it in a performance auditor by measuring performance over time.Decision Yield can also be used when you have a...

What would YOU call the unit of Decision Yield?

Ian Turvill and I were thinking about Decision Yield and wondering what the (unofficial) "unit" of Decision Yield should be. If you have ideas please send them to me or post them as comments and Ian and I will post...

Operationalizing Decision Yield - measuring performance over time

A number of previous examples introduced Decision Yield, discussed how to develop questions to measure it and then how to operationalize it in a performance audit. If your concern with a decision is to ensure that you maintain or improve...

Operationalizing Decision Yield - Creating and Applying the Decision Performance Audit

Posted by Guest Blogger, Ian Turvill. Yesterday, I described how you could - in theory - develop a set of questions to measure Decision Yield for any decision-making process. Today, I'm going to describe the practical application of those questions...

Here's a quick way to get more automatic loan decisions

Chris Pratt at Financial Insights pointed me at a nice little piece she wrote on Auto Lending - Advice for Lenders Intent on Marketing Automobile Loans Direct-to-Consumers: Don't Tug on Superman's Cape(fee or subscription required). I was struck by a...

Here's a Method Insurers Are Using to Find Millions of Dollars in Avoidable Claims

Posted by Guest Blogger, Ian Turvill. I just wrote an article on the use of Enterprise Decision Management to eliminate losses due to "claims leakage" in insurance. (See "EDM plugs the claims leakage dam".) It appeared in recent online and...

Operationalizing Decision Yield - Defining the questions

Several of our posts (like this overview) have talked about using "Decision Yield" to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making. But how do you about adding some "meat" to this concept? Well to use it you first need to...

Decision Yield - an overview

What is Decision Yield One of the challenges in adopting Enterprise Decision Management is measuring the ROI. Sometimes organizations find that a focus only on costs saved does not yield enough of a return to justify the investments required for...

InterACT - A Summary

Well I think we are done blogging from InterACT so I thought I would write a quick summary. There were a ton of good sessions and lots of interesting discussions so the links below represent just a tiny fraction of...

Improving operational business decisions

A great article on EDM - Increasing Precision, Consistency and Agility of Operational Business Decisions with Enterprise Decision Management - in DM Review this week. Of course, I wrote it so I would say that, wouldn't I? More on InterACT...

Live from InterACT: Decisions On Call: How the Decision Service Provider (DSP) Model Works

Posted by Guest Blogger, Ian Turvill From Fair Isaac's InterACT Conference, San Francisco, CA Well, as promised, I'm plugging the gap on a description of the "Decision Services Provider" model. James just delivered a presentation on this topic at InterACT,...

Live from InterACT: So, What is InterACT Then?

I thought I'd extract a little from the press release that literally just went across the wire: InterACT, the world's leading business forum on business analytics, emerging decision management technologies and their applications, is being held this week in San...

Live from Brainstorm: Making the transition to services engineering

In Brett Champlin's session on the Making the transition to services engineering this morning. A couple of interesting points came up in his discussions of how the processes of delivering services are different from those of delivering products. 90% of...

The Harvard Business Review focuses on Decisions

In this month's (January 2006) Harvard Business Review there are a whole series of articles on decisions and decision-making. You can see the table of contents on the site. I will write something about a number of these articles over...

Real-time or Right-Time

This article on real-time v right-time by Jim Ericson made me think about how this topic plays out in an EDM context. The key issue it seems to me is to establish which moves towards real-time offer real business value...

Using Decision Yield to measure IT superiority

This article by Paul Strassman - Measuring Your I.T. Superiority - was fascinating and made me thing about Decision Yield again. It seems to me that using a measure like Decision Yield to assess, in a multi-faceted way, how you...

Decision Yield as a way to measure ROI

Decision Yield is an evaluation metric that reveals the quality of your current decisions and decision processes, and helps you plan, justify and measure improvements. Why do we need one? Well, what constitutes a good decision? Is it the outcome alone? The cost of executing that decision? The speed? How about the coordination of multiple decisions across different parts of your organization?

IT Priorities, leaders and EDM

This article in Computerworld - Are IT Priorities in the Wrong Place? struck me as I was reviewing my email newsletters today. Several aspects of leaders identified in the article struck me as particularly relevant for those of you wondering if EDM is right for you.