JT on EDM

Ronan Bradley had an interesting article on ebizQ this week – Fertile Ground for ROI in BPM: Three Unlikely Areas. In it he outlined some areas of banking where business process management (BPM) could deliver an ROI.

1. Keeping up with regulations
   In which he points out that “a feature of BPM systems (over custom coded solutions for instance) is that they are configurable through the use of rules”
2. Derivative Trade Cycle
3. Automation of back-office and support desk function
   In which he says that “All of this makes a good potential sweet spot for BPM: complex sets of rules to be followed and automated, and high cost associated with human error”

What struck me about this, and should strike you, is how decision-centric Ronan’s examples are. Regulation is often about what is allowed or not allowed – what decisions are appropriate in other words. Part of the derivative trade cycle is pricing – making an appropriate pricing decision – and part is about eligibility decisions. Automation of the back-office involves automating lots of know-how – the rules behind decisions.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I have a decision-centric point of view but I do find it interesting that three areas of ROI for BPM could have so much to do with decision automation and management.