From the monthly archives:

November 2008

New blog location

November 29, 2008

Well as you might have noticed I have a new blog location – jtonedm.com (JT on EDM). The blog on smartenoughsystems.com/wp is now retired and all the posts will redirect here.
If you have a link to the smartenoughsystems blog please move it – just replace smartenoughsystems.com/wp with jtonedm.com (note the dropping of the /wp).

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More analytics in the cloud

November 25, 2008

Having posted about Zementis – a company that allows you to deploy analytic models into the amazon coud – before I now see that Mathematica is getting in on this whole cloud thing. Personally I think that analytics and decisioning are ideal for operating in the cloud. Analytics take a lot of computing power when [...]

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1:1 Marketing works for the NHL

November 25, 2008

Interesting article on how the NHL used the power of personalization and targeting (or extreme personalization) to improve results. It does not talk about how they do this but clearly they have made things like the front cover choice for their catalog and key elements of their web presence decisions so they can make [...]

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Results of a survey on verification of business rules

November 24, 2008

Some time ago I linked to an interesting looking research project and the results are now available – Development and Verification of Rule Based Systems – a Survey of Developers. Valentin did a nice job summarizing the results, comparing them to a previous study of more academic projects and drawing some distinctions between academic and [...]

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The small impact of business rules on the big players

November 21, 2008

Jim Sinur brought up an interesting point today when he blogged IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP have bought Business Rule Technology. What’s up with that? The big players seem to be toying with business rules – there’s plenty of activity but not much understanding or commitment.

SAP bought Yasu but until recently did not show much [...]

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In the coming recession put your customers first with decision management

November 20, 2008

I was pointed to a post today on the topic of customer service (Another Day, Another Customer-Service Nightmare on the EconoWhiner) that pointed out that companies
need to provide quality service and quality customer service if they’re going to survive an economic downturn as severe as this one?
Now I am not going to pick on AOL [...]

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First Look – Predigy

November 20, 2008

Predigy is a technology originally developed by Intelligent Results (founded in 2001) that was acquired by First Data in 2007. It was originally focused on the military (particularly on the analysis of unstructured data) but has subsequently moved into commercial applications. Predigy is now a decisioning platform with some applications in banking, collections, telecommunications and [...]

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On Best Buy’s success and being decision-centric

November 19, 2008

Last week I saw a post comparing Best Buy and Circuit City – one thriving and one going into bankruptcy – and it made me think about the role of decision management in Best Buy’s success. I have head Best Buy present various times an a number of elements of their successful customer-centricity strategy are [...]

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Using decision management to prepare for an unknown future

November 18, 2008

Recently, Ronan Bradley discussed the challenges for banks in the area of compliance, given the rapidly changing environment. He made three specific points with which I agree and that I think shows the value of a decision management approach for banks and others facing an unknown but difficult regulatory environment in the next year or [...]

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First Look – Savvion Business Rules Management System

November 17, 2008

Savvion today announced it has released a Business Rules Management System. Now this may suprise you – after all Savvion is a Business Process Management vendor – but I think it is a sign of the growing recognition that decision management is important to business process management. Before this announcement Savvion was using Yasu’s product [...]

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First Look – Be Informed

November 16, 2008

Last week I got a chance to catch up with a Dutch company in the decision management space – Be Informed. Be Informed arose out of work within a big systems integrator building complex processes, especially in government, that was unable to find good tools for case management and complex knowledge-based processes. The company [...]

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Decision Management and fixing healthcare

November 14, 2008

I think alot about how decision management can be used to improve healthcare. Neil Versel is one of the bloggers I read in this space and he had a post this week called “A modest proposal” in which he repeated some comments about the failure of the medical profession to use Clinical Decision Support systems [...]

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First Look – Savvion 7.5

November 11, 2008

I got a quick overview of Savvion 7.5 this week. Savvion is one of the pure-play BPM vendors with customers in Telecommunications, Media, Financial Services and Manufacturing (along with some retail and healthcare). They released version 7.5 at the end of September.
Savvion has recently been investing in domain-specific vertical solutions built on their horizontal [...]

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Using Decision Management for Customer Retention

November 10, 2008

CRM Daily had a nice little article on Customer Retention that reminded me of the example I often use for how the elements of decision management contribute to more effective customer retention decisions. Large organizations spend vast sums on retention – one bank, for instance, spends $1Bn annually – and retention is a perfect candidate [...]

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Using decision management to surive an IT squeeze

November 7, 2008

An old friend sent me a link to an article on the Financial Times – How to survive an IT squeeze. I was struck by a couple of quotes:
Scarcity of capital will generate increased competition for the cash that is available. Consequently it will be even more important that businesses do everything they can to [...]

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Treat your customers as people by managing customer treatment decisions

November 7, 2008

Great comment from monkchips on twitter today:
the key to customer relationship management is to treat your clients as people rather than accounts. everything else follows from that.
Of course the challenge is how to make sure that all the people who work for you and all the systems your clients use do this. While you can [...]

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On the importance of holistic decision making

November 6, 2008

I was chatting with someone the other day who shared a story of a European health insurer.   Their decision-making in claims looked only at the validity of the claim and nothing else. This of course created a situation where good (and very profitable customers) could be treated correctly but ineffectively – such as one [...]

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The Technology of Decision Management

November 4, 2008

I just wrote an article for BPM Institute on The Technology of Business (Enterprise) Decision Management. It’s short but, if you want more, Neil and I are working on a multi-vendor study of the technology for decision management that we should have available really soon…

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First Look – Bosch Acquires Innovations Software Technology

November 4, 2008

David Kim, MD of the Americas for Innovations Software Technology briefed me recently on the Bosch acquisition of the company. Innovations Software Technology was founded in 1997 and had grown to about 120 employees by September when it was acquired by the Bosch group.
Bosch is a $63B company (61% automotive, 13 %industrial, 26% consumer [...]

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EDM Summit – some closing thoughts

November 3, 2008

I thought I would wrap up with some closing thoughts for the week:

Lots of discussion of the importance of data – understanding it, integrating it, cleaning it and making the same data available to those reporting on it, doing analytics with it and running operational systems.
Interesting times in the rules market with recent acquisitions by [...]

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