business process

Business Rules, Decision Management and ASUG

May 14, 2012

I do a lot of work with companies and organizations adopting business rules and Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) such as BRFplus and NetWeaver BRM. I wanted to share two things (as I head off to Sapphire/ASUG).
First, I often find that when organizations start with business rules they begin by just trying to capture business [...]

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IBM IMPACT Forbes Mini Main Tent

April 30, 2012

The Forbes Mini Main Tent was kicked off by Mike Perlis, CEO of Forbes. Mike focused on how to build a business as strong as the Forbes brand – something with four legs:

Keep print business on track
Build the digital business for growth
Develop brand extensions like conferences and international
Become a great technology company

This last one is [...]

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First Look – Progress Corticon Update

April 24, 2012

Progress Corticon Business Rules Management System (BRMS) v5.2 was delivered in February and focused on key enhancements for natural language support, mobility, and Progress Software integration.  Since the first version nearly a decade ago, Corticon has focused on offering easy-to-use tools to express and manage decision making logic.  The Corticon business rules expression language is [...]

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Decision Management Training in Europe this June

April 11, 2012

I am giving a 2-day workshop on the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics in Europe this June:

Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

Organizations must understand how to identify and classify decisions and how to assess the potential for business rules [...]

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Target variables matter but so do decisions

April 8, 2012

Dean Abbot wrote a great post recently “Why Defining the Target Variable in Predictive Analytics is Critical” in which he referenced the CRISP-DM approach to building predictive analytic models and talked about the importance of target variable selection in building an effective model. The thrust of Dean’s post was the crucial point that because
The target [...]

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Live Event – Sapphire: Smarter, Simpler Applications with Decision Service Management

March 26, 2012

[ May 16, 2012; 12:00 pm to 12:45 pm. ] I am hosting a micro-forum at SAP’s Sapphire/ASUG event this year on “Smarter, Simpler Applications with Decision Service Management” with Carsten Ziegler, author of a great book on SAP’s rule engine BRFplus.
This discussion focuses on decision service management (DSM) – a strategy that helps make business processes and systems more efficient and more agile. Learn how DSM [...]

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Live Event: IBM IMPACT – From Business Rules to a Decision-Centric Organization

March 26, 2012

[ April 30, 2012; 3:45 pm to 5:00 pm. ] Session 2420 at IBM’s IMPACT is titled “From Business Rules to a Decision-Centric Organization” and is being presented jointly by me and a client of mine – Gagan Saxena of Apple Vacations.
Apple Vacations is expanding its B2C business by improving consumer experience, adding intelligent personalization and dynamically creating product packages – a dramatic shift from [...]

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Book Review: Knowledge Automation: How to implement Decision Management in Business Processes

March 13, 2012

Some time ago I got a pre-release copy of Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes, Alan Fish’s new book on the analysis and design techniques of decision management. I was delighted to write a foreword for Alan and with the arrival of a printed copy I wanted to extend this with [...]

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First Look – Bosch Software Innovations inubit Suite 6

February 29, 2012

Bosch Software Innovations (the company that emerged from Bosch’s acquisition of Innovations Software Technology with its Visual Rules BRM suite some years ago) acquired inubit last year and has been working to develop an integrated portfolio. The inubit acquisition came after a number of joint projects where customers used both inubit Suite for BPM and [...]

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Decisions, rulesets and business rules revisited

February 28, 2012

Some time back I wrote Here’s how decisions and rules relate (and how to manage them) and it seemed to me that this could do with being repeated with small updates.
One of the questions I get often is around how decisions and business rules relate. Business rules are, after all, one of the core technologies for [...]

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First Look – Zoot

February 9, 2012

Zoot was founded in 1990 and has been providing hosted decision management solutions since 1992. With a focus on financial services, Zoot’s clients include 3 of the top 5 U.S. banks and they work with clients of all sizes and across all lines of business.  Instant credit decisioning is one of their critical offerings, but [...]

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Workshop: Decisions and Decision Management (Berlin, Germany)

February 8, 2012

[ June 4, 2012 to June 5, 2012. ] I am giving a live 2-day workshop in Berlin, Germany this summer on Decisions and Decision Management.

Organizations must understand how to identify and classify decisions and how to assess the potential for business rules and analytics to support and improve those decisions. They need to understand the available technologies and approaches and the long and [...]

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Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business (Denver)

February 2, 2012

[ March 22, 2012; 8:00 am to 9:00 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.” I will be speaking on BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler, and More Agile Business. The third  is in Denver, CO on March 22nd and the main session starts at 8:30am MT. I will be [...]

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Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business

February 1, 2012

[ March 7, 2012; 6:00 am to 7:00 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.” I will be speaking on BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler, and More Agile Business. The second is in Columbus, OH on March 7th and the main session starts at 8:30am ET. I will be [...]

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Live Event: Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business

January 31, 2012

[ February 15, 2012; 6:30 am to 7:30 am. ] I am speaking at a series of IBM/Information Week events this quarter on “Process Excellence: A Route to Better Business.” I will be speaking on BPM and Decision Management for Smarter, Simpler, and More Agile Business. The first  is in Dallas TX on February 15th and the main session starts at 8:30am CT. I will be [...]

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Some thoughts on decision terminology

January 30, 2012

An interesting thread over on LinkedIn got into a discussion of terminology and I thought I would share my opinion on this here:

Decision Management is an approach for supporting, automating, managing and improving decisions.

Decision Management Systems are systems that automate and manage repeatable decisions.
Decision Support Systems support people manage decisions, both repeatable and one-off.

To build [...]

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Webinar: Breaking Down Integration Silos with Holistic Integration

January 10, 2012

[ February 7, 2012; 11:00 am to 12:00 pm. ] I am giving a webinar with Talend on February 7th at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern on holistic integration – the combination of data management, application integration and business process management for best in class integration.

You can register for the webinar here.

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Opening Keynotes at #BBCCon11

November 1, 2011

Gladys Lam kicked if off by introducing the three chairs of the conference – Kathleen Barret Chair of IIBA who heads up the business analysis tracks, Roger Burlton of BPTrends who heads up the business process tracks and Ron Ross of BRSolutions who heads up the business rules forum tracks. The three chairs then came [...]

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Decision Management Orchestrating Consistent Enterprise-wide Decisions #iod11

October 25, 2011

Erick Brethenoux, Pierre-Henri Clouin and Asit Dan presented on IBM’s Decision Management approach – a nice chance to see both the Business Analytics and WebSphere bits of IBM talking about the same problem. CEOs consistently tell IBM that volatility, uncertainty and complexity are continuing issues. CIOs with a mandate to transform the business are responding [...]

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