Smart (Enough) Systems

James and Neil presenting at Intalio’s user conference

May 20, 2008

The folks at Intalio invited us to speak at their user conference June 17-18. We are presenting on Applying Decision Management to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile on the first day. We would love to see you there so drop by and say hello if you are attending. Also we have a discount [...]

Read the full article →

Your chance to blog and win!

May 8, 2008

Tony, over on the Decision Support Analytics blog, is running an interesting competition and the prizes have just improved – Neil and I offered a signed copy of our book to add to his list of potential prizes. You can check out the details here. I plan to write a couple of entries soon and [...]

Read the full article →

Gartner, BI and Smart (Enough) Systems

May 5, 2008

Two of Gartner’s smartest analysts – Kurt Schlegel and Gareth Herschel (shameless plug) – just published an excellent little paper called “Business Intelligence and Decision Making“. This paper was one of Gartner’s Strategic Planning Assumptions and the (free) summary says:
A subset of organizations that seek a competitive advantage will evolve the primary role of their [...]

Read the full article →

Here’s how to use EDM to support Earth Day

April 22, 2008

Well today was Earth Day – you knew that, I hope. I knew because last week I was at John Muir’s house with a wonderful group of 4th/5th graders doing a simulation of his period. So, in the spirit of Earth Day, how are Enterprise Decision Management and Smart (enough) Systems “green”?

If your marketing systems [...]

Read the full article →

Howard Dresner recommends the book

April 10, 2008

Howard Dresner, now independent but previously of Gartner and Hyperion and one of the leading voices in the Business Intelligence and Performance Management space listed Some good sources and included our book and our blogs (this one and Neil’s on Intelligent Enterprise). Thanks Howard.

Read the full article →

iRobot – Elite CRM, stupid returns system

April 2, 2008

This review in destinationCRM of iRobot’s automated customer service system – in which the system was given a 2008 Elite award – reminded me of an experience with a different iRobot system. iRobot’s return system is less award-worthy. Let me take you back a few months…
At Christmas I took advantage of an iRobot offer to [...]

Read the full article →

Gartner BI – wish I was there

April 1, 2008

I was checking out Doug Henschen’s interview of Kurt Schlegel – Gartner BI analyst – and page 2 was particularly excellent. Kurt clearly understands the value of being decision-centric and the need for BI to broaden to include rules and predictive analytics. And he plugged the book too, which is always appreciated. It’s a pity [...]

Read the full article →

Want EDM Success? How about a recipe for that?

March 28, 2008

Mike Kavitz had a great post on his blog today Want SOA Success? Try this Recipe. I really liked the article, not least because it was clearly based on hard-won experience on Mike’s part. Reading it I saw how similar an Enterprise Decision Management or EDM success recipe would be.

Research the living daylights out [...]

Read the full article →

What IS a smart (enough) system anyway?

March 27, 2008

I am often asked the question in the title – what is a smart (enough) system? Here’s the list we use when we talk about it:

Operational
While one can make systems of all kinds “smarter” we are talking about making operational, transactional, high-volume, typically customer facing applications smart enough to be useful.
Real-Time
As a result we talk [...]

Read the full article →

Live from DAMA – Re-Thinking Search in a Web 2.0 World

March 19, 2008

First session today is Jayne Dutra of NASA on Re-Thinking Search in a Web 2.0 World. Jayne started by going over some of the basics, talking about web 1.0 with portals/websites/search moving to Web 2.0 with blogs, wikis, RSS, social networking and community portals. She used a Mills Davis slide that talked about web 3.0 [...]

Read the full article →

Live from DAMA – Business rules, decision management and smarter systems

March 18, 2008

This was my session. You can get a PDF of my slides or View them on SlideShare.
Previous in series Next in series

Read the full article →

Has Business Intelligence Outlived its Usefulness?

March 3, 2008

I saw a post with the title “Has Business Intelligence Outlived its Usefulness?” on Colin White’s blog and my first reaction was one of shock. On reading it, however, I see that Colin is taking aim not at BI in general but at the use of the phrase – a narrower and easier target!
I do [...]

Read the full article →

Podcast featuring James, Neil and Smart (enough) Systems

February 28, 2008

CS TechCast is a podcast series released every Monday hosted by Eric Johnson, Eric Beehler, and Josh Jones. Each week they discuss the latest Information Technology trends and news, and bring you interviews with key members of the IT Community. This week they included a nice little interview with me and Neil about Smart (enough) [...]

Read the full article →

Using EDM for ‘Long Tail’ Algorithms

February 19, 2008

I saw this post recently – “The fat tail will be human, the medium tail social, the long tail algorithmic” – in which Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) says “The short head will be human, the fat middle social and the long tail algorithmic”. This made me think some more about the role [...]

Read the full article →

Today’s teenagers, tomorrow’s workforce

January 31, 2008

Two posts caught my eye last night – 5 questions a teenage kid might ask if starting work at your business today by Mike Sarokin on the EDS blog and Vinnie Mirchandarni’s follow up here. As the parent of a college student myself I had to chime in.
It seems to me that not only [...]

Read the full article →

A chance to get the book (and see me) at ILOG’s Dialog 08

January 28, 2008

Next month (February 24th – 26th), I am going to be attending ILOG’s user conference:

I will be introducing and acting as host for a couple of sessions on best practices and giving a lunch and learn on Tuesday. I will be there the whole time, blogging from the BRMS track so look me up if [...]

Read the full article →

Book review for the British Computer Society

January 21, 2008

Ian Graham of Trireme reviewed Smart (enough) Systems for the British Computer Society’s magazine IT Now. You can read the online review here.

Read the full article →

Book excerpted in BI Journal

January 21, 2008

For those of you who get TDWI‘s BI Journal, the most recent issue has an except from Smart (Enough) Systems titled “Inside Enterprise Decision Management“

Read the full article →

What does “Enterprise” mean in Enterprise Decision Management?

January 8, 2008

One of the biggest sources of confusion with Enterprise Decision Management or EDM is the worry that it requires enterprise-wide adoption to be valuable. That, unless a huge project is undertaken to adopt the technologies and approaches required, no value will be gained. “Enterprise” is, after all, one of the most overused term in the [...]

Read the full article →

Book to be translated into Russian!

December 17, 2007

Just heard that Symbol-Plus Publishing of St. Petersburg will be translating Smart (Enough) Systems into Russian. Interesting…

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →