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Answers to Top BRMS QuestionsNovember 2009
Answers to Top BRMS Questions
Answers to ten frequently asked questions about what business rule management systems are and how they are used
Brett Stineman
Product Marketing, Business Rules Management (WebSphere),
Application and Integration Middleware Software, IBM Software Group
Answers to Top BRMS QuestionsPage 2
Answers to Top BRMS Questions
In the current economy, interest in business rule management is coming from not only IT, but often business managers
eager to respond more quickly to change and improve control over their critical business systems. Those new to business
rules usually have the following questions about the technology, how it applies and what results are like.
• Whatdobusinessrulemanagementsystemsdo?
• What’sthedifferencebetweenaBRMSandarulesengine?
• HowcanItellwhetheraBRMSisagoodfitforanapplication?
• WhataretypicalapplicationsforBRMSinfinancialservices?
• HowshouldwestartusingBRMS?
• WhatskillsareneededforasuccessfulBRMSdeployment?
• Cannon-technicalstaffeasilyworkwiththesystem?
• Whatdoessystemmaintenanceinvolve?
• WhatimprovementscanbeexpectedfromaBRMS?
• HowdoesBRMSfitintostandardITplatformslikeJava,.NETorCOBOL?
Answers to Top BRMS QuestionsPage 3
� What do business rule A Business Rule Management System (BRMS) is an integrated application management systems do? development and execution platform that allows organizations to define,
deploy, monitor and maintain the vast variety of automated decisions used
by operational systems. A BRMS allows decision logic to be extracted and
managed separately from core application code, so that it can be easily
understood, maintained and reused across the organization.
By externalizing conditional rules from application code and process models,
business experts can own their definition, maintenance and governance,
reducing the amount of time and effort required to update automated
decisions in production systems, and increasing the organization’s ability to
respond to changes in the business environment.
A BRMS is designed to both handle decisions that change frequently and
those with high variability from one customer interaction, transaction or
process to the next. Because a BRMS is able to base each decision output
on a variety of input data and multiple interrelated rules, it is able to apply
fine-grained terms, offers, actions or other custom decisions at the individual
level, while also enforcing compliance with internal business policies and
external regulations when required.
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� What’s the difference between a A business rule engine is a component of a BRMS. It allows disparate systems BRMS and a rules engine? to invoke rule execution, and determines the proper “firing” of rules based
on the context of the request. Rule engines can combine data with rules to
determine a result (decision), which is then passed back to the system that
made the request. When rule technology first became commercialized, the
products were focused on the execution engine and the algorithms that rule
engines used to determine which rules are applicable and in which order
they should be evaluated for a given request. Over time, tools and capabilities
were added to allow business user involvement in managing rules, including
the ability to test the business impact of changes to rules. It is with these
improvements that rule engines went from being standalone products to
components within a BRMS.
A BRMS includes, at a minimum, three primary components:
• Arepositoryallowingrulestobeexternalizedfromcoreapplicationcode.Therepositoryallows
decisionlogictobemanagedasanenterpriseasset,makingiteasiertounderstandandupdate
automated,operationaldecisions.Therepositoryalsoenablesdecisionlogictobeconsolidated
fromdisparateapplicationsandinformationsilossothatitcansharedandreusedacrossthe
organization.
• Toolsallowingbothtechnicalandnontechnicalbusinesssystemstakeholderstodefineand
managedecisionlogicintherepository.Thesetoolsgivebusinessfunctionstheabilitytodefine
rulesthatwillguidethebehaviorofoperationalsystems,whilealsofacilitatingcollaboration
betweenbusinessandITonapplicationdevelopmentandmaintenance.
• Aruntimeengineallowingproductionsystemstoaccessandexecutedecisionlogicmanaged
withintheBRMS.Theruleengineexecutesrequestsbasedonspecificbusinesscontext,usinga
combinationofdatainputs,setsofapplicablerules,andexecutionalgorithmsthatdefinehowto
processthedataandrulesinordertoprovideadecisionoutput.
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� How can I tell whether a BRMS is a A key factor is the degree and frequency of change in a particular business good fit for an application? operation, especially when that change affects critical business systems.
Organizations that are looking to accelerate their responsiveness to change
(due to market demands, competitive actions, new business models/strategies
or regulatory requirements) look at using a BRMS in order to enable quick
changes without lengthy IT projects.
Another factor is the level of complexity of the decisions in question. For
applications with large volumes of complex and interrelated business
policies, like those involving risk-based pricing or point-of-sale decisions that
can require hundreds to thousands of business rules, then a BRMS would be
a good fit.
Ownership can also determine fit. Regardless of the frequency of change,
some rules, like those in risk assessment or sales offers, need to be in the
tight control of business users. A BRMS provides a comprehensive yet
user-friendly environment for rule creation, access and maintenance. One
especially important capability of a BRMS for business users is the ability to
define rules in a non-technical (and easily customizable) syntax, but which
still allows for the rules to be deployed into the production environment for
use by operational business systems.
Another consideration is the need to justify actions or decisions. Why was
this loan application rejected? Why was that claim settled for US$550?
A BRMS handles decisions consistently and documents the reasoning
behind them, yet allows permissible situations to be handled according to
their specific needs and context. This yields drastic savings of time, error
and liability, and shifts the focus to exception management. In terms of
auditability, the BRMS repository provides a history of policy changes over
time, so that decisions can be matched to the specific versions of rules
fired at the time the rule engine was invoked by a transactional system or
process—a powerful way to quickly and thoroughly meet any compliance
mandates.
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� What are typical applications for Organizations across all industries and the public sector have been able to BRMS in financial services? improve their operational systems through the adoption and implementation
of a BRMS. Some examples of applications include:
• Banking—loanorigination,cross-selloffermanagement,paymentfeecalculations,creditrisk
decisions
• Capitalmarkets—tradeordervalidation,accounton-boarding,anti-moneylaunderingcompli-
ance,generalledgerdatavalidation
• Healthcareandlifesciences—clinicaldecisionsupport,druginteractionassessment,clinical
trialsdatavalidation
• Insurance—policyunderwriting,claimsprocessing,riskrating,commissioncalculations
• Manufacturing—orderconfigurationvalidation,contract-basedbilling,orderprioritization
• Publicsector—servicesentitlementandbenefitscalculation,taxfraudassessment,homeland
securityscreening
• Retail—onlinerecommendations,pricingandtaxcalculations,loyaltyprogramoffermanagement
• Telecom—offerconfiguration,serviceprioritizationandassignment,cross-networkbilling,
loyaltyprograms
• Travelandtransportation—loyaltyprograms,contract-basedbillingmanagement,ticketpricing
Customer relationship management (CRM) and point-of-sale (POS)
enhancements are in high demand at the moment due to current market
conditions and higher scrutiny over business operations. CRM and POS with
embedded BRMS have been proven to drive higher customer acquisition
rates through better customer experiences and highly personalized offers.
Complex functions, like creating unique bundles based on the best fit
between a customer’s goals, preferences and risk profile are automated in real
time.
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� How should we start using BRMS? While a BRMS can be used across many different functions of an
organization, ideally it is deployed gradually.
First, identify pain points within your organization’s operations and
processes where there are frequent changes to business policies and
decisions, and which require fast implementation. Look at business areas
you are trying to improve with better responsiveness to changing conditions,
fewer manual steps, higher consistency, more granular customization, or with
more transparency and visibility—these are the “low hanging fruit” areas
where BRMS-based automated decisioning will provide dramatic returns.
Also, initially look for applications that have well-known and documented
business policies, because less time will be spent on harvesting and
understanding rules before putting them into the BRMS.
Once the first application has been deployed, the IT and business teams can
leverage best practices for the creation, implementation and maintenance of
new rule-based applications and further expansion can be made with greater
confidence.
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It is critical that both business and IT stakeholders are involved. The � What skills are needed for a business representatives are experts on the functions being automated, and successful BRMS deployment?the IT people help deliver the infrastructure that will support business rule
management.
Typically, a BRMS team is made up of the following roles:
1. BRMS project lead—definesthetasklevelimplementationplan,theresources,thetask
dependenciesandsoforth.Theleadisalsoresponsiblefordefiningtherulegovernanceprocess.
2. Enterprise architect—definestheoverallsolution,includingthetechnicalarchitectureand
theintegrationoftheBRMSintothetechnologystack.Thearchitectalsokeepsaneyeonthe
reusabilityoftheinfrastructureandBRMS-baseddecisionservicesacrossotherproductlines,
divisionsorlinesofbusiness,makingsuretheBRMSinvestmentisfullyleveragedthrough
expansion.
3. Business policy analyst—definestherulestructure,whichistheorganizationofrulesinto
logicalcategoriesandrulesetsthatcorrespondtothewaythatbusinessexpertsthinkabouttheir
policiesandrules.
4. Rule developer—responsibleforimplementingthebusinessrulesapplications.
5. Internal business experts—subjectmatterexpertswhoareinvolvedindefiningthegoalsofa
rule-basedapplicationandmaintainingtherulesfortheirareasofdomainexpertise.
Professional consultants and methodology experts have also proven their
worth many times over by bringing projects and teams together quickly and
successfully. They can be involved lightly or deeply, from blending in with
your teams to helping set up the whole BRMS infrastructure, accelerating
breakeven and ROI.
In some instances, such as legacy modernization projects, people with
specific experience (for example, COBOL programming) may be needed to
harvest rules from existing systems.
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� Can non-technical staff easily work Most often, nontechnical staff should be involved in updating and with the system? maintaining the business rules, so your BRMS evaluation should include a
close look at the non-technical business user interface and tools. The BRMS
should provide specific environments for each type of user, from business
experts to developers to systems administrators.
Some BRMS products have a Web-based interface for business users,
providing graphical and natural-language rule editors. In these cases,
rules are accessed and maintained through this interface, which might also
include the ability to perform testing and simulation, as well as methods for
routing rules to IT or a rule governance team for approval and deployment.
Some BRMS offerings may also include guided authoring and maintenance
of rules in desktop applications such as Microsoft Word or Excel.
� What does system maintenance For maintenance, it is helpful to think of the business rule life cycle in which
involve? rules are defined, validated, tested and then deployed to a production system.
Rules are monitored and updated with versioning controls as they change
to meet new business circumstances, and then are retired when no longer
relevant.
As far as who maintains the various aspects of rule-based applications,
business users usually handle policy management, which consists of the
creation and/or update of business rules. IT typically manages the BRMS
platform itself, such as adding or phasing out decision attributes, updating
rule vocabulary or reorganizing rule hierarchies. IT also makes sure that
technology integration testing is done alongside the business outcome
testing. Also, there are system administrators who take care of deploying
business rule applications and SOA-based decision services, as well as
monitoring the rule execution throughout all systems.
Again, it is vital that a BRMS address the specific maintenance needs of each
stakeholder in the rule life cycle with tools and environments designed for
both non-technical and technical participants.
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� What improvements can be expected The most common improvement is decreasing time to market for products, from a BRMS? services and business policy implementation. Companies often experience
significant speed gains, like the threefold improvement achieved by one top-
five diversified financial company in the United States. Updates to product
or eligibility guidelines can be rolled out in a matter of days or hours when
using a BRMS, instead of weeks or even months without.
Streamlined operations are a common result, including cost reductions,
faster processing and better customer service. We hear a lot about shifting
customer service organizations from a transaction orientation to being
focused on nurturing customer relationships. Of course, there will always
be exceptional situations that require manual intervention, but a BRMS
enables many customers to dramatically increase the number and frequency
of automated decisions in their operational systems.
You can also expect higher quality decisioning, applied quickly and
consistently. Some decisions among IBM WebSphere ILOG BRMS customers
use over 3,000 rules, delivering a level of granularity that would be
impossible with traditional embedded decision logic.
Example cases include a large health insurer that cut its claims processing
time by over 30 percent, while also automating about 80 percent of the
decisions that were previously handled manually for dramatic improvements
to operations. Another company achieved a fivefold reduction in staff days by
implementing policy changes with WebSphere ILOG BRMS.
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� How does BRMS fit into standard IT The ease of integration depends on the BRMS. When a BRMS is natively
platforms like Java, .NET or COBOL? built in the platform of your business, the design, maintenance and execution
of BRMS applications are simplified.
From a developer standpoint, the BRMS needs to fit within the most
frequently used development environment. For Java stacks, for example,
the BRMS development tooling should fit within the Eclipse integrated
development environment (IDE). For .NET development, it needs to run
within Microsoft Visual Studio. The BRMS should also support a variety
of operating systems, application servers, databases and other platform
infrastructure.
COBOL-based applications are an interesting case. So much is said about
legacy migration, but high investment and reliance in COBOL-based systems
make it difficult to consider wholesale replacement for many organizations.
For these instances, a BRMS system with COBOL code generation and
deployment capabilities can resolve both the need for improved system
agility and the protection of previous investments. This approach enables
externalization of business logic from legacy COBOL code for better and
faster change management, while ensuring the continued business operation
of core business systems.
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Learn More
For more information, please visit the following IBM WebSphere ILOG BRMS
sites:
• BRMShomepageonibm.com<http://www-01.ibm.com/software/websphere/prod-ucts/business-rule-management/>
• BRMShomepageonIBMdeveloperWorks<http://ltsbwass001.sby.ibm.com/cms/developerworks/websphere/zones/brms/index.html>
• Emailinquiriestoilogcc@us.ibm.com
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