The Decision Management Solutions webinar series

Tomorrow, September 23, 10 AM PT, will start the Decision Management Solutions webinar series with an introduction to the 5 core principles of decision management, by James Taylor. This session will outline 5 core principles of decision management in a non-technical fashion. Suitable for those new to Decision Management as well as those looking for ways to describe Decision Management to non-technical colleagues.

Next week, September 30, Eric Siegel, president of Prediction Impact Inc., will present on optimizing business decisions, how best to apply predictive analytics. Harnessing value with predictive analytics depends on some careful choices: What kind of customer behavior you predict and which operational decisions you automate with it. This webinar will guide you in making these choices, and cover a healthy dose of the core technology along the way.

There are 11 webinars in the series and you can use the registration page for the series to register for several at once. In the registration page, you can also see the details on each webinar.

The Decision Management Solutions webinar series is organized by James Taylor through his company, Decision Management Solutions, and it is a great opportunity to learn more on the subject with leading experts as James Taylor, Eric Siegel, Barbra von Halle, Larry Goldberg and many others.

For those interested in Decision Management, James Taylor and Neil Raden wrote an excellent book: Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions.

Business Rules Forum and EDM Summit

The 11th International Business Rules Forum happened last week (October 26-30, 2008 - Buena Vista Palace, Orlando, FL) and with The first annual Enterprise Decision Management Summit co-located.


Here are some links with news, posts and articles about the Business Rules Forum and EDM Summit (James Taylor, Paul Vincent, and Sandy Kemsley did a nice coverage):

- Smart Enough Systems - James Taylor
. EDM Summit - some closing thoughts
. EDM Summit - Emerging Trends Panel
. EDM Summit - Day 3 Begins
. Predictive Analytics Produces Business Rules That Deliver
. Rules in tables, spreadsheets and diagrams
. EDM Summit - Day 2 Begins
. Rules and Process Management for Insurers
. Hotwire.com Revenue Management
. Live from the EDM Summit - From Here to Agility

- Tibco - Complex Event Processing Blog - Paul Vincent
. Business Rules Forum 2008: on the Web, & Emerging Trends
. RuleML 2008: PRR and rules vs decisions
. Business Rules Forum 2008: Upper Ontology for Events, Processes, States, Rules
. Business Rules Forum 2008: Nearly CEP
. Business Rules Forum 2008: The Borat Marketing Award
. Business Rules Forum 2008: And one last thing…
. Business Rules Forum 2008: The BRE Vendor Panel
. Business Rules Forum 2008: Business Decisions from Real Time Events
. Business Rules Forum 2008: Agile, Optimization

- Column 2 - Sandy Kemsley
. Business Rules Forum: Kevin Chase of ING
. Business Rules Forum: Kathy Long on Process and Rules
. Business Rules Forum: Pedram Abrari on MDA, SOA and rules
. Business Rules Forum: Gladys Lam on Rule Harvesting
. Business Rules Forum: James Taylor and Neil Raden keynote
. Business Rules Forum: Vendor Panel
. Business Rules Forum: Mixing Rules and Process
. Business Rules Forum: Ron Ross keynote

- B-Eye-Network - Blog: William McKnight
. Business Rules Forum - Disney and their Data
. Business Rules Forum - Beyond Subject Matter Expertise

The Semantic Web and Web 3.0

Tomorrow, September 25th at 3PM ET, the DM Review,in its initiative called DM Radio, will provide a live web broadcast called The Semantic Web and Web 3.0, hosted by Eric Kavanagh with Jim Ericson.

Accordind DM Review: "You've likely heard of the Semantic Web, which some pundits say will usher in Web 3.0. More than just a new spin on an old domain, the Semantic Web promises to essentially re-architect Internet content in a way that facilitates a new level of information integration. What will that mean for the burgeoning industry of business intelligence and data warehousing? How will this Semantic Web affect business strategy, decision-making; and what impact will it have on the lucrative enterprise software market for information management?

Tune into this episode of DM Radio to hear the experts explain what's happening and why. We'll talk to Hired Brains co-founder Neil Raden, who will outline the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which is built on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a relatively new W3C standard for for describing Web resources, such as the title, author, modification date, content, and copyright information of a Web page. We'll also hear from Jason Hekl of InQuira, and a special guest.

Attendees will learn:
- Why the Semantic Web changes the rules of information management
- What impact the Semantic Web could have on enterprise architectures
- How organizations can transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0
- How relational information models will be affected
- What a declarative ontology is all about."

In the DM Review website, you can register for this live Web broadcast.

You also can check out the DM Radio archives to hear previous programs with a variety of other issues.

I think this episode of DM Radio will be very nice, the subject is interesting; and also because I like so much to read the Neil Raden's blog in Intelligent Enterprise, he is an experienced professional, has good ideas and an interesting point of view about the business and technologic issues. He is co-founder of Smart (enough) Systems, a company specialized in Enterprise Decision Management.

About problems and resistance to adopt EDM

This week, James Taylor (Smart Enough Systems) wrote in his blog, a very nice post called The empire has less staff,about problems and resistance to adopt Enterprise Decision Management(EDM). He starts the post mentioning a comment (also interesting) that one reader did in his previous post: Here’s how to get started with decision management, and develops his thoughts about this issue.

He finished the post with a good statement:
"EDM is a great approach but it needs the same kind of organizational readiness and flexibility that any new development approach does and it can be limited by the politics and performance measurement systems that are in place.You can, and should, “think global, act local” and get started with a focused EDM project because success will make the necessary organizational change easier."

Very nice post about the founded barriers to implement EDM in the companies.

For those interested in Enterprise Decision Management, James Taylor and Neil Raden, his partner on Smart Enough Systems, wrote an exceptional book:

Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions

Requirements Gathering: Don't Be Naïve

Today, Neil Raden (Smart Enough Systems) wrote an interesting article in Intelligent Enterprise, called Requirements Gathering: Don't Be Naïve.

In the article, he talks about what he thinks be wrong in the issue of business requirements gathering.

He has an interesting point of view and made me think about this issue. I agree with him when he said: "use experienced people who already have a good handle on what organizations like yours have done successfully", but I also know that is increasingly more difficult to find experienced people with those skills.

I think nowadays one of the most important challenges in BI projects is to find experienced people that have good skills to do the important work of business requirements gathering.

What's the Difference between Decision Management and Performance Management?

Yesterday, Neil Raden (Smart Enough Systems) wrote a post in his blog on Intelligent Enterprise, about the "discussion" between Gary Cokins and James Taylor, to define the terms Decision Management and Performance Management.

In my opinion, there are three different opinions, by three great expert professionals that don't need presentation, showing for us how is difficult to define the roles and the boundaries of incipient concepts.

I agree with Neil Raden when he said, ending the article: "EDM is operational at the detail level of the business. Performance Management is a collection of disciplines for executing strategy and continuously monitoring the results. There should be a nice synergy between them, but either one could do fine without the other."

For those interested in Enterprise Decision Management, James Taylor and Neil Raden wrote an exceptional book:

Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions