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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



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?


� 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.


� 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.


� 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.


� 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.


� 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.


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.


� 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.


� 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.


� 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.


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>

• [email protected]

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