James Taylor's Decision Management

I saw this post on Nevant's blog about an item on TechReplublic entitled "Master the mundane with SOPs that fit". I found this fascinating as one of the uses of business rules is to automate the mundane. As the author says

"the best run organizations are those which have mastered the mundane"

SOPs are "written instructions to achieve uniformity of the performance of a specific function" and when it comes to the mundane in the business, not just the mundane in the IT department, using business rules to achieve this uniformity can be very effective. Not only can they be automated in a way that achieves mastery by creating SOPs and sticking to them, they can be easily and effectively changed by business owners to ensure that they are constantly evolving to be more effective. Thus automating the rules for paying claims ensures that all claims are handled quickly and consistently while empowering those who understand the claims process to change those rules when legal changes, policy changes or business changes demand it. As I said once before, if you need a policy manual, do you need a rules engine too?

It also occurs to me that business rules are a great way to implement a best practice approach while still considering the individual quirks of your environment. In fact using business rules to enhance the standard approaches embedded in your enterprise applications can be very effective.

Technorati Tags: Business Rules, organizational performance