This report on ebizq started me thinking on the challenges for the modern day IT Enabled Enterprise.Some of these are:

1. Enterprises need to extract as much as they can from their existing IT investments.
2. Business Policy & decisioning MUST be IT enabled for business agility & responsiveness
3. Decision makers MUST control and have visibility into the IT System’s decision making capabilities
4. Business knowledge MUST be IT enabled for
   • Standardized deployment across the enterprise
   • Preserve the Business Knowledge within the company

Business Rules Management Technologies are the Enablers for achieving these Enterprise Goals.

BRMS (Business Rules Management Systems) externalize Business Rules from the application and allow for a Enterprise Rules Repository.
So, when the Business requirements change, the Business Rules change. The result, the lifetime of your Business application is enhanced without the need to rewrite the whole application

So much of time is spent simply to communicate the correct requirements to the IT Team, and to correct and verify application behavior. Like the old Project Management saying goes, “Involvement is the Key to excellence”, BRMS allows the Business to get involved with their IT and directly control the system change for the expected behavior

BRMS provide direct visibility into the “Rules of the Business” driving an Enterprise application. For example, Product Managers can directly view the rate sheets that are used by a Mortgage Loan Origination System.

When changes are required, BRMS technology offers Business friendly tools to directly approve Business Rule change. For example, using QuickRules.NET, the analysts can directly export their Rate sheets into the Enterprise System without it ever going through a Developer’s hands. This completely eliminates manual errors and improves Business Productivity and efficiency.

Now of course, there is this issue of Business Rule Reuse. Businesses require that certain rules across across different Business Divisions. Or that some Business Rules be redeployed with some minor modifications across different geographies. This can be achieved only with the adoption of Business Rules by the Enterprise.

Finally, there is this issue of Knowledge drain. Business Rules enable a company to capture explicit and tacit knowledge in an form that is both IT enabled, and also Business Friendly.The implications here are that the Enterprise stands to can insulate itself from the risks of it’s critical Employees leaving the organization.

Business Rules are here to stay. The Agile Enterprise is a Profitable Enterprise !