Enterprise Architects partner with the business to help them take full advantage of the technologies that their organizations are using, or should be using, like advanced analytics and AI. They map technologies to the business requirements, and ensure that technologies are applied cost-effectively and for maximum business benefit. But describing the benefits of these new capabilities in business terms is often a challenge and a key hurdle. Furthermore, traditional SOA (service oriented architecture) does not have obvious “hooks” for these technologies.
To successfully enable AI and advanced analytics in their organizations, Enterprise Architects are adopting decision management to build the business case and deploy these technologies with Decision Services.
Decisions are the language of the business. Business SMEs participate more fully in decision modeling than traditional requirements approaches, and take ownership to drive the requirements even further. Decision modeling clarifies the real requirements for data and logic in a decision, so much so that SMEs typically learn something from building the model. Some have gone on to use it in their own training programs. Decision modeling is collaborative. It clarifies the business goals and measures, and the technology enablers, establishing a robust business case.
Decision Management makes it straightforward to implement AI and advanced analytics through Decision Services. Decision Services are a key technical deliverable from applying the decision management approach. While a Business Rules Management System (BRMS) is the most typical way to build a Decision Service, using one is not a requirement.
Decision Service – A service that answers a business question for other services.
However, because this is a business decision, and business partnership and ownership are key success factors, the “business decision” here must allow the business to verify exactly what is going on inside the service. In general this means that coding approaches cannot be used as most business people don’t want to read, let along write, them. Avoiding coding by using a BRMS also enables speed and agility, as business users can update their business rules directly without IT.
Decision management collaboratively defines the business case and ensures agile deployment with sustained business users engagement. For capabilities like advanced analytics and AI that are rapidly becoming a competitive imperative, Enterprise Architects are leading their organization with the decision management framework for applying analytics and AI into operational systems.
For a detailed description of the best practices and technologies for building Decision Management Systems, read our free report, Decision Management Systems Platform Technologies Report.