Decision Management Systems: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics

"A very rich book sprinkled with real-life examples as well as battle-tested advice.”—Pierre Haren, VP ILOG, IBM"James does a thorough job of explaining Decision Management Systems as enablersof a formidable business transformation.”—Deepak Advani, Vice President, Business Analytics Products and SPSS, IBMBuild Systems That Work Actively to Help You Maximize Growth and ProfitsMost companies rely on operational systems that are largely passive. But what if you could make your systems active participants in optimizing your business? What if your systems could act intelligently on their own? Learn, not just report? Empower users to take action instead of simply escalating their problems? Evolve without massive IT investments?Decision Management Systems can do all that and more. In this book, the field’s leading expert demonstrates how to use them to drive unprecedented levels of business value. James Taylor shows how to integrate operational and analytic technologies to create systems that are more agile, more analytic, and more adaptive. Through actual case studies, you’ll learn how to combine technologies such as predictive analytics, optimization, and business rules—improving customer service, reducing fraud, managing risk, increasing agility, and driving growth.Both a practical how-to guide and a framework for planning, Decision Management Systems focuses on mainstream business challenges.Coverage includesUnderstanding how Decision Management Systems can transform your businessPlanning your systems “with the decision in mind”Identifying, modeling, and prioritizing the decisions you need to optimizeDesigning and implementing robust decision servicesMonitoring your ongoing decision-making and learning how to improve itProven enablers of effective Decision Management Systems: people, process, and technologyIdentifying and overcoming obstacles that can derail your Decision Management Systems initiative