Business Process and Business Rules Management

BPM combines the technologies of Workflow Management and Application Integration. They allow for tasks to both be directed to staff for processing, and to be transferred to IT systems as participants in the process chain.    

With Business Rules Management (BRM) companies primarily automate the complex decisions in their business processes:

• Within process steps to fully automate them
• For the transition between individual steps ("flow")
• As intelligent generators of events that trigger a process based on rules

BPM controls business processes - BRM automates decisions in processes.

BRM & BPM - Two Approaches for Business   

These decisions - the business rules - are the components in IT systems that are changed most frequently, primarily due to laws and to the market. This is why it is necessary to model rules, instead of coding them into applications.    

The graphical modeling approach of the Visual Rules BRM system is so intuitive that business experts are able to maintain these rules themselves.   

BRM Automates BPM   

BRM extends BPM by adding intuitive and traceable mapping of rules, ultimately leading to automation of the complex decision rules for process management. To accomplish this, Visual Rules BRM systems also can be supplied with data from different systems or sources.

The rules can be used across processes and systems throughout the company. BRMS thus ensures conformity of automated decisions, within the guidelines of the company.

Dynamic Changeability of Business Rules    

Changeability of business rules requires that they be brought into production independent from processes and applications. The Visual Rules BRMS provides different options for deploying rules as rules services (using WSDL) or for processes. They can thus be employed as part of a SOA.

Additionally Visual Rules, with its graphical modeling approach, is ideally suited for integration into BPM systems.

Why are companies using the combination of BPM and BRM today - and what benefits are they enjoying?

Companies use BRM systems in BPM anytime that it is essential to transparently map and automate complex rules for process or workflow management.     

Typical applications of BPM and BRM are

• application verification and
• document management.

BPM manages, for example, the electronic processing of documents coming in from different channels and their central repository storage and access.  

BRM automates the rules for routing the documents and approval processes. Documents are automatically transferred to the next process step carried out by a member of the staff or a system, depending on document type, composition and status.