4 Promises Rules Engine Technology Should Be Able to Deliver

May 5, 2020

Whether you already have a business rules engine in use in your organization or you are just beginning to understand the value that it can add to your operations, it is important to remember what sets some business process management software solutions apart from others. Sure, there are a lot of different types of solutions out there, but what truly makes some stand out in the crowd? What makes them great?

At a minimum, a business process management solution should be able to commit to offering your organization a set of qualities that allow it to adapt to the culture of your organization, facilitate continued improvements, and drive efficiencies. Each of these capabilities and more are woven into the design of the Decisions rules engine, but how do you know you have found the “best of breed” for your needs?

Here are four commitments every great rules engine should promise to deliver your organization.

It Is Flexible & Customizable

No two businesses are the same, so their rules engines and business process management solutions should not be identical either. Because there is no “one size fits all,” workflows and business processes should be customizable so each organization can create models that work best for them. This same principle also applies to the business rules engines that businesses have in place to facilitate them.

A rules engine should commit to delivering complete flexibility in creating business rules in order to get the best outcomes, as defined by the organization—not the rules engine or the applications it interacts with. Decision makers need to be able to have complete control over what happens in their business processes, applications, and operations, regardless of the age or level of customization of their systems.

Finally, the ability to select from a range of available platforms, features, and hosting models, such as those available with Decisions, allows an organization to select the right implementation for them. With a great rules engine, if you can dream it, you can implement it.

It Has a Smart & Simple Interface

Running a business is hard enough as it is; capturing and automating the processes that make your operations tick should not make things even harder. A great rules engine is tuned to make it straightforward—if not easy—to conduct the entire lifecycle of business process automation, even on a routine basis.

The platforms that set themselves apart take many of the difficulties, complexities, and nuances out of creating and managing rules for the end user. This means that the same people who are responsible for implementing a process have the ability—through smart and simple interfaces—to capture and improve their business processes from start to finish, facilitating automation and highlighting manual steps or anomalies for action.

It Facilitates the Capture of Business Knowledge

When they step back from the business process mapping and rules creation exercise, organizations realize that they are actually capturing how their organizations operate. Rules engines should be able to provide the practical functionality of applications and data flows, but should also be able to conceptualize the knowledge, experience, and decision criteria that your staff use to make your business hum.

Therefore, a great rules engine should offer plenty of workflow automation tools and custom data structure designers to capture the people-centric and data-centric processes that have gotten your organization to where it is today—and will take it into the future.

It Manages Multiple Workflows

A great rules engine should make visualizing and managing complex business processes easy. From finance and human resources to payroll and healthcare, it can get complicated to document separate and very different workflows within one solution.

Decisions’ approach builds off its full end user portal. Its support page has forms, dashboards, a powerful application and workflow server, and feature-rich design studios with multiple rule styles and forms available to evaluate data, enforce policy, and trigger actions. When combined, each business unit can capture, automate, maintain, test, and deploy their rules with built-in application integrations and the help of an expert support team.

Of course, every organization will have its own requirements for selecting a business process management and rules management solution, but it is important to make sure these four commitments are on your “must have” list. With these qualities in mind, you can be sure that your rules engine will make your workflows work for your business.

If you would like to see a great rules engine in action, contact Decisions to see a demo and learn how your organization can try the platform for free. Once your staff gets a chance to see how the platform can solve your problems, the choice will be clear.

Becky Simanowski
Becky Simanowski is the Digital Marketing Director at Decisions and manages all digital marketing programs including SEO, SEM, Email, Social Media, and Conversion Rate Optimization.

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