Event processing takes data and puts it to work in some very sophisticated ways, like decision-making in real time.
Even though the processing of events emulate a business user’s knowledge and skill, the logic behind it is not that business-user friendly. Historically, it takes a technical user to modify decision tables and business rules, which slows the process. While the business waits for IT, valuable time is lost.
Applications that don’t provide a way for business users to define and control how they can take advantage of events in real time leave the business at the mercy of technical developers and IT departments. But that problem has been solved now—with collaboration, decision tables, and business rules. The result is that now some of the most powerful and valuable event-driven applications are being built for the enterprise.
Decision Tables
Very simple rules can be represented as a set of if-then conditions and actions, where every condition is formed by a unique combination or range of values for a set of input parameters. The actions for every condition are relatively straightforward, such as a score, decision, or name of a function or business process. Decision tables that represent such rules could be completely defined by business users, with limited support from technical users for their event-driven invocation.
Business Rules
On the other end of the spectrum, rules that involve complex correlation and computations may need a lot more involvement from technical users; however, these rules also render themselves to parameterization, thereby providing business users with a significant role in their definition.
TIBCO lets technical users create rule templates that business users can fill in. Business rules can be used, for example, to compute loyalty-related discounts based on customer category and total purchases over time where the discounts offered change frequently based on time of year, inventory availability, and other factors, such as what competitors are offering.
Our event processing platform gives business users a spreadsheet-like interface they can modify. They can actually export or import the spreadsheet to Microsoft Excel.
Collaboration
Technical users create the templates that business users can implement completely on their own, and support the behind-the-scenes computational logic and template creation. Business users get hands-on efficiency with the ability to create and modify simple rules without needing IT. They can independently define offers and rules to give the business unprecedented agility. By reducing the amount of users required to operate this type of system, a business can make decisions faster, reduce loss, and increase revenue.
Want to learn more? Read the full whitepaper, Event Processing with Decision Tables and Business Rules, here.
