Jim Sinur

I had the pleasure to speak at the Business Rules Forum in Las Vegas this week as the opening keynote. I spoke on the linkage of Patterned Based Strategy (PBS) to Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Process Management (BPM). The audience seemed to be challenged to start thinking how to link the grass roots business rules efforts to the bigger need of organizations keeping sharp in the light of a constantly changing business environment.

I also did a couple of breakout sessions on “Business Rules Management” and “The First 100 Days of a BPM Effort”. Due to the increased interest in cost reduction and revenue generation, these topics seemed appropriate for the times. With organizations looking for good ROI with low investment, the combination of BPM and rules combines some impressive paybacks. Gartner has been advising it’s clients to “double down” on process improvement. Business rules certainly get dragged into the fore with BPM and decision management.

The overall number of attendees was flat from last year which is pretty good considering the economy. There were rumored to be 300+ there on the peak day and it looked to be true. There was an increase in the number of business focused folks, which was an improvement over last year. There were four tracks. One track was for Case studies and had some interesting success stories even in a down economy. There were also BPM, rules and decision management tracks chocked full of interesting sessions.

The vendor participation was strong with a number of interesting new vendors for me to follow up with down the road. IBM was on the only power vendor to show up. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP were missing in action, but all of the up comers were there (Convergys, Corticon, Decision Management Solutions, Delta R, Equifax, Experian, FICO, IBM, Idiom, InRule, Innovations, Pega, Open Rules, Red Hat, Rule Arts, and Savvion)

I would recommend a deeper dive by looking at Sandy Kemsley’s blog

http://www.column2.com/