Changing the Rules, Changing the Game

Changing the Rules, Changing the Game 

Getting business rules management right is a 

game changer for revenue agencies. 

FTA Technical Conference August 2009 

Copyright © 2009 Accenture All Rights Reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Objectives 

•The organizational impact of business rules 

done right 

•The real technology picture—myths and 

realities 

•The right roles for technology and business 

owners 

•The latest on plain language rules 

•The steps your agency can take today for 

success 

© 2009 Accenture. All rights reserved. 

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Agenda 

•Evolution of Business Rules & Value 

•Components of a Business Rules Engine 

•Impacts on BPM 

•Common Questions 

•Challenges & Lessons Learned 


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Agenda 







4

Should SOA Be My Priority? 

Key Challenges Potential Impacts 

Breaking through the hype and 

determining SOA “fit” in my organization 

Peak of the SOA hype curve 

Vendors pushing SOA agendas 

Understanding my ability to adopt SOA 

SOA may be bleeding edge in my 

environment 

Capability needs & current gaps 

Determining a roadmap for adoption 

balancing delivery of business value with 

enabling capability 

Pragmatic approach providing value in 

increments 

Tightly aligned with business priorities & 

initiatives 

Developing a business case & ROI 

Turning conceptual value to measurable 

value 

Quantifying benefits and costs 

Identifying funding approach 


No unified definition of SOA and its potential 

value making further progress challenging 

No framework for assessing whether current 

business priorities could benefit through SOA 

adoption 

Potential setup for failure without full 

understanding of requirements 

May misunderstand the various capabilities 

required for successful adoption 

May prioritize activities incorrectly missing 

opportunities to positively impact business 

initiatives 

Put on unachievable, or overly costly, path 

Difficult to acquire funding and support 

without quantifiable benefits 

5

The Four Phases of SOA Maturity 

Organizations will move through four distinct phases, each one with several 

iterations before achieving the next step 

Phase 4 

Phase 3 

Phase 2 

Phase 1 often is 

initiated through 

development of an 

SOA Roadmap 


Phase 1 

Organize and 

strategize 

Management buyin 

and business 

needs. 

SOA readiness 

assessment 

Planning for SOA 

transformation 

Initial 

Deployment 

First SOA 

projects. 

Convert 

applications into 

web-services 

Composed 

services to create 

business 

processes. 

Enterprise 

Service 

Bus Based 

Solution and 

SOA Platform 

Emphasis on 

strategic and 

business services. 

Consolidation of 

processes and 

services in creating 

an ESB 

Service oriented 

design and 

development using 

SOA tools 

SOA is 

industrialized 

Services - fabric 

of business 

operations 

Cross enterprise 

processes 

Federation 

Utility and 

services 

infrastructure 

Predictive IT 

Business Insight 

Near real time 

0-18 months 18–30 months 30–48 months 

6

Process 

Monitoring 

What is Business Process 

Management (BPM)? 

• Business Process Management (BPM) is a Business and 

Information Technology discipline covering business and IT 

solutions. 

• Using BPM, companies follow a formal approach to design, 

run, monitor and continually improve their operations. 

Process 

Analysis 


Process 

Automation 

Process Analysis - creation of ‘To-Be’ processes 

based on business requirements, compliance and 

other needs 

Process Automation - streamlining business 

processes through either commercial off the shelf 

or custom developed BPM applications 

Process Monitoring - capability to capture and 

monitor process metrics to provide visibility into 

process (also known as Business Activity 

Monitoring) 

7

What are Business Rules? 

A business rule defines or constrains an aspect of the business in order to impose structure or influence 

behavior. 

Business rules typically focus on: 

• Access control issues – i.e. the ATM pin code you enter must match the encoding on your ATM card 

• Calculations – i.e. converting a percentage into a letter grade 

• Policies – i.e. new college students are required to meet with their academic counselor before enrolling 

in their classes for the semester 

*Source: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dmndhelp/v6rxmx/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wbit.help.br.ui.doc/topics/cundbus.html 


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*

Business Flow – Process 

Payment 

- Business Rules influence process flow 


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Business Rules Engine 

Evolution 

• Expert Systems 

• Defense & Academia 

1960 1970 1980 1990 


• Ported to mainstream dev 

languages and OS 

• Commercial uses – lending, 

securities 

• Probabilistic algorithms 

•Expanding vendor landscape 

• Enable differentiation 

• Corporate Asset 

• Advent of Business Rules 

Management systems 

New 

Millennium 

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Value of Business Rule 

Management System (BRMS) 

– Provide a repository for storing those decisions that provide 

competitive advantage 

– Provide a dynamic SME repository to ensure against IP 

walking out the door 

– Make implicit logic in application programs explicit and 

available to be reused across the enterprise 

– Decrease application maintenance by externalizing the rules 

– Allows business users create, maintain and version rules 

through the use of a “natural” language capabilities and not 

pseudo-code 

– Enables “late” binding of rules at run-time by applications 

– Augment human judgment 

– Enable complex flow direction associated with BPM 


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Agenda 







12

Business Rule Management 

Solutions 

A robust business rule management solution will 

integrate methodology, technology, and processes. 

Business 

Rule 

Methodology 


Business Rules Management Solution 

Technology 

Business Rules 

Rule 

Management 

Processes 

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What is a business rules 

methodology? 

“A framework for designing, building, and maintaining 

a set of related business rules.” 

•It’s the foundation for business rule design 

•It’s constrained by a given technology 

•It drives application requirements 


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Rule Design Considerations 

When designing a set of business rules, the rules 

methodology sets the foundation for: 

•How rules are organized 

•The complexity of rules 

•How reusable rules are 

•How flexible/adaptable the designs are 


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Rules Organization 

Rules can be organized in a number of ways, but the 

key is to facilitate ease of maintenance for the enduser. 


Eligibility 

Rules 

Account 

Level 


Agency 

Level 


Location 

Level 


Annual 

Specific 


Tier 

Placement 


Tier 1 


Tier 2 


Tier 3 


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Maximizing Reusability 

The granularity of a rule can have a significant impact 

on reusability. 


Limited Reusability 

IF 

State = “MA” and 

AcctType = “SALES_TAX” and 

TaxYear = 2009 and 

AccountNotRegistered and 

GrossSales > $250,000 

THEN 

AssignToCandidateAuditPool 

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Maximizing Reusability 

Breaking a large rule into several smaller rules can improve reusability 

and also aide in the testing process. 

IF 

State = “MA” and 

AcctType = “SALES_TAX” and 

AccountNotRegistered 

Execute Sales Tax Risk Rules 

Execute Claims Rules 


Greater Reusability 

IF IF 

AcctType = “SALES_TAX” and TaxYear > 2004 

THEN and GrossSales > $250,000 

Audit Candidate = 8 THEN 

High Gross Sales 

IF 

Audit Candidate >= 8 and 

High Gross Sales 

THEN 

AssignToCandidateAuditPool 

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Flexibility 

The methodology may work very well for the current 

situation, but how does to accommodate new 

requirements? 

• Can the methodology adapt to new rule and predictive 

model requirements? 

• How easily are new variables introduced? 

• What is the impact of changing an existing variable? 

• What is the impact on the underlying technology? 


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Business Rules Management 

Systems (BRMS) Components 

*Source: http://www.ilog.com 


* 

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Agenda 







21

BRMS impacts on BPMS and vice versa 

Symbiotic Relationship Forming 

BPMS 

Workflow 

Process 

Modeling 

BRMS 


Management 


Without Business Rules 

• Business Processes are commodities 

• Documenting “as-is” and “to-be” 

processes no longer constitutes 

business value 

•Business Process Models cannot be 

evaluated/interrogated at run-time 

Without Business Process 

• Rules technology has little to no 

appeal to the Business 

•Scenario planning/what-if analysis 

limited 

• Agility is being able to make 

business decisions better, faster or 

cheaper not make IT’s life easier 

BPMS 

Workflow 

Process Modeling 

Rules Reuse GOAL 

BRMS 

Rules Management 

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BRMS impacts on BPMS and 

vice versa 

* Once the Business Concepts are modeled, IT will have to relinquish some control 

*Business Rules 

Categories 

Structural Relates business concepts 

together. Also known as fact 

business rules or fact types. 

Integrity Ensure the knowledgebase is 

always in a rational state 

Behavioral Determine the path taken through a 

business process 

* Terry Moriarty, http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5023 


Description Example Ownership 

Knowledge Property - Car has 

Current Mileage 

Interaction – Renter Places a 

Reservation 

State or Type – Some Cars are 

Damaged 

Eligibility – A car is due for 

maintenance every 3K miles 

Validation – Some reservations 

may request a car make and 

model 

Computation – Loyalty Members 

receive a 10% discount 

Event/Condition/Action – If the 

reservation requests a care 

group and a car in that group is 

not available, then upgrade the 

car 

Policy – The branch manager must 

approve upgrades of more than 

two car groups 

IT establishes. The 

Business maintains. 





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BRMS impacts on BPMS and 

vice versa 

– Acquisitions 

• BPMS vendors are acquiring BRE vendors – i.e. SAP acquiring Yasu. 

Microsoft making a push into BRMS market. Oracle CRM uses Haley 

Systems 

– Partnerships 

• BPMS vendors who do not acquire will create or continue partnerships with 

BRMS vendors – i.e IBM and ILOG, Fair Issac and Corticon 

– Rules Templates 

• Seeding of BRMS with templates containing common rules for generic 

business processes 

– Natural Language Expressiveness 

• Evolution from quasi-programming language to more English-like 

– End User Rule Management 

• More usability features for the business user. Rules are no longer the 

exclusive domain of IT 

– Integrated creation, modeling, management, simulation and 

deployment of processes and rules from within the BPMS 


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Agenda 







25

Business rule vs. process step 

• Process steps are an ordered set of 

actions or decisions that are made in 

the execution of the business process. 

• Decisions are candidates for business 

rules 

• Key is how “volatile” is the decision 

• ATP is a standard calculation and fails 

the volatility test 

• Tier 1 customer defined differently 

based upon market conditions or 

economic drivers. Passes the volatility 

test 

• Business rules are like any other 

corporate asset. Provide IP, brand 

value and competitive advantage 


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Business Rule vs. SOA Policy 

• A business rule defines or constrains an aspect of the business 

in order to impose structure or influence behavior 

• A SOA policy defines the requirements that well defined sets of 

services must follow 


• i.e.. All externally accessible services must implement 

https 

• Have two components: Type and Scope 

– Type addresses schema, communication and behavior 

– Scope addresses policies applied to specific services 

and content 

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Can’t I do it all in a BRMS vs. 

BPMS (and vice versa) 

• BPMS suites are designed to model, execute and manage 

business processes 

– Do not have the rules repository or the management 

capabilities to reuse and version potentially hundreds of 

rules 

• BRMS suites are designed to automate complex decisions 

– Can initiate actions but are not designed to manage the 

process steps in an end-to-end business process 


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Agenda 







29

Challenges & Lessons Learned 

1. Business and IT commitment to Rules Technology 

2. Attempts to “boil the ocean”. Rules are everywhere. Must 

create a set of metrics to determine the value of the rule 

3. Value of rules must be demonstrated early and often. 

Value typically translates to faster time to solution or 

cheaper cost of the solution. 

4. Business rule extraction can be time-consuming and costly 

5. Significant retooling/retraining required for developer 

community to implement declarative programming styles 

6. Distrust of “black box” rules engine to handle application 

decision logic 

7. Re-architecture required for existing application to exploit 

BRMS 


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Summary 

• Business rules define or constrain an aspect of the business in order to 

impose business structure or influence behavior 

• Business Rules are corporate assets that can provide differentiation and 

competitive advantage 

• Value can be achieved with BRMS without implementing BPMS 

• The delineation between SOA Policies and Business Rules will continue to 

blur 

• BRMS market consolidation and acquisition by BPMS vendors will virtually 

eliminate pure-play BRMS vendors 

• Implementations of standalone BRMS and/or BPMS-BRMS face 

challenges related to people, process and technology 

• IT will be “uncomfortable” allowing the Business to directly change integrity 

and behavioral rules 


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About the speaker 

Paul Sager is an Accenture Senior Manager based in 

Chicago, Illinois. 

Paul is a Technical Architect within Accenture's US Revenue Industry 

Group. During his 19-year career with Accenture, he has specialized in 

the installation, operation and support of mainframe-based business 

applications including Accenture's integrated Tax Administration 

System (TAS). He has delivered business and technology innovation 

for government tax agencies at the city, state and national levels. Mr. 

Sager holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems 

from the University of Dayton. 

Contact Info 


Email: paul.d.sager@accenture.com 

Telephone: 312.693.7625 (Chicago) 

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Changing the Rules, Changing the Game

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