IDIOM in the News
5 May 2010
Business Analysis & Systems Analysis
Modern Analyst publishes a new article by Idiom Product Director Mark Norton
"Requirements and the Beast of Complexity"
Download the article in PDF format
20 April 2010
Paying for rules by the rule with IDIOM
I have blogged about the folks at IDIOM before and I recently heard that they are making IDIOM Decision Manager available under a new free/very low cost price plan. Not a trial or test plan, but a real pricing model that supports commercial development and full ownership of generated code at what can only be described as a VERY competitive price:
US$10 per 1,000 lines of code
This is for either Java or C# and goes down to just US$1 per 1,000 lines of code for the second and subsequent generation of code for a given set of rules. Not only is this a very competitive price, it's also delightfully incremental and matches to the amount of value you are getting at any point. They also now offer a free download and a month of code generation free. If you tell them you heard about this on JTonEDM you might even get an additional free period! Pricing and other details are here on the IDIOM site.
Now IDIOM Decision Manager is a little different from many other BRMS products in that it generates standalone code for the rules/decisions you implement in it and because it manages rules as decision models not as rulesets. The interface is very friendly though, with business users liking it a lot, and the tool allows you to build and deploy decision services which is what counts. It's also touches your existing architecture very lightly (thanks to its code generation) and let's you treat the logic in your decisions as readily changeable content not as code. All in all a product that is definitely worth checking out, especially given this new pricing model. You can check out their getting started video or go to their website or more details.
Disclosure: IDIOM Software is a customer
20 January 2010
Decision-centric organizations focus on decisions
The first critical characteristic of a decision-centric organization, obviously enough, is a focus on decisions instead of processes or functions. The decisions an organization makes, the actions it selects from the possible alternatives are critical. Decisions are what make strategy real and drive results and performance against metrics. Implementing a strategy defined at the highest level of the organization comes down, in the end, to the decisions made about how to interact with partners, suppliers, customers, employees. It is these decisions that make a strategy real. Business metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are affected by the decisions made throughout the organization--the offers made to retain customers, the prices offered, the suppliers selected, the approvals given, the claims paid.
Organizations make many different decisions and these fall into three broad categories based on the value of each decision and the frequency with which those decisions are made. As shown below, decisions can be divided into strategic, tactical and operational decisions.
In the lower right of the chart are operational decisions, high volume but individually low value decisions. The primary focus of a decision-centric organization is on operational decision making--the day to day decisions taken by organizations as they run their business: the eligibility, pricing, risk and marketing decisions that drive transactions and customer interaction. Small improvements in these decisions often make a big difference, thanks to the multiplying effect, and these decisions are at the core of the business operations that must be improved.
Tactical decisions, shown in the middle of the chart, are taken less often but are less structured and repeatable. Typically the domain of knowledge-workers and managers, these often include escalations from and exceptions to operational decision-making. Unstructured decisions, such as those in complex cases, are a major class of tactical decisions in many organizations. Tactical decisions are important to a decision-centric organization. They are important because they represent the point where people must be engaged in otherwise automated processes. They also represent an opportunity for technology to act as a multiplier on the value of experience, knowledgeable staff.
Strategic decisions are taken rarely but are high value. These are one-off, ad hoc decisions taken at the highest level in an organization. While these decisions are important, all organizations make these decisions and a decision-centric organization is no different in how these are made, only in how they are implemented and made real.
Tomorrow, the other characteristics of a decision-centric organization.
20 October 2009
Do the decisions made on your sales front line always comply with your business policy?
If you can answer the above question affirmatively and with certainty then your business is in good hands. For many less fortunate businesses, this is a problem that surfaces in many subtle, and sometimes expensive ways. For one insurer, it showed up in bad business 'on the books'. The business policy said 'don't take this risk', but with 13 different systems implementing their underwriting decision-making, there was always a chance that they would be out of step. But what really did the damage was a third party agent who made underwriting decisions with typically human 'flexibility'.
"We had done our homework, understanding the extreme fire risk that polystyrene cladding represented" lamented the underwriter. "But then we found that an agent had bound us to several building policies covering this extreme risk". He continued "The inability to reliable deploy and execute our underwriting manual for our own and third party agent use is a systemic issue that is difficult to rectify".
This problem is not uncommon - a disconnect between the business policies that define acceptable business risk, and the mix of computerized and manual systems that are supposed to implement them.
This is a problem that Idiom has dealt with many times. Idiom can help to reconnect business policy to front line decision making by developing a tailor-made decision architecture. In explaining Idiom's new offering, Mark Norton, Idiom Product Director said "Idiom Ltd is offering senior Decision Architects for high level consulting, to design you an architecture that you can rely on to truly implement your business policy. And if you choose to use our approach to implement the architecture, the total cost of ownership is likely to be an order of magnitude less than traditional development approaches".
He further explained "A Decision Architecture is a set of decision models that represent the management policies of a business - these decision models are formally designed to meet some fundamental criteria. Firstly, the decision models must be carefully designed so that each decision and each decision model is defined once and once only. Secondly, each decision model must fully and accurately define the policy clauses that it represents. Thirdly, the decision models must be accurately automated and correctly placed within operational systems - without fingerprints! And finally, the decision models should be defined and implemented in a way that is synergistic with the underlying system platforms."
According to Mark Norton, "This is the secret to taming the beast of IT. A well designed decision architecture is a remote control for the business - it puts business policy directly into the driving seat of the front line computer systems"
To arrange for an free initial discussion with one of Idiom's Decision Architects, please email IdiomSales@idiomsoftware.com or call Mark Norton direct on +64 21 434669.
24 August 2009
Idiom Product Director to Present at Partner CXO Breakfast and Seminars
Idiom partner RHE Group hosted a CXO breakfast event at its Wellington offices 84 Boulcott Street, (7:30am-8:30am, Wednesday 2nd September) to discuss Business Agility and Decision Automation, that was followed by an open invitation lunch event from 11:30am-1:00pm.
There was also an open invitation lunch event in Auckland (11:30am-1:00pm, Friday 4th September).
Mark Norton, Idiom Product Director, was the keynote presenter at each event, providing an introduction to 'decision automation' and then leading subsequent discussion. The presentation was followed by a brief Idiom product demonstration.
» Download the CIO presentation PDF(414K)
» Download the CIO presentation PPSX(541K)
10 July 2009
Idiom Ltd participates in the CIO Summit 2009, Booth 11
Idiom was a sponsor and exhibitor at the NZ CIO Summit 21-22 July 2009, Auckland NZ.
Innovation was one of the key themes of the conference, with the conference organisers observing in their opening statement that "organisations face increasing economic uncertainty, challenges keep growing and IT leaders are expected to deliver greater results within tighter budgets". As one of NZ's leading technology innovators, and one of only three NZ technology companies to be recognized on a Gartner Magic Quadrant, Idiom has developed its innovative decision automation products to meet this challenge.
Idiom's flagship product, Idiom Decision Manager, is well established in key NZ corporate, central government and local government accounts. The latest version of this product was available for review at the CIO Booth 11, where Idiom CEO Richard Stafford and his team were on hand to discuss Idiom's plans for making this product available for free download later this quarter.
Idiom also announced its revolutionary new IQ Workbench, which adds the power of Idiom Decision Manager and Idiom Document Generator to Idiom Forms to deliver complete, fully functioned online services. Idiom IQ Workbench is a significant step forward in the automation of core processes. Idiom also had IQ Workbench demonstrations available at the conference exhibitor Booth.
Idiom - "delivering greater results within tighter budgets"
» Check out the 2009 CIO Summit Images
25 May 2009
Idiom Product Director features in MicroEnsure Matters
MicroEnsure is an Idiom partner whose mission is to empower the materially poor to transform their lives by insuring them against financial risk and its consequences.
MicroEnsure publishes a respected and widely read quarterly newsletter, "MicroEnsure Matters". Idiom Product Director Mark Norton has contributed an article titled 'The Anatomy of an Insurance Product' to the Industry Opinion pages of their latest publication.
» Read 'The Anatomy of an Insurance Product' Article
18 May 2009
Idiom Ltd participates in the GOVIS 2009 User-Centred Government conference
Idiom is pleased to be a sponsor and exhibitor at the GOVIS 2009 conference, 20-22nd May 2009, Wellington NZ. The 'user-centred government' theme is particularly appropriate for the release of Idiom's exciting new product, Idiom IQ Forms.
Idiom's flagship product, Idiom Decision Manager, is well known to central and local government users. IQ Forms predecessor, Idiom Forms, is currently in use at several thousand sites throughout NZ, linking users to Government Ministries and agencies. Idiom IQ Forms is Idiom's latest product, which adds the power of Idiom Decision Manager and Idiom Document Generator to Idiom Forms to deliver complete online services to government and local authority users. There are several thousand downloadable forms available online within the NZ government sector that users are required to download and complete when requesting access to various government services. Every form that is downloaded generates significant cost for its sponsoring agency - and costly delay and frustration for its user. Idiom IQ Forms removes this cost and frustration, providing a seamless interactive service that gets the job done.
Idiom IQ Forms is a significant step forward in the automation of central and local government processes, making Government services directly accessible to users throughout the country and overseas, as envisaged by the eGovernment initiative. In anticipation of eGovernment, some of Idiom's customers are already forging ahead with automation of various public services. Idiom will have IQ Forms demonstrations available at the conference exhibitor stand where Mark Norton, Idiom Product Director, will be available throughout the conference.
16 April 2009
Business rules guru James Taylor blogs Idiom Decision Manager
Enterprise Decision Management and Business rules guru, James Taylor blogs Idiom Decision Manager.
His conclusion is that while IDIOM is not a "classic" rules management system, it has some unique features. At its heart it allows you to build Decision Services, however, and that's what matters.
» Read James Taylor's Idiom Decision Manager blog
16 March 2009
Idiom Decision Manager 3.6 released
Idiom is pleased to announce the latest release of its flagship Idiom Decision Manager product. Version 3.6 is now in General Availability and is available to all customers on current maintenance from the Customer download site. A full differences document is also available on the download site. Amongst many changes, the major highlights of v3.6 are the Templates feature, and a model Comparer.
The Templates feature allows best practice decision models to be distributed to clients or other decision designers, to be used as a framework for local decision model development. Both the template and the local changes can be independently developed and re-integrated on an on-going basis without loss of integrity by either the Template or the locally modified models.
The Comparer allows a successor version of a model to be compared with its predecessor, with all changes identified in a user navigable, graphical view.
1 March 2009
Link Corporate Policy and Data Design with Decisioning
The Data Administration Newsletter has this month published an article, 'Link Corporate Policy and Data Design with Decisioning' written by Idiom Product Director Mark Norton.
January 2009
Idiom leads its competitors with Business Rules for BBQ's
Idiom attended the 2008 International Business Rules Forum at Orlando, Florida just prior to Christmas. Idiom was invited to speak as part of the new 'Enterprise Decision Management' stream of the forum on the subject "Next generation Decisioning Methodology".
But Idiom knew that it would take more than an interesting and insightful presentation to attract the discerning North American audience to its Exhibition booth.
» Read more about the Orlando Forum
September 2008
Mark Norton speaks at Business Rules Forum and 1st EDM Summit
Mark Norton, Product Director, Idiom Ltd, gave a Special Talk on Next Generation Decisioning Methodology at the Business Rules Forum in Orlando, Florida, 26-30th October 2008.
Mark's topic was "How to model business decisions in a way that drives systems towards tight strategic alignment and more effective business execution."
"Idiom Decision Manager" and the decisioning methodologies which support it have been proven through practical application in projects that cross a wide range of business domains.
» View Mark's Orlando presentation
June 2008
Mark Norton to speak at the Eurobizrules conference, Munich Germany
Mark Norton, Product Director, Idiom Ltd, was to have spoken at the Eurobizrules conference, in Munich, Germany, 16-18th June 2008. Unfortunately the conference was cancelled due to logistic and organisational reasons.
Mark's subject was to have been "The importance of 'Decisioning' as a significant and discrete subset of the business rules universe".
Idiom is a leader in the development and practical application of Decisioning, which is evolving as a new and increasingly important Informations Systems discipline.
May 2008
Idiom Ltd participates in the World Insurance Forum, Dubai
Idiom Ltd participated in the World Insurance Forum, Dubai as a Trade Exhibitor as part of the Investors Guaranty Global Alliance®.
Investors Guaranty® is a global organization with interests in financial services, insurance, and operating units specializing in information, compliance, risk, valuation, and media technologies.
Mr Douglas L King, Chairman of Investors Guaranty® and a Director of Idiom Ltd, represented the Investors Guaranty group as an invited panel speaker on the subject 'Capital - Assessing the Magnitude of Economic Perils'.
February 2008
Idiom Helps National Transport Insurance Focus On The Future
National Transport Insurance implemented "Focus" - a fully integrated Line of Business Insurance System. By developing its Business Rules in-house, Focus is delivering a scalable, extensible, state of the art platform...
Read more in the News Archive...