Decision Modeling in Action

Here are some examples of how organizations are using decision modeling to improve their business performance:

Closing the Gap Between Processes and Business Rules
This tax administration is using decision modeling to fill the gap between process models and business rules in the most extensive project ever undertaken. Decision modeling was quick to implement and has made it easier to evaluate rules, to view the overall process picture and to communicate to stakeholders.
 
 "Decision modeling enables us to model our business by dividing it into concrete parts that are understandable to business people without being too detailed. It also helps us not to lose sight of the overall picture of the process while delving deep into the details of business rules."
Structured Business Rules Analysis
This insurance company has a complex eligibility / completeness decision involving thousands of rules in one of their business processes. These rules come from internal policies, State and Federal regulations, existing system behavior and more. Building the decision model, with over 300 decision nodes, allowed them to specify this decision-making very precisely while still engaging business users in review. Many diagrams were built, each showing a different perspective of the model so that different groups could participate effectively. Finally the rules were captured in spreadsheets, each linked to from one of the decision nodes. Instead of one big bucket of thousands of rules, decision modeling provided a properly structured model that was easy to manage and navigate.

Business Process Modeling and Decision Modeling For New Package Selection
This government agency was building detailed process models to understand its requirements for a new package selection effort. It became clear that understanding the processes was just the start, however, as many of these processes involved complex decisions and calculations such as tax determinations. A package might support the process but not support the decision-making on which that process relied. To make sure they picked the right process the agency used decision models to define precisely how these decisions needed to be made and what information and regulations were used at each point. The combination of process AND decision models was key.

Decision Centric Dashboard Design
This Enterprise IT Quality Management Group wanted to develop dashboards that would better support decision making and integration and visibility with a wider range of data sources. These dashboards are used to manage 100+ projects being released every 2 weeks into production across hundreds of critical applications ranging from mainframe, client-server, web and mobile applications. Multiple dashboards and reports from various quality management, requirements, project management, cost management and defect management systems needed to be organized logically to support critical operational and strategic decisions. Decision modeling helped create the perfect uncluttered dashboard design that included role-based displays with all required Input Data and Business Knowledge Sources presented in logical components. The graphical Decision Diagrams were invaluable in discovering gaps and in generating consensus. 

 "This is the critical path to monetizing advanced models."

Best Practice for Predictive Analytic Models Usage in Claims Processing
This organization is using decision modeling to make sure its front-line staff are taking advantage of an analytics developed to detect fraud. They built a decision model of the best practice for deciding if a claim should be paid automatically, examined or referred for fraud. The elements of the decision-making supported by the analytic application were made explicit, clarifying how the new application could and should be used to improve decision-making.


What's Your Business Context?

  • Here is a short video on on support site on how decisions are put into a business context
  • To learn more about decision discovery and how to link decisions to your business objectives, watch these videos on Decision Management on our youtube channel.