The "must-see" event for buyers of performance management and business intelligence solutions Includes: BPM Partners Vendor Landscape Matrix, List of "Core" Vendors for 2009, Specialist Vendors and the 2009 BPM Pulse End User Satisfaction Ratings. As mainstream performance management adoption increases, many companies have assumed that their vendor decisions are safe by simply choosing a leading vendor. Although the leading vendors do have comprehensive solutions, these solutions may not be best aligned with an individual company’s business requirements.

Most business processes—loan-approval processes being a good example—contain multiple decision points. At these decision points, certain criteria are evaluated. Based on these criteria or business rules, business processes change their behavior. In essence, these business rules drive the business process. Frequently, these rules are embedded within the business process itself or inside custom Java code, which can cause several problems down the road.

Your company operates according to a set of specific procedures and constraints that invoke the use of strictly-defined business objects that contribute to overall strategy and goals. These rules are essential because they help maintain overall consistency and focus in company processes, but for many businesses, the underlying rules that control daily activities are not properly maintained or understood.