More Than 40 Percent of CIOs and CTOs Surveyed Plan to Automate Decision Management Processes

SOURCE:  Corticon

Corticon, a leading provider of business rules management systems (BRMS), today announced the results of a survey of CIOs and CTOs asked about their plans to automate decision management within their organizations.  41.4 percent of the survey respondents stated they plan to automate their decision management processes.  Additionally, over one-third of respondents, 35.9 percent, indicated they plan to deploy a business rules engine for decision management.  Decision management refers to the processes an organization uses to manage its interactions with customers, employees and suppliers.

“Automating decision management is essential to effectively competing in today’s marketplace, and these findings align with our daily discussions with business executives across a range of organizations and industries,” said Bob Schoettle, chief marketing officer at Corticon.  “Profitability and market share depend on the day-to-day decisions of both knowledge and line workers, and automating decision management to ensure  the best decisions are made consistently every time is critical.”

Automating decision management enables organizations to improve productivity and customer service, and adapt quickly to changing market conditions.  Business rules engines, a key component of a BRMS, automate the business logic behind decisions, for both manual and inflexible legacy system processes, in order to lower operational costs, increase customer satisfaction, and generate higher profits.

The survey also asked respondents to rate the importance of six objectives for new business-application development.  Respondents rated the following objectives as either important or critical to their organizational goals:

• Improve the end-user or customer experience:  88 percent
• Make better or faster business decisions:  78 percent
• Provide competitive advantage:  70 percent
• Achieve operational savings from automating decision-making processes:  70 percent
• Achieve capital savings in tools used for application development: 55 percent
• Reduce the number of IT development and change cycles: 45 percent

“An overwhelming majority of the respondents, 88 percent, cited improvements in the end-user or customer experience as a prime objective in developing business applications. By eliminating much of the complexity of application development, a business rules engine significantly reduces the time required to write, test, deploy and update business applications when compared to legacy code-based approaches,” said Schoettle.  “When those applications are designed to rapidly process complex sets of rules, decisions affecting customers can be made in a fraction of the time, and customers benefit immediately.”

Respondents also shared details of their application development budgets, with 49 percent stating their budget for the coming 12 months would exceed their current budget.  Nearly half, 45.4 percent, said that development of new business applications “from the ground up” requires more than six months.  In addition, 66 percent stated that their business process applications need to be modified from every week up to six months to account for changes in the market, customer patterns, or industry regulations.

The survey statistics indicate a large opportunity for more widespread adoption of business rules as the enabling technology. Corticon’s patented “no coding” rules engine manages even the most sophisticated decision-making logic in a simple spreadsheet-like environment and lets organizations build or change mission-critical enterprise applications in significantly less time than would be required in traditional programming-based application development.

The survey, administered in July, 2011, polled CIOs and CTOs from across industries for their views on decision management and business rules, and had 128 respondents.  For a complete listing of survey questions, methodology and results, email pratibha.jain@corticon.com.

About Corticon

Corticon enables organizations to make better, faster decisions by automating business rules. Corticon’s patented “no-coding” rules engine is used by over 450 customers to automate their most sophisticated decision processes, reducing development and change cycles by 90%. Automated decision management with Corticon empowers organizations to improve productivity and customer service, and adapt quickly to changing market conditions. For more information, visit www.corticon.com.

View Original Press Release