Improving the understanding of BAM technology for real-time decision support

Abstract

Business activity monitoring (BAM) provides real-time access to critical business performance indicators to improve the speed and effectiveness of business operations. Ideally, BAM systems should allow enterprises to improve their operational performance by helping them perceive, understand and respond to events that have a significant impact on their business processes. Despite the fact that most enterprises have pressing needs to improve their operational performance in highly competitive and dynamic business environments, BAM systems have been poorly utilised. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no formal standards which enumerate what specific features BAM systems must include or theoretical models which support comparative analyses between BAM systems. Indeed, selecting a suitable BAM system is a challenge. To improve the ability of enterprises to understand and select a BAM system for their particular decision support needs, a BAM definitional model as well as BAM classification criteria are proposed.