The User Interface For No One
As described in an earlier post by Carlos, Decision management is an up-and-coming discipline. We truly believe in its potential and what it will bring to enterprises. That being said, the road to greatness is paved with pebbles. We have seen the same errors over and over again in adopting decision management.
I want to discuss one of the main issues that I have witnessed first hand with our clients. Many start decision management with a business rules implementation, mostly with automation in mind. In order to process applications such as claims, they build new systems on top of their Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS). Most of these efforts are IT-driven, even if the solutions are meant for the business side of the house. As a result, the user interface (UI) is often overlooked.
Mike Gualtieri from Forrester has been stressing quite vocally this past year the importance of user experience (UX). Good design could mean the difference between success and failure. He is totally right.
Over and over, we have seen IT groups overlaying some business words on top of a rules language and calling it a business user interface. As a result, the user interface is more a technical interface, where business users must follow the same technical syntax but with some business veneer. Some go as far as exposing IF-THEN point-and-click rule-building screens with no regard for the core concepts they map to. What follows?
In the best case:
- Frustration finding stuff
- Clumsy navigation
- Intellectual confusion
In the worst case:
- Incorrect codification of business concepts
- Rigid business rules that can’t express the nuances of the business
- Terrible performances
Poor Experience Leads to Poor Results
Not only does a poor UX lead to low adoption, it produces poor results.
First, most business analysts do not want to become programmers, nor should they. Business expertise is invaluable. Why waste time teaching them how to write code when they should be focused on formulating and executing business strategies? As a result, very few business experts transition to technical specialists.
Second, a poor user experience now usually leads to an every poorer experience later. If business analysts can’t easily express their concepts, they have to come up with work arounds. Mapping concepts such as product definition, pricing schemes, and legal regulations to an IF-THEN format can be challenging. In many cases, one product definition will result in a bunch of business rules (eligibility criteria, product characteristics, etc.) scattered in various places. Finding those elements down the road might be difficult if not impossible.
Third, all this leads to errors that are costly and time-consuming to identify and fix. Missed opportunities, terrible deals, or violation of legal regulations translate into lost revenue and hefty compliance fees. While verification or simulation tools might help catch some of those mistakes, the risks just seem too high. It’s no wonder many executives are pulling the plug on BRMS.
Putting the User Back in the User Interface
Are all BRMS implementations doomed? Of course not! However, organizations will need to invest in a face lift.
Rather than starting with the technology, start with the business. Gather requirements from and design your implementation for the end user, then map the technology. This will help you build the right user interface and processes to make your business rules project a success. It’s much easier to iterate this way. In some projects, we actually designed business user interface with no regard to the back-end technical implementation. This approach allowed for Agile development (incremental changes with short feedback cycles).
Aspects to Consider in Your UI Design
A good UX includes many aspects. Here are some to consider:
- How business concepts are represented: Most business analysts are used to capturing and understanding business rules in the form of decision tables, decision trees, and other rule metaphors. How will your UI support and display different metaphors? Will users be able to combine various metaphors in the same project?
- How business rules are organized: Packaging by ruleset, although natural to IT, is often foreign to business analysts. From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense to view rules one at a time nor view rules according to their execution grouping. Users should be able to organize rules in a manner that aligns with their day-to-day activities and whatever task at hand.
- How users navigate through the business rules: Business rules are interconnected. For example, in insurance, there may be multiple rating tables, each for a different portfolio segment. Another example, some rules may be state-level overrides to nationwide business rules. Business users need to be able to easily navigate through these connections. Non-structural navigation enables tech giants to act dynamically, like Amazon with its product recommendations and other links.
As dynamic, personalized user interactions are becoming the norm for consumers, employees are expecting the same experience with enterprise systems at work. Per Mike Gualtieri’s recommendation, do not alienate your audience, design for them. Create the user experience that will make your project successful, regardless whether it’s a decision management one.
Learn how we addressed the user interface problem with our SMARTS™ Data-Powered Decision Manager.