Business activity monitoring

Business activity monitoring (BAM) is the part of business process management that uses technology to monitor business activity. BAM software provides dashboards that you can use to monitor business processes, key performance indicators (KPIs), and service level agreements (SLAs) in real time.

BAM shows you how a process behaves and evolves. BAM software can also help you identify new scenarios and new indicators you should be tracking.

The aim is to proactively spot opportunities and risks.

Based on a set of rules you feed into the BAM software, it recognizes and interprets situations that arise, enabling you to make the best decision. Once you make that decision, it’s integrated into a dashboard and routed to the appropriate system for implementation.

BAM offers a global view of business processes, showing you if they’re successfully meeting measurable goals and alerting you when errors occur. BAM tools give businesses the ability to both monitor internal processes and to predict outcomes — from spotting credit card fraud to anticipating stock price changes to predicting election results.

Dashboard capabilities vary according to the tool. For example, SoftSol’s Business Process Transformation tool offers real-time customizable graphical reports. Software AG’s business activity monitoring tool offers “intelligent self-learning capabilities that monitor each KPI and learn what is ‘normal’ based on historical patterns.”

Oracle BAM has two types of dashboards: 

1. An “active” dashboard shows what’s happening in the business process in real time as new data comes in. 
2. A “tactical” dashboard enables users to drill down to view data by any categories you’ve defined (date range, geography, etc.). 

You can configure a dashboard with buttons that enable users to take immediate action.

If you use business activity monitoring wisely, you’ll have more than historical reporting to rely on. You’ll also have real-time insight into what’s succeeding and what isn’t. With that information, you can continually improve and refine your processes to increase speed and efficiency — and thus profitability.