An Exploratory Case Study of the Benefits of Business Rules Management Systems

Business rules engines and business rule management systems (BRMS) are gaining popularity especially in large, complex, and real-time business environments. In essence, the business rules approach represents a new paradigm for compartmentalizing the formalization of business policies and rules as a separate component from application code. Given that this phenomenon has not yet been empirically investigated from a research perspective, we report on an exploratory case study undertaken to better understand the impacts of the business rules approach on activities throughout the software development lifecycle at a large Fortune 500 corporation. Our study integrates theoretical notions from the literature on knowledge reuse and systems theory with four constructs – centralization, standardization, externalization and structuration – to categorize the benefits arising from BRMS. Our results suggest that the application of the business rules approach has the potential to facilitate information systems development activities at all stages of the software development lifecycle.