FICO Author Publishes How-To Guide for Knowledge Automation in the Era of Big Data

MINNEAPOLIS—March 29, 2012—FICO (NYSE:FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced the publication of Knowledge Automation (Wiley) by Alan Fish, a principal consultant in FICO’s Professional Services group. The book provides a how-to guide for improving business processes by automating business knowledge, which includes not just human knowledge but “artificial” knowledge extracted from data using analytics.

Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes describes a simple but comprehensive methodology for decision management projects, which use business rules and predictive analytics to optimize and automate high-volume business decisions. Fish describes a new method called Decision Requirements Analysis, which can help IT professionals run any project to implement decision management with reduced risk and increased profit.

“Business managers and IT professionals looking to get value from Big Data need to focus not just on how it can be stored but also how it can be analyzed, and how the resulting knowledge can be used in automated decisions,” said Fish. “The biggest reason businesses fail at this is that they don’t clearly define the scope and structure of their decision management projects. In Knowledge Automation, I introduce Decisions Requirements Analysis, a simple method which allows the structure of business decision-making to be modeled in a single diagram.”

FICO’s consulting team has already been using this methodology for several years to deliver successful, high-volume business rules management system (BRMS) applications that power billions of decisions daily, and help companies have more meaningful and profitable interactions with their customers.

Fish pointed out that although the value of predictive analytics has been understood for some time, it is not generally acknowledged that the disciplines of decision management and business process management are intimately related. "Many companies have incredible latent value in their data that they have not exploited, because they are not using analytics, or not using them well enough," Fish noted. "The full value of Big Data can only be realized by understanding the role of discovered knowledge in decision-making, and the role of decision-making in business processes. That's why process modeling and decision modeling are so important."

"As companies mine increasingly large amounts of data for insight and build systems that act more independently, an understanding of the decisions involved becomes ever more critical," said James Taylor, CEO and principal consultant of Decision Management Solutions, who wrote the book's foreword. "Alan's book is a timely description of an effective approach for analyzing and understanding the decision-making that drives a company's day-to-day operations. If you plan to analyze and model decisions, and you should, this book will show you how to do it."

An excerpt from the book introduces the topics of decision management and knowledge automation, as well as explaining the “decision yield” concept for measuring the value of business decisions. For more information on the book, visit its page on the Wiley website: www.wiley.com/buy/978-1-118-09476-1.

Über FICO
FICO (NYSE:FICO), formerly known as Fair Isaac, delivers superior predictive analytics solutions that drive smarter decisions. The company's groundbreaking use of mathematics to predict consumer behavior has transformed entire industries and revolutionized the way risk is managed and products are marketed. FICO's innovative solutions include the industry-leading solutions for measuring credit risk, managing credit accounts, identifying and minimizing the impact of fraud, and customizing consumer offers with pinpoint accuracy. Most of the world's top banks, as well as leading insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, rely on FICO solutions to accelerate growth, control risk, boost profits and meet regulatory and competitive demands.

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