Event based monitoring
Event based monitoring does not stop at single or discrete situations but extends to responses to a sequence of events. Thus, the monitoring of the supply chain would involve the movement of goods from the vendor to the transportation company and then to the buyer. The events along the way can have consequences for inventory holdings and financial payments. Delays can occur on the way due to weather changes or congestion on the roadways or the vehicle carrying the goods could meet with an accident. Based on preset rules, the BI software can make simultaneous decisions for alternative means to replenish inventories as well as financial payments to transportation companies.
An example of responses to complex events based management is the experience of American Electric Power Company which often made duplicate payments to its numerous suppliers who submitted invoices under different numbers and in several different formats such as e-mail, snail mail, etc. The complex event management software helps to detect duplicate payments by looking at addresses, dates, amounts submitted and names of vendors to check for overpayments.
Event based monitoring provides the infrastructure to monitor events, compare metrics to standards and sends out alerts when action is required. In the daily routine of business, companies need to keep track of their supply position. Often, supply will either exceed or run short of requirements. Business Activity Monitoring tools enable companies to compare the actual situation with thresholds and send out alerts if the situation warrants action by decision makers.
Business Activity Monitoring has been widely adopted in the financial services, logistics and the telecommunications industry and its acceptance in the mainstream is expected to be completed by 2008. In the financial services industry, it has been readily accepted as a large majority of trading decisions is triggered by news feeds about financial events. In the logistics industry, a large number of scheduling decisions are prompted by information on progress of shipments. Similarly, the telecommunications industry uses BAM to monitor the observance of service level agreements.