Business activity monitoring

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) refers to a category of software that aids the monitoring and tracking of business activities implemented within computer systems.

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is a concept introduced by Gartner, Inc. Referring to the collection, analysis, and presentation of real-time information about activities within organizations, including those involving customers and partners. BAM tracks both individual business process, often managed by business process management (BPM) software, and sequences of activities that may span multiple systems and applications. Its primary goal is to give operations managers and executives a clear, real-time view of business operations.

Description

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) software provides real-time insights into the status and outcomes of operations, processes, and transactions, helping organizations collect and use this information effectively. While BAM systems typically display data on computer dashboards, they differ from business intelligence (BI) dashboards. In BAM systems, events are processed in real-time or near real-time and immediately displayed, whereas BI dashboards typically refresh at scheduled intervals by querying databases. This difference in data update frequency can make BAM dashboards more responsive, depending on the refresh settings used.

Certain products offer trouble notification functionalities, enabling them to interact directly with the issue tracking system, allowing e-mails and voice or text messages to be relayed to individuals depending on the nature of the issue. Where feasible, automated problem solving can correct and restart failed processes.

Processing events

While early technology processed events emitted as the process was being orchestrated, this had the disadvantage of requiring enterprises to invest in BPM before being able to acquire and use BAM. Newer versions are based on complex event processing (CEP) technology and can process greater volumes of underlying technical events to derive higher-level business events, therefore reducing the dependency on BPM.

Related fields

• Business service management
• Business intelligence (BI)
• Business process management (BPM)
• User Activity Monitoring