ILOG has announced that @NetHome, a leading Japanese broadband Internet provider, has selected ILOG JRules to be a key component of its new customer service management system for its high-speed Internet services. ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, will consolidate customer information residing in different applications into a single platform, making it possible to reduce the maintenance cost of these applications. As ILOG JRules also provides access to available services through rules, the JRules-based system is expected to expedite the delivery of more personalized services. The new BRMS-based system - part of a larger service-oriented architecture (SOA) project – will deploy in September 2007.
@NetHome offers high-speed Internet, media and IP telephone services to cable companies throughout Japan. @NetHome provides these services to more than 850,000 households through its cable company partners. The company chose JRules because it needed a more flexible system to cope with the frequent changes occurring in customer data records and agreements, and to speed up the introduction of new services as well as to provide more personalized customer service plans.
In the previous customer service management system, business information on each cable company partner was hard-coded, so that when a change occurred, it was necessary to rewrite a part of the system, making it difficult to implement changes quickly. Moreover, as each cable provider has its own regulations, management of new subscriptions or contract cancellations was extremely complex.
In the new system, which complements a Business Process Management (BPM) system, ILOG JRules will consolidate the business logic linked to the customer data located in several siloed applications and centralize the data in a repository. This means that when a change in product offerings, customer information or contracts is needed, the application requires only a simple update of the business rules without any need to modify the code. This system now makes it possible to easily manage new customer subscriptions, as well as subscription cancellations or changes. @NetHome anticipates significant reductions in the set-up times for new service offerings or for delivering their services to new cable providers.
Also, as the business rules are written in natural language (Japanese in this case) and presented in an easy-to-use Web interface, they can be understood by people with limited IT knowledge. This accessibility enables the IT but also the operations department to rapidly propose new services to their customers.
ILOG has consistently built on its history of product innovation to make it one of the industry's leading providers of business rule management systems. Forrester Research has recognized ILOG as a rules platform market leader, including the leader in rules platforms for Java. Customers of ILOG's award-winning BRMS products include eBay, Equifax, Grupo Santander, Harrah's Entertainment, Visa, Vodafone, Zurich, and many other leading Global 2000 companies and governments worldwide. ILOG's business rule management system (BRMS) product line includes ILOG JRules(TM), ILOG Rules(TM) for .NET® and ILOG Rules (C++).
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