To cut a long story short: no, it is not. Rather than replacing your current ERP system, or any other system for that matter, CEP enriches business processes by predicting events based on data from existing monitoring systems, such as ERP. Its goal is to identify meaningful events, such as opportunities or threats, and respond to them as quickly as possible. CEP and ERP complement each other, kind of like a married couple. This comparison led us to the following enlightening example.
Resuscitating ‘dead’ data
Among thousands of incoming events, a monitoring system may receive the following three from the same source: church bells are ringing, the appearance of a man in a tuxedo with a woman in a flowing white gown and rice flying through the air. From these events the monitoring system may infer a complex event: a wedding! In a way, CEP breathes life into ‘dead’ data. Or, to put it in automotive terms: it alarms us when we are headed for a collision, quite like park assist. Others refer to CEP as the ‘automatic IT brake’, not to slow things down but to prevent worse from happening. Anyway, we think you catch our drift by now. With the increasing importance and opportunities of AI, we expect CEP to become an important business tool for real-time decision-making rather sooner than later.
Act now, not tomorrow
ERP has been developed to help organizations control and manage administrative processes. Full stop. Today’s business, however, requires swift and proactive action (the act-now economy). CEP will give you real-time outcomes based on predefined (business) rules. This, to our humble opinion, will fundamentally change the IT landscape. And with business rules changing all the time, you are now offered the ability to change them in turn. Other benefits of CEP include:
• Legacy systems will be feeding the CEP
• No need to re-enter or convert data
• Storing data in one place minimizes the inconsistency of sharing and updating them in different systems
• If needed, full automated steps can be executed by the CEP platform
All these actions will result in a flexible IT architecture that provides timely and accurate information.
It’s all about perCEPtion…
For more detailed information or advice on CEP and how it can improve your business, don’t hesitate to contact USoft here
