In this presentation we describe how a large bank successfully transformed a legacy account management system to a highly dynamic web application using rules-based technology. To comply with “Know Your Customer” requirements the bank needed to seamlessly extend the old on-boarding account management system. A new system was supposed to create and maintain about 1000 dynamically displayed questions using a very complex interaction logic that depended on different types of customers, accounts, and planned account activities. The system should support more than 6,000 business users working concurrently on creating new and modifying existing customer accounts. The existing system with hard-coded logic was not able to support new functionality not mentioning frequently required changes. However, we needed to stick to the existing UI experience to minimize the learning curve for business users. Facing these challenges, the bank understood that only a rules-based approach was able to solve the problem.
After evaluating several rules-based frameworks, the bank selected the open source business rules and decision management system that allowed us to build highly customizable rules-based web questionnaires. As a result, the bank successfully created, tested, and put in production a new highly dynamic account management system within the expected time-frame and budget. Being in production for a few years, the new system has proved the power of the selected rules-based approach. This presentation describes how we overcame the most difficult challenges (both technical and organizational) and shares the lessons learned.

Learning Objectives:

• How to migrate a complex web application to business rules
• How to represent complex interaction logic using decision tables
• Advantages of customizable business rules