It was a privilege to be invited to CGI’s conference this. I was only able to attend for parts of two days, but I enjoyed the presentations and the networking. Having not spent much of my career in banking, I was a little our of water, but I learned pretty quickly that despite some domain deficit, there was plenty of commonality. I particularly enjoyed two presentations. Michele Edelman of Discover Financial Services discussed her program to implement EDM at Discover, definitely a work in progress, but well on its way. As a result, I invited Michele to give her presentation at our EDM Summit in Orlando in October, and she accepted. We also had good time reminiscing about all the people we have in common, going that to the Metaphor days in the 80’s.

Another presentation I enjoyed was the one by Kathleen Khirallah of the Tower Group. The material was focused on issues in banking, particularly risk, but what struck me was how thoroughly prepared Kathleen was and how comfortable she was with the subject. I don’t usually give out straight 10’s on evaluations, but I did this time.

I met a lot of very interesting people, including Jame Cofran of CGI and Christine Pratt of Financial Insights (an IDC company). I’d known of Christine and her work for a long time but I’d never had the pleasure of meeting her before.  I don’t know when I’ll ever see John Romig of American General Financial Services in Evansville, IN, but I enjoyed spending a little time with him.

Special thanks go out to Tennyson Brennan of the Bank of Montreal for reading the book! And also to Lee Lopriore for the invitation. CGI has an impressive array of tools for the banking/investment business, and a solid rules engine in Strata. They also have ambitious plans re-engineering for those products, including Strata, over the next several years.

Related posts:

1. James is speaking at the European Business Rules Conference
2. Building Blocks of Decision Management
3. Intalio User Conference Wrap Up
4. Come to the Intalio User Conference and get the book for free!
5. Testimonial from Christine Pratt