MDM and business rules management

Business rules aren't system-centric, they're business-centric. As such, they should leverage master data when they need to. For instance, take a simple business rule, like "all branches should have a branch code." The branch code would then be able to roll up to branches within a certain region. If you look at the new crop of business rules management systems currently available on the market, they ensure that business rules are consistent across systems, deployed as a centralized enterprise service for consistency's sake. A real-life example is with volume purchase agreements (VPAs). In order to apply the correct pricing, a business rules management system might need to call product master data on a PIM hub to get the most current list price for a product in order to calculate an accurate VPA. This scenario combines workflow, master data, and authoritative business rule calculation to ensure the integrity of potentially high-impact discounts.