One of the easiest to understand (not the simplest) use cases for a rules engine like DecisionRules is airline, ticket pricing.

You need the cost of labor, the cost of the plane, the cost of fuel, the the weight of the avg passenger, the weight of their average luggage, the the weight of the freight, the number of passengers on that flight, the fees for each airport, the taxes for each airport, etc., etc.. The idea is easy enough, but WOW, there is a lot that goes into the pricing. If you look at how different unions get paid differently in different states, taxes are different by city, county, state, and country, etc. and you can see how quickly the pricing of a plane ticket can get overwhelming.

This is a classic use case for a rules engine. Even a perfect use case for having different permissions for different users, and different parts of the rules for each rule owner. So, the tax specialist has access to the tax rules, the fuel department can access the fuel rule, etc..

Because there are SOOOO many moving parts in an airline, you can see why you might want a simplified way to manage a complex model with tens, and maybe hundreds of moving parts.

Right about now you are going "But Dave I don't have an airline,, this sounds neat, but why do I need a rules engine?" well I am verbose so let me answer that :-)

Do you sell widgets,? (widgets, the generic word for any physical good). If so, you have to buy them, assemble them, package them, sell them, ship them, manage different vendors, some stores who sell your widgets, and your own Shopify store. Guess what? At a few of those steps, a rules engine could help a TON to drive efficiency, and optimize your costs. Pricing, shipping, discount/coupons, and loyalty programs can all have rules built for them. Do you think Amazon is using a spreadsheet for everything?

If you'd like to scale you need to organize your processes, and in many case a rule engine could go a long ways towards you being able to automate more, and more of your processes, decision-making, and organization.

Another great use case for the SMB is to clean up some of your current automations. Do you have a Zap or Integromat automation flow from hell that you are afraid to touch? Well, sketch it, out, and then build it, piece by piece in DecisionRules.

Want to optimize your paid ad spend? Build out your different rules for different platforms, and ad types, and you can combine them for maximum efficiency.

So, what am I working on? Primarily two things: 1-make some of my automations a lot more efficient, and 2-valuation models for different asset classes with different valuation methods. Eventually I will try some of the other stuff, like lead scoring, but finance is my wheel house.

Decision Rules is a fantastic rules engine. I dug in, and read up on the major competitors and they are all ridiculous in their own way (price and/or complexity). DecisionRules otoh is powerful, clean, and an incredible value.