Personalization: A Rules Based Approach

The fifth and final approach to personalization utilizes rules to understand users and events and then push personalized content and messages to them.  This probably represents one of the most complex aspects of personalization but it can be extremely powerful.  I say “rules” because you need some engine, most likely separate from a portal server, to queue up messages based on events that may occur in a number of other systems.  Let me give you some examples of how this might work:

• Your customer calls into the support desk asking about how to use your tool to build a new widget.  The rules engine pulls that information from the trouble ticket system and applies a pre-existing rule to find content related to that widget.  The next time the user logs into your portal, you have a message ready to go for him or her with a list of articles that might help.
• A physician starts to provide support for a patient and submits one of several claims.  The same rules engine pull information from an insurance company’s system to note a gap in care, the pre-existing rule captures the gap and queues up a message for the physician’s office next time someone logs in.
• Still in the healthcare world, a patient goes to the doctor to have him look at his knee. The doctor tells him that it’s probably a blown ACL and after x-rays, they will probably schedule a knee operation.  On submission of the claim, the rules engine see the claim and applies a pre-existing rule. The next time the patient logs into the portal, they see a message telling them that the surgical center down the street from the hospital cost about half what they would pay for the same operation at the hospital and that will translate to $X of out of pocket expenses

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Of all the examples of personalization, I think this provides some of the highest value to both the end users and the companies who manage the portal.  Of course, doing something like this represents no small undertaking.  It requires:

1. A working portal site
2. a separate rules engine that makes it easy for savvy business users to setup rules
3. Integration with multiple systems to get event based information.  This would include web analytics, back end systems, attributes about a user to segment and define them, etc.
4. Integration with the portal and the rules engine. Some portal vendors have already integrated a rules engine, others need to do it. It’s not a complicated integration but it still requires some development effort
5. A way to test rules before you push them to production to ensure they work

So bottom line, rules based personalization provides huge value but requires a fair amount of investment on your part.