Business activity monitoring (BAM) can provide real-time views that improve operations in the same way that the driver of a vehicle uses driving and navigation skills and technology to monitor various factors that will help him or her reach a desired destination safely. With BAM, real-time data is interpreted in context, assuming that companies make the initial effort to define what has to be monitored, the variables to be considered, who receives alerts on problems, and the best ways to provide and send alerts. The results are speeded response times and improved decision-making. While service level management (SLM) and business service management (BSM) are IT-focused, business process management (BPM) and business activity monitoring (BAM) are business-focused. BAM specifically monitors, filters, and analyzes events as they take place in enterprise business processes or IT operations. Users are informed by alerting of issues and aberrations or suitable processes are automatically triggered. Topics covered are the most common architecture, the results of a survey on the types of performance metrics and standards used by responding companies, and an action plan consisting of four steps for BAM deployments (identification of business process components, identification of problem or risk areas on the process, development of metrics and indicators, and implementation and customization of BAM).