BAM, or Business Activity Monitoring could be as simple as generating status reports of a business process or as complex and comprehensive as the monitoring and analyses of all critical enterprise activities.

Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM) is a complete solution for building interactive, real-time dashboards and proactive alerts for monitoring business processes and services - giving executives and operation managers the information they need to make better business decisions and take corrective action if the business environment changes.

An example of the use of BAM is the monitoring of credit card transactions to prevent fraud. If a large cash advance is charged to a credit card that is uncharacteristic of the normal behavior of the credit card holder, a bank security officer can call that person on the telephone and verify that the transaction was intended. Another example of suspicious behavior is the repeated withdrawal of cash at or near the allowable maximum from an automated teller machine (ATM) at frequent intervals.

BAM can also be used to forecast events such as interest rates, stock prices, fuel prices and even the outcomes of political elections and to determine how specific changes might affect the way an enterprise should be managed.