A Gartner term that defines the concept of providing real-time access to critical business performance indicators to improve the speed and effectiveness of business operations. At its broadest level, BAM is the convergence of operational business intelligence and real-time application integration. Compared with traditional business event monitoring and reporting, BAM requires a higher degree of organizational and architectural planning and investment due to: Its focus on real-time data, as well as real-time access to data. The use of information from multiple application systems, and other internal and external sources (unlike traditional monitoring, which uses a single source). The delivery of information through alerts and graphical displays (dashboards), which are customized and optimized for different users across the enterprise. See application integration, business intelligence and ZLE.