Appian vs IBM BPM | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8 out of 10

Based on 179 reviews and ratings

Score 7.2 out of 10

Based on 61 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe that Appian is very well-suited to provide an approval work-flow. For making requests where there is a specific hierarchy of approvals that must occur, it is great. For example, if an employee needs to make a capital request for a long term project, the number of approvals can be set based on the amount of the items/work that is to be capitalized. If the amount is < 10000, maybe only manager approval is required. If the amount is over 10,000, Department Budgetary approval is also required. Over 25,000, Finance approval is required. Over 100,000, executive approval is required. Appian makes it very easy to set these conditions and send out tasks based on them. Appian also Excels at reporting. Appian provides the tools to report on any of the data that is captured in the request. This data can be exported to Excel to be used for audits or data management. Data can be reported in a variety of ways grid format, generate a pdf, or with charts and graphs. I don't believe that Appian should be used to replace any cost accounting type of functions. There are enterprise systems, such as Oracle that do a better job with that. Appian's strength is providing workflows.

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Christine Mulready

Principal Programmer

GDITDefense & Space, 10,001+ employees

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Have your process first on paperIts important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is nomagic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so thatyou get a chance to improve your process continously.BPM is not an applicationIf you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for anorganization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an applicationlevel.http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.htmlKnow the difference between process data and business datahttp://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html

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Prasanna Selvaraj

Senior Consultant

Mindtree Ltd.Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Appian

IBM BPM

Visual Modeling

Drag-and-drop Interfaces

Platform Security

Platform User Management

Reusability

Platform Scalability

Appian

IBM BPM

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

Appian

IBM BPM

Process designer

Process simulation

Business rules engine

SOA support

Process player

Support for modeling languages

Form builder

Model execution

Appian

IBM BPM

Social collaboration tools

Appian

IBM BPM

Content management

Pros

I have observed after version 17.1 we have a lot of good features in Appian that improve usability (UX). This adds real value in this competitive Digital space.
You can understand business use case and convert it to a logical process automation.
Process Modeller has improved a lot and providing smart services use adds more value.
Service integration helps us to seamlessly integrate with third-party systems

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Ravi Joshi, PMI-ACP®

Solutions Architect

Fidelity InternationalInvestment Management, 5001-10,000 employees

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System does a great job normalizing business process and automating order processing tasks. Before TeamWorks, the process was much more manual and more expensive staff ($65k to $70K) were required to manage the process. Since implementing TeamWorks, we need much lower-skilled workers to manage order processing.
System ensures that we have consistent data across all systems.
Rules engine is really the “company playbook” – it is the heart and soul of how the company works. It handles thousands of orders per day

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Advanced functionality requires use of the Appian expression language. The more advanced the logic, the harder it is to build with the expression language. This means development expertise is more relevant if you need advanced functionality, which I imagine applies almost all the time. I would much prefer if they allowed some common language such as JavaScript out of the box.
Debugging has proved difficult. It’s easy for developers to get the app to or feature to a “working” state but it needs robust alpha testing.
Deployment can be tricky. When a solution gets big and there are many teams and dependencies, it needs a careful process to ensure things don’t break.
Reasuability of Appian objects is both a pro and con. Reusing objects across apps may be more trouble than its worth because of creating heavy dependencies. Experience is helpful to strike the right balance.

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Verified User

Director in Research & Development

Pharmaceuticals Company, 10,001+ employees

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The system gets crashed when many instances go into the queue stage. The system even crashes and sometimes restarts automatically when the load on the server increases. We had to develop a separate software for this and maintain the same.
We cannot manipulate the data during run time. It is difficult to develop user-interfaces with complex functionality.
In order to consume external services that follow HTTP protocol, we need to use IDE for that, and consuming services from IDE takes a lot of time to give a response.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Appian 9.0

Based on 16 answers

We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian

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Michael Campbell, PMP,CSM

Director, Strategic Process Project Management

Scripps NetworksBroadcast Media, 1001-5000 employees

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IBM BPM 8.0

Based on 4 answers

This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Music Company, 501-1000 employees

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Usability

Appian 8.6

Based on 45 answers

Great platform for providing business process management. Fairly easy to learn tool (especially now that I have seen the evolution over 5 years). More difficult to master, but there is a great community that is always willing and able to help solve your problem.

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Business Process Management Administrator/Designer

Scripps Networks InteractiveBroadcast Media, 1001-5000 employees

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IBM BPM 8.0

Based on 2 answers

• The system is easy enough to use but, by definition, is a complex tool. However, they have done a good job generally balancing tool complexity / capability with usability. When comparing to MS Biz Talk, for example, Biz Talk has less functionality but is actually harder to use.
• Software is very flexible. For somebody with the right technical background, it’s quite easy to write some Java code to overcome any hurdles or make the product do what is needed

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Appian 8.1

Based on 123 answers

We have a mixture of onsite and offshore support by Appian and their partner Cognizant. Our stated support hours for the business are 9-5pm Mon-Fri. Cognizant being located in India provides us with coverage up to 9pm should anything happen that needs urgent attention. Appian Cloud Support are also there should we have any issues connecting to the application.

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Business Analyst

Sydney AirportAirlines/Aviation, 201-500 employees

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IBM BPM 8.0

Based on 2 answers

Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 201-500 employees

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In-Person Training

Appian 9.0

Based on 1 answer

As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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IBM BPM 9.0

Based on 1 answer

• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Online Training

Appian 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Really great training platform. Very visual and easy to use.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Implementation Rating

Appian 9.0

Based on 8 answers

It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.

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Development Team Lead for BPM, Integration and Special Project Teams

University of WollongongHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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IBM BPM 9.0

Based on 1 answer

• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

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Alternatives Considered

The main advantage of Appian is the cost structure that is more suitable for starting a test-project to see how develop in Appian and most of all how Appian is accepted inside the company. In few weeks you can show the first results and start the journey on digitalization.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Other

Banking Company, 201-500 employees

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Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight.Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it.Pega vs IBMIts difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.

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Prasanna Selvaraj

Senior Consultant

Mindtree Ltd.Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

IBM BPM 10.0

Based on 1 answer

It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load

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Founder and Chief Technology Officer

BP3 Global, Inc.Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

Our objective to reduce customer effort when dealing with government by 25% was exceeded. In the process of applying for an alcohol licence renewal alone, we saw approximately 80% reduction in time and effort for the business customer - and that was just a prototype! Imagine the possibilities when this is taken into a live environment!

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Lynley Johnston

Contract Senior Business Analyst

Department of Internal Affairs (NZ)Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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It has added value to the upper management to give visibility into what is happening at any time in the enterprise.
Boosted employee morale because it gives them all the information to work the case/task in a single location.
Identifies bottlenecks and improves the turnover.

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Keshava Murthy B S

IBM Smarter Process Solution Architect

PerficientComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees

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Screenshots

See All (5) Appian Screenshots

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Appian Editions & Modules

Edition

Free	$0
Standard	60.00²
Flat Fee	Contact Sales³
Enterprise	Contact Sales⁴

per user per month
one fixed price per app, unlimited users
unlimited number of apps, priced by user

Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

IBM BPM Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

Appian

IBM BPM

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