What users are saying about

Appian vs IBM BPM

Appian

Top Rated
159 Ratings

IBM BPM

53 Ratings

Appian

Top Rated
159 Ratings
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Score 8.3 out of 101

Based on 159 reviews and ratings

IBM BPM

53 Ratings
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Score 8.1 out of 101

Based on 53 reviews and ratings

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Likelihood to Recommend

Appian

Surely Appian is not a Site Development Tool. So we should avoid the use of a system for just UX development. We should look for process automation as much as we can mature the use cases.

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Ravi Joshi, PMI-ACP®
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IBM BPM

BPM is well suited for simple as well as complex approval workflows. It is well suited for simple User Interfaces. The BPM Coach feature is not well suited if you need complex User Interfaces. If you need to use complex User Interfaces with BPM then you are better off using Portlets. It is also not well suite if you have SOA services that have a lot of types, recursive references, and anyType attributes.

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Verified User
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Feature Rating Comparison

Reporting & Analytics

Appian
—
IBM BPM
2.1
Dashboards
Appian
—
IBM BPM
2.1
Standard reports
Appian
—
IBM BPM
2.1
Custom reports
Appian
—
IBM BPM
2.1

Process Engine

Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0
Process designer
Appian
—
IBM BPM
9.0
Process simulation
Appian
—
IBM BPM
7.0
Business rules engine
Appian
—
IBM BPM
9.9
SOA support
Appian
—
IBM BPM
9.0
Process player
Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0
Support for modeling languages
Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0
Form builder
Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0
Model execution
Appian
—
IBM BPM
5.0

Collaboration

Appian
—
IBM BPM
4.0
Social collaboration tools
Appian
—
IBM BPM
4.0

Content Management Capabilties

Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0
Content management
Appian
—
IBM BPM
8.0

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® profile photo
Ravi Joshi, PMI-ACP®
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  • BPMN diagrams are somewhat easy to read and comprehend for non-technical business users.
  • BPM Coaches allow developers to rapidly develop simple User Interfaces.
  • BPM allows developers to call basic SOA services easily.

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Verified User
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Cons

  • No source control.
  • Very minimal debugging.
  • Appian boasts it is "low code", but it is anything but, especially if you want to do anything non trivial.
  • Very hard to install and upgrade. This should be easy, but very hard to get right, very easy to mess up.
  • Doesn't scale easily, this again is a lot of hard work to get right and hard to maintain.

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Verified User
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  • If you need to develop complex User Interfaces, they are very hard to implement using Coaches.
  • If you need to call SOA Services that have complex data structures such as recursively nested objects and anyType objects, the built in service discovery and type generation does not support it and blows up.
  • The Process Designer IDE tends to run very slow because of all the chatting it has to do with the server side Process Center.

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Verified User
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Likelihood to Renew

Appian9.5
Based on 11 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
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IBM BPM8.0
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
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Usability

Appian8.8
Based on 28 answers
Very easy to develop and learn. Extremely intuitive for business users.

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David Cohen
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IBM BPM8.0
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
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Support

Appian8.3
Based on 52 answers
We have Appian support here full time who are always helpful and understand both the products and our needs. They help guide the product to help it stay stable.On the odd occasion we need to call Appian themselves, they have always been responsive and genuinely want to help us solve the issue.

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Verified User
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IBM BPM9.0
Based on 1 answer
• Always get a response to a support ticket in less than 2 hours
• Urgent tickets are usually responded to within 15 minutes
• Support staff generally are familiar with our setup and it’s not necessary to explain things multiple times – frequently talk to the same person who is very familiar with our setup

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Verified User
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In-Person Training

Appian9.0
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
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IBM BPM9.0
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
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Online Training

Appian10.0
Based on 1 answer
Really great training platform. Very visual and easy to use.

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Verified User
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No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Implementation

Appian8.0
Based on 1 answer
No answer on this topic is available.
IBM BPM9.0
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
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Alternatives Considered

We went through a light-touch Request for Proposal process, explaining the problem we were trying to fix and giving lots of examples of the current process and pain points. Appian was one of 10 respondents but stood out as having all of the components that would make putting the customer first, sharing information across multiple government agencies, workflow, low code and speed to build a working prototype that would work on multiple devices (pc, mobile, table) out of the box.Appian understood the problem we were trying to fix, and their response answered the majority of our concerns about how to solve the problems for the business customer by using and re-using information. Other providers could do some parts of the functionality needed, or offered to build the prototype from scratch, or couldn't meet our timeframes (due to length of delivery or lack of resources). Some of the respondents missed the point entirely and simply did not meet the requirements we set.Another factor was the cost estimate presented by the respondents - Appian was not the cheapest, but they were definitely not wildly expensive (unlike a couple of other respondents)!

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Lynley Johnston
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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
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Scalability

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
IBM BPM10.0
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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Scott Francis
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Return on Investment

  • Keeps our data clean with validations which cuts down on paying unnecessary claims
  • Spent millions of dollars to build over 4 years

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David Cohen
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  • We use IBM BPM more to help our customers than to help ourselves. For our customers, IBM BPM has helped us dramatically reduce cycle time of previously manual processes, while increasing accuracy and customer satisfaction. However, it is difficult to get customers to go on record with ROI as they treat this as confidential/private information.

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Scott Francis
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Pricing Details

Appian

General
Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No
Additional Pricing Details
—

Appian More Information

Appian RPA

IBM BPM

General
Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No
Additional Pricing Details
—

IBM BPM More Information