ARIS vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ARIS
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Software AG's Business Process Analysis Platform, ARIS, uses robust architecture and process management / analysis capability to drive integrations with the existing business processes along with information technology and SAP systems.
$100
designer
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow is a solution that helps users automate digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency and insights — on premises or on cloud.N/A
Pricing
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Editions & Modules
ARIS Elements
$100
designer
ARIS Advanced
$200
designer
ARIS Enterprise
contact us
ARIS Enterprise
contact us
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Considered Both Products
ARIS
Chose ARIS

Features like SAP Solman Sync, Alfabet EA integration (another Software AG product) and a well defined framework for BPM or any consulting practice across any verticals or domains is useful in a consulting practice, whether it's TOGAF methodology, running a BPM Lifecycle or Six …

IBM Business Automation Workflow

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
9.1
6 Ratings
11% above category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
20% above category average
Dashboards7.96 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Standard reports9.76 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Custom reports9.86 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
7.5
6 Ratings
12% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
17% above category average
Process designer8.26 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process simulation8.66 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Business rules engine6.46 Ratings10.04 Ratings
SOA support7.45 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process player6.02 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Support for modeling languages9.16 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Form builder7.16 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Model execution6.82 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
8.4
6 Ratings
3% above category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
3 Ratings
20% above category average
Social collaboration tools8.46 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
9.3
6 Ratings
13% above category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
21% above category average
Content management9.36 Ratings10.04 Ratings
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ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
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Medium-sized Companies
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Enterprises
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(6 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
Software AG
Well suited for enterprise architecture modeling where the intent to document elements beyond processes as well, such as risks and controls, KPIs, systems, org charts, etc. It also has the excellent capability of creating custom reports, hence if looking for various views right from summary to detailed, this is a great tool. It is less appropriate for implementing the processes as it is not very strong in BPMN.
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IBM
Have your process first on paper Its important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is no magic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so that you get a chance to improve your process continously. BPM is not an application If you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for an organization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an application level. http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.html Know the difference between process data and business data http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html
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Pros
Software AG
  • Query feature is excellent to extract information in a specific manner.
  • Ability to create custom reports.
  • Collaboration feature is very good.
  • Semantic checks to check validation errors.
  • cloud based central repository.
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IBM
  • 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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Cons
Software AG
  • Defining databases, use of entities and relationship diagrams, define data, like data models, there is still a part they could improve.
  • Providing more standard reports and improving on access rights and privileges functionality
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IBM
  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Software AG
No answers on this topic
IBM
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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Usability
Software AG
I am a BPM and Enterprise Architect Consultant and hence have been using different BPM and EA tools for consulting practice. Until now I have used Opentext Provision EA,Sparx EA, MS Visio and IBM Blueworks. All of the tools used are good and have their own unique features and capabilities. ARIS BPA is widely used by my current organization for different projects.
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IBM
• 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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Support Rating
Software AG
It has good, even complex functionality that is provided by its library and ability to create relations between items, yet it is not hard to use. Anyone can use it in a short time. It provides reporting abilities and good documentation with the availability of exporting options. The only drawback I have seen was user management/login issues.
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IBM
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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In-Person Training
Software AG
No answers on this topic
IBM
• 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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Implementation Rating
Software AG
No answers on this topic
IBM
• 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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Alternatives Considered
Software AG
The Service area, they have been very useful. ARIS suite is covering number of applications. ARIS engine is very powerful and robust. The tool can be configured in many ways which can be beneficial but can be a curse at the same time. As a user, you need to apply this flexibility with care.
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IBM
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 IBM Its 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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Scalability
Software AG
No answers on this topic
IBM
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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Return on Investment
Software AG
  • Documentation of processes made it possible for anyone to see who does what, how and using what systems.
  • Dependency on specific people is eliminated.
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IBM
  • 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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ScreenShots

ARIS Screenshots

Screenshot of Start page of ARIS Elements.Screenshot of Modeling a BPMN diagram using the web-based ARIS designer.Screenshot of A process landscape in the ARIS portal.Screenshot of A customer journey landscape in the ARIS portal.Screenshot of The steps view of a process model, automatically generated, enriched with multi-media content. An easier way to get process knowledge to employees.Screenshot of A management dashboard in the ARIS portal.