IBM Business Automation Workflow vs. Mendix

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Mendix
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Mendix is a low code platform-as-a-service offering with mobile and social extensions. Mendix was acquired by Siemens August 2018.
$0
Pricing
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free Edition
$0
Pro Edition
1,250
per month (billed annually)
Pro Edition
1,250
per month (billed annually)
Enterprise Edition
1,675
per month (billed annually)
Enterprise Edition
1,675
per month (billed annually)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
20% above category average
Mendix
-
Ratings
Dashboards10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
17% above category average
Mendix
-
Ratings
Process designer10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process simulation10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Business rules engine10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
SOA support10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process player10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for modeling languages10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Form builder10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Model execution10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
3 Ratings
20% above category average
Mendix
-
Ratings
Social collaboration tools10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
21% above category average
Mendix
-
Ratings
Content management10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
-
Ratings
Mendix
8.5
9 Ratings
1% below category average
Visual Modeling00 Ratings8.29 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces00 Ratings8.69 Ratings
Platform Security00 Ratings8.89 Ratings
Platform User Management00 Ratings8.69 Ratings
Reusability00 Ratings8.29 Ratings
Platform Scalability00 Ratings8.39 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Small Businesses
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Quixy
Quixy
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(66 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(12 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.7
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMendix
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Siemens AG
Mendix excels in scenarios involving Business Process Automation, making it a strong choice for applications requiring workflow automation, including processes like request approvals, document management, and other business workflows.Conversely, Mendix may be less suitable for projects that demand highly customized solutions with extensive custom coding. Its primary focus on low-code development may not align well with the requirements of projects that heavily rely on intricate and specialized coding.
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Pros
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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Siemens AG
  • We're able to really easily develop different views that are very specific to a customer's needs or customer's different types of user needs. So for example, the production managers can have a certain view that's relevant to them and then certain line managers can have views that are specific to them that allow them to run different scenarios which they define. So it allows us to easily build customized apps for each different type of user.
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Cons
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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Siemens AG
  • Earlier versions lacked in UI/Ux. This is still improving.
  • Since everyone and anyone can create custom add ons (widgets), Mendix could improve their quality checks (but not as rigid as eg Apple).
  • Upgradeability used to be somewhat of an issue. Version 7 looks to be handling this better than previous versions.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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Siemens AG
A 10 would say I have nothing to wish for. A 9 means I haven't seen anything better.This tool really helps you in the whole creation and maintenace cycle, so from requirements to building/modeling to testing to deploying to capturing feedback.
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Support Rating
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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Siemens AG
Response times are quick and you will get updates regularly about the status of your request. Even with very technical questions they have specialists that can help you with your problems it will give you an answer or help you with a work around.
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In-Person Training
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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Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Siemens AG
Mendix would be my preferred system all the way. The system is designed for these kinds of works. I've worked with WP and DNN but they should be used just for websites. To create an app for a business value, I would suggest Mendix. Also, the offline capabilities of Mendix have greatly improved since the deployment of Mendix 7.13.
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Scalability
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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Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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Siemens AG
  • It helps to speed up application development because of its low code by the fact that it's low code. It allows professional developers to focus more on specialized application development rather than the more routine application development that business IT and super users can do for themselves with some coaching from the IT department. So it's just allowing the more specialist professional developers.net, for example, Java in our organization to focus on more complex engineering application developments.
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ScreenShots

Mendix Screenshots

Screenshot of Agile Project Management: Collaborate. Manage. Iterate.Screenshot of Central App Management: Application Management Made Easy.Screenshot of App Store: Hundreds of building blocks to get you out of the gate.Screenshot of 1-Click Deployment: Efficient DevOps. Enabled.