IBM Business Automation Workflow vs. Microsoft 365 Business Premium

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
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
An integrated solution, designed for small or medium-sized businesses, bringing together the productivity of Microsoft Office with advanced security capabilities to help safeguard data from external threats and help protect against data leaks. With Microsoft 365 Business Premium, users can empower employees to be productive anywhere on any device. Get more done with AI built into the Office apps. Work better together with a hub for teamwork bringing your tools and people together in one place.…N/A
Pricing
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
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
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
-
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
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
-
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
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
-
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
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
-
Ratings
Content management10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
Small Businesses
Square 9 Softworks
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Score 9.7 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(8 ratings)
8.2
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(45 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(41 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.4
(9 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Business Automation WorkflowMicrosoft 365 Business Premium
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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Microsoft
Well-Suited Scenarios:Collaborative Work Environment:Scenario: Your organization relies heavily on collaboration, and you need a platform that integrates email, chat, document sharing, and online meetings seamlessly.Usage: Microsoft 365 Business Premium provides tools like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, fostering a collaborative work environment.Professional Communication:Scenario: Your business requires professional email communication with a custom domain, and you need advanced email security features.Usage: Microsoft 365 includes Exchange Online for business-class email, with features like anti-malware and anti-spam protection.Document Management and Sharing:Scenario: You have a need for centralized document storage, version control, and secure sharing within and outside the organization.Usage: OneDrive for Business and SharePoint allow for secure document storage, versioning, and controlled access to files.
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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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Microsoft
  • Work in sync in different departments.
  • Being able to work from any device or computer. It is a very noble tool in different devices.
  • The work between the different programs (Word, Excel, Notes) that it offers is extremely light and good.
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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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Microsoft
  • The only thing that is a bit cumbersome is that it doesn't seem that you can save files directly to programs like one drive if you aren't using a Microsoft program to generate the document. An example of this would be if I am working in a PDF in our PDF Program I have to first save it to my desktop and then drag it into one drive. I end up with duplicates and that can sometimes make it hard to remember which is the most up-to-date.
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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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Microsoft
It is part of the organisation now. It provides and rich feature set and requires a relatively low amount of administration.
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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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Microsoft
The basic apps are straightforward and easy to use, especially since they have been around so long. I'm referring to the basic apps like Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc. Other features such as Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint Sites, Sharepoint Lists, Sharepoint Groups, etc. all require a higher level of knowledge to both implement and use properly
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Performance
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
In the last 5 years, Microsoft has come a long way. The performance of the products has become more and more user-friendly and it seems that the feedback provided by the user community is being listened to and worked on. The processes are very fast and seamless. There are negligible errors and doesn't slow the systems down.
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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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Microsoft
As mentioned elsewhere in the review, Microsoft has historically paid attention to community feedback and issues, but timeliness can improve, and so can the addressing of long-standing issues about which many users have said "I have this issue too!" but no official solution exists. For issues that do have a solution, however, the solution is usually not difficult to find, and the explanation of features on Microsoft's website can mitigate many problems.
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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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
Before migrating to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, we possessed an in-house exchange server. Therefore, it was difficult for us to look at alternatives to Microsoft for a solution – we did look at the Google Suite of products, but the transition for us seemed less cumbersome to stay with Microsoft from a staff and administrative perspective. While the G Suite does offer us many outstanding products and services, we also didn’t feel that Gmail is up-to-par as a corporate solution the way Exchange/Outlook/OWA are – this alone was also a driving force for our end-users, as there was minimal transition for them to move from an on-premise solution to an off-premise solution. The additional features of SharePoint, Teams, Project, and so many other applications within Microsoft 365 also helped us make a strong case to stay with Microsoft and expand what we were using. The end-user and mobile protections of InTune have also put us at ease when issuing laptops and mobile phones to an almost fully-remote end-user base.
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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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
  • Teams has streamlined our chats within each department so its easy to help out each other when problems or issues arise as well as having chat conversations in real time instead of the slower email option. This is especially handy when peopel are not working in the same space and cannot use a phone.
  • All of our major communications, are done through Outlook email keeping everyone on the same page of issues within our organization or updates coming out for example
  • Excel provides a simple system for creating our schedules, Tracking customer issues, project boards etc. having all these readily available minimizes time spent looking for information and grants more time for customer interaction and increasing service and sales.
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ScreenShots