Ideagen Risk Management vs. ProcessMaker

Pentana is great for monitoring PIs and risks. We find it less helpful for monitoring projects (with the Actions module); it isn't quite flexible enough for our needs, though the support team have been very helpful in adding custom fields for us.

The task mining component is well suited for processes where there are a lot of steps performed in a variety of systems, particularly by a single individual on a team. It also requires a robust activity ID to be able to track an activity. It is not well suited when trying to track a process where the content is in an email.

Incentivized

• Pentana is excellent for monitoring, recording and reporting on PIs. Very easy to use the PI module.
• Pentana is excellent for monitoring risks at various levels (service, strategic etc.). Risks are displayed very clearly in a tree structure and the module is relatively easy to use.

• User interface. It is clean and easy to understand. You won't get overwhelmed the second you log in.
• The workflow maker. With a drag and drop interface, you can easily visualize and implement what you want on the screen. Out of all the programs we tested, this one had the easiest process maker and designer.
• Ease of understanding. My biggest recommendation would be that this program is easy to access for anyone. There are complications (see negatives) but this program can be implemented quickly and efficiently, and nearly anyone can learn to use it. You will not feel like you are in the dark with it.

Incentivized

• Pentana could improve the free Documents module that comes with Pentana Risk. At the moment documents have to be linked to an action in order to display query results (such as how many documents are due for review) - this can be confusing for users who don't understand why there is an action linked. There is also no easy way for users to see the documents that are assigned to them.
• We would like to use the Actions module fully in order to monitor our corporate projects, but it a bit confusing for users and not very flexible when a project doesn't mirror Pentana's way of monitoring actions.

• Complications when you get to the more advanced pieces. When trialing, I found that the more advanced a process got, the more complicated it got for me in coding. When you begin using the more advanced features, you will find that you need to have a basic knowledge of coding - otherwise you won't go any further. This was my sole issue. Unfortunately, it was one that would have brought the school to a grinding halt if they were to ever get more complicated than they were.

Incentivized

We are happy with this product

Incentivized

Some modules are more user-friendly than others. It's sometimes not obvious where to click to update the fields (or even that field titles can be clicked on). We have written 'Howdys' to help users. There can also seem to be a lot of steps/clicks to updating risks and actions. The Reports module on Pentana classic is certainly not user-friendly, particularly the Report Layout and Charts modules - we were told these would be integrated into the web version but this hasn't happened yet.

I gave this overall rating for ProcessMaker due to its overall flexibility, design and ease of use for most. Examples of this from us include it being an excellent and trustworthy tool for automating processes, the abilities and capabilities for real-time process tracking and the web-based accessibility and implementation which allows for easy access and management of the tool.

Incentivized

The support team are excellent and always answer queries promptly. They are very helpful.

We selected Pentana because our neighbouring authorities are users and had spoken highly of the product and given us demonstrations; some of our staff were also familiar with Pentana when it was called Covalent. It seemed to be the best product on the market for monitoring risks, PIs and projects.

Before making the decision to get ProcessMaker, we assessed different and best options in the market, which are also quite competitive. KiSSFLOW, Blueworks Live, and Bizagi, being the most relevant and ADONIS, to mention the ones we consider the most relevant and capable of meeting our needs. In the end, we went for ProcessMaker because of mainly three things as described before: 1. Real-time process status tracking. 2. Metrics and dashboards. 3. Ease of use for constructing diagrams.

The capability is robust and quite industry agnostic. It would benefit significantly with some out of the box models - e.g. procure to pay on SAP and similar. They could also develop industry specific examples which could kickstart the implementation for organizations.

Incentivized

• Pentana Risk has allowed my team to focus on other areas of work whereas before we would be manually chasing for updates on PIs and risk. Pentana Risk does the chasing for us!
• We are able to produce reports for audit purposes very easily, rather than sending spreadsheets which is what we used to do.
• New managers can easily inherit risks, projects and PIs and see all of this on a custom portal, saving them time when they start.

• I'm using Communication edition to introduce BPMN in my organization. I can build the first process in a short time, make my boss more confident with my job.
• But, with ProcessMaker, we need more time to design code to handle the process, and without PHP/Javascript Programmer, it seems hard to work with more and more processes online.
• However, IE Browser is not well supported, somewhat let the user confuse.

Incentivized