SmartDraw vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs. Microsoft Visio

I believe SmartDraw is a great tool for small- to mid-sized organizations for simplifying the production and management of org charts. We've also had the PMO experiment with the use of some of their flow charts as well. If an organization has an HCM with the capability of producing (good!) org charts, that is likely the best option... but many that I have used in my 30-year HR career don't. So there is definitely a need for SmartDraw in the market!

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Enterprise Architect can be used to capture business requirements, design and management of all successive models, algorithms, process flows/workflows, design of business data objects and other artifacts. The strong point is the ability to link the items in all models with each other, the more time the analysts and designers "invest" into making nice and clearly defined models, the higher the future pay-off by any successive changes to the systems. Enterprise Architect is not a good tool for capturing rather unstructured business requirements, use e.g. Confluence or other solutions instead. EA should comprise the extracted models with very little unstructured information. Management of the changes process should not be done in Enterprise Architect, rather use JIRA/Confluence or similar.

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Visio is by far and away the best tool that I have used to do Value Stream Mapping sessions with the warehouse I support. It has all of the shapes needed built in to be able to represent all areas of the processes. I also like how you are able to make the drawing as big as needed and when printing it out of Visio you have the ability to use the necessary paper size. The biggest complaint that I have with the software if how it can be cumbersome for non-Visio users (that is, people without a license in the orgnaization) to interact with the Visio Map. We normally have to dedicate one Visio SME to be able to make the changes that Process SME's find since they do not have access to the software.

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• Provides examples to work off of--these are helpful when you don't know exactly where to start.
• Provides a number of stylistic options without making things too complex, so you can be creative without getting overwhelmed.
• Provides a wide variety of templates, meets a wide variety of needs.

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• Open Architecture - A wide and extensive set of options, plug-ins and customization options make Sparx EA more of a tool kit than just a tool. Most tools allow customization but Sparx EA is built from the ground up with this in mind.
• Wide variety of formats, lexicons, standards and data import export capabilities allow different roles to interact with the information in different ways.
• Automated report generation allows architects and designers to spend less taking on word processing and more time on performing architecture and design.

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• Microsoft Visio is excellent for organizing thought processes related to our more complex research.
• The diagrams created with Microsoft Visio are ideal for graphically displaying the internal organization of work and research groups through flow diagrams.
• Microsoft Visio is a great tool for managing our students' activities by creating flowcharts that help us graphically visualize the steps of their group work.

• A month-to-month plan would be ideal for users that don't have a need to create many projects
• The sidebar navigation can be a little confusing with all of the tools listed.
• Offering customizable plans with only the feature you need would simplify navigation

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• Needs someone that is very conversant with business modelling terminology

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• When navigating through swim lanes, the user must be careful between switching from the point to the connection features as it can be difficult to remember which mode you’re in.
• When drawing “decision points,” it can be difficult to type words like “yes” or “no” between the connection lines.
• The exporting options aren’t ideal. They are hard to create in PDF format.

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We use Microsoft Visio to keep our diagrams updated and to that end we will need the subscription to keep using the software. Otherwise we will be left with PDF versions of the diagrams.

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I rated 8 because its simple to use and easy to create network topologies quickly. I liked the drag and drop option which makes designing the network topology and flow chart easier. In general its does what it needs to.

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I have always struggled with some basics, such as connection points, object alignment, font consistency, arranging layers and their order (bring forward, send backward), and managing overlap. I usually need to create an initial rough draft and then do a separate cleanup pass to bring the diagram up to my quality standards. If I skip that step, the result generally does not look very good. And once a diagram becomes busy or the file gets large, Visio has been unstable for me in the past, including occasional crashes that caused non-recoverable edits.

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They are always very helpful, we get computers every two years and I have to call them to move the license from one computer to another and they do it with a smile in their voice!

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The support team of Sparx EA, based in Australia, is always willing to help and give direction.

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Overall, I feel that Microsoft's support is weak. They are now such a behemoth that their model of putting documentation online for their users to sift through is totally outgrown. Given the amount of money you pay for these licenses, Microsoft should provide easy one-on-one support for their products via email or chat. The idea of paying their rates for support incidents is ridiculous. If you have an enormous amount of time on your hands, use their support websites and you will eventually find a solution most of the time.

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We have used Corel Draw and Adobe Acrobat. Both of those tools were good when they came out but the abilities of SmartDraw far outweigh both those tools. Corel Draw was also more complex to operate and do tasks, as was Adobe Acrobat in which some basic tasks took additional steps to complete.

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BiZZdesign represents a different new concept to enterprise architecture, its gravity center is not technical modelling, but rather a view on capturing the whole end-user experience or customer journey. It also allows to grasp areas as internal company capabilities, required for adoption/changes and operation of the solution, uses the same Archimate modelling language. This solution is in my opinion a new generation enabling to not only design the solutions, but also manage the whole application portfolio with respect to capabilities and requirement parameters.

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Even though it’s a more expensive solution, Vizio is built for the enterprise. Therefore, it integrates perfectly with our existing Microsoft stack, and quite frankly, because it’s such a more mature product, it provides exactly the functionality we need and expect.

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• SmartDraw has provided good return for our internal purposes. Using it to understand an organization's structure and inner workings has been valuable. On the client side, creating steps and businesses processes has also been a big plus. It has helped decrease confusing reporting structures and has provided a detailed map for individuals to understand where they fit within their organization.
• Unfortunately, SmartDraw has been somewhat inefficient with some of the more complex projects on our plate and has really deterred certain employees from even wanting to use it.

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• This program speed up the development process. It generates the actual code with my model classes after modeling

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• Reduces the amount of time I need to create process flow diagrams. In the past I would use Powerpoint or Word which required a lot more effort and time and never looked as good. Visio just takes that headache away.
• Only negative is that I personally believe it should always have been part and parcel of the Office suite, thus giving more users the opportunity to use it rather than specifically having to justify its separate purchase within our organisation. Different now with Office 365 of course!

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