ARIS vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ARIS
Score 8.0 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 9.7 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
NoNo
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
Bizagi Digital Business Platform and Signavio Process Manager
Chose ARIS
Yes, ARIS is one of the leading process modeling and analysis tools with advanced reporting and modeling capabilities. It also provides a license for simulation and process mining.
Chose ARIS
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 …
Chose ARIS
ARIS has its own EPC notation which is very easy, hence a preferred notation amongst many. It has some enhanced features like the ability to create custom reports, queries, adhoc analysis, and simulation, which not all tools offer. However, it is very high priced compared to …
Chose ARIS
ARIS is a much more complex ecosystem than Visio in terms of functionality, being able to create complex relations between people, departments, IT systems, input and output documents, and roles. ARIS handles all these via its library that is defined and created for the whole …
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
Chose IBM Business Automation Workflow
IBM BPM makes development easier, which is faster when compared to the others. IBM's customer support is good. Easy for the user to learn while providing powerful integration. More secure when compared to others. It provides the reusability of components. Monitoring and report …
Chose IBM Business Automation Workflow
BPM was purchased together with other products from IBM's InfoSphere and WebSphere offerings before I came here. I have personally worked with alternatives at a previous jobs. I have developed workflows using SharePoint. I have developed workflows using Documentum's workflow …
Chose IBM Business Automation Workflow
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. …
Features
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
9.1
Ratings
11% above category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Dashboards7.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Standard reports9.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Custom reports9.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
7.4
Ratings
12% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
18% above category average
Process designer8.20 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process simulation8.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Business rules engine6.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
SOA support7.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process player6.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Support for modeling languages9.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Form builder7.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Model execution6.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
8.4
Ratings
0% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
17% above category average
Social collaboration tools8.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
ARIS
9.3
Ratings
13% above category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Content management9.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
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ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
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Medium-sized Companies
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ARISIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
ARIS is well suited when we want to understand the interrelationship between different processes and their decencies on systems etc. It allows to create an integrated view with easy navigation from one process to another and allows to add information like metrics, risks, cycle time, FTE, etc. Overall, it is a great tool for modeling and analysis. Though it offers BPMN notation, it has limited compatibility with some other tools, hence if the objective is to implement these processes using tools like PEGA then is it not suitable. Further, it is very high priced, so for basic modeling, it might give the right ROI.
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It is best suited for streamlining business processes in our enterprise. It acts as middleware and allows to use of mobile development
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Pros
  • BPMN, EPC based modelling of business processes
  • Enterprise Architecture modelling and consulting using support of TOGAF and ArchiMate with extended packages to ARIS BPA
  • Continuously evolving product based on upcoming and current industry trends
  • Supports IOT modelling and also cloud based infrastructure management
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  • Case management - provides flexibility for dynamic processing.
  • Smarter process - streamlines repeatable activities and does work distributions.
  • Advanced integration - makes integration with other systems very easy.
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Cons
  • Has been used in multiple coe set up programs where ARIS has been super handy to use especially its modeling and documentation capability.
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  • Installation is (typically) a bit painful out of the box and requires expert help.
  • Following installation, initial projects require outside consulting expertise to be successful. Projects without importing BPM expertise tend to have much higher failure rates. Though individually the technologies involved are widely available and not complicated, combined and collectively BPM solutions require a flexible, creative, technical talent to help deliver. It takes time to learn the judgment and craft required.
  • The out-of-the-box UI controls (widgets) are not terribly inspiring- on desktop or mobile. Use of third party toolkits (e.g. Brazos) is recommended. Silver lining: those third party toolkits are quite good.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
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
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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Building complex UIs can be cumbersome. Calling complex SOA services that have a lot of objects, types, anyType attributes, recursive object references, etc can be cumbersome. The Process Designer IDE communicates with the server side Process Center a lot and as a result it is pretty slow. The IDE is also Eclipse based which doesn't make it faster.
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Support Rating
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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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
No answers on this topic
• 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
No answers on this topic
• 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
Yes, ARIS is one of the leading process modeling and analysis tools with advanced reporting and modeling capabilities. It also provides a license for simulation and process mining.
Read full review
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
No answers on this topic
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
  • 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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  • Easier to implement and does not take much effort to work on it.
  • Versioning made easy. We can even degrade to the previous version in case of any issue, which is not easier to do in other BPM suites, thereby, saving a good amount of time.
  • Helped in achieving client requirements faster, which results in a higher return of investment.
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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.