Oracle BPM Suite is part of [the] Oracle Middleware Suite. We have [an] extensive license with Oracle. We use Oracle BPM as a front end technology. BPM is set up to cater to our business processes. We have multiple BPM workflows running as a part of our sales ecosystem. Oracle BPM [Suite] is a[n] advance[d] technology from Oracle. Development is not easy. Development requires knowledge of Multiple Oracle Technologies. UI is not easy with Oracle BPM.
Pros
Oracle BPM [Suite] can support unlimited number of cases. No limitations in cases raised.
Oracle Weblogic can handle multiple traffic. [It] can handle lots of heavy load[s].
Oracle BPM has extensive integration with database[s]. Huge number[s] of customization can be created.
Cons
Oracle BPM has a difficult UI to work with.
Oracle BPM have limited scope of using REST API based operation
SOA Workflows are difficult to understand
Likelihood to Recommend
Oracle BPM is part of [the] Middleware SOA suite. Hence Oracle BPM can be directly installed with Oracle Weblogic. Oracle BPM comes with [a] standard out of the box portal. Recently Oracle has introduced another Web based portal to design processes. Standard Oracle BPM workflows can be created using the Jdeveloper. Deploying BPM apps are easy to deploy over Weblogic. All features with Weblogic can be utilized with Oracle BPM. Oracle BPM is [a] standard Middleware product and can make excellent front end applications.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We have used Oracle BPM Suite to automate business processes across the organization, one of them being the creation and approvals of various business documents using long running tasks (with HumanTask). We moved to BPM from Outlook flow for approvals and the difference was tremendous. Having one place to see all processes and their statuses, adding reminders for overdue tasks, escalation, and delegation was really making a difference at that time.
Pros
Modeling business processes - it is providing an interface where users can drag and drop many kinds of shapes to build a business process.
HumanTask - I consider this as being the key strength of Oracle BPM. It allows you to create approval flows in different ways and it manages the long-running processes (while waiting for people to interact with the flow).
The user-interface for user tasks - it is one place where you can see all tasks and their progress. Admins can see and interact with other people's tasks.
Cons
Oracle BPM is left behind by other tools more modern in terms of user experience, usability and ability to integrate with everything else.
To really harvest the potential of Oracle BPM you need to do it in JDeveloper and with ADF. This restricts its usage to very technical people.
The administration of the Oracle BPM tools has really put a burden on our team. It is running on Weblogic and we experience issues very often either with performance or with a bad configuration of the system.
As with all Oracle products, the price can be an issue for smaller shops.
Likelihood to Recommend
There are other more modern tools out there that will do what Oracle BPM does but much better. Oracle BPM didn't keep up with competition in terms of: - user experience - usability of the tools - integration with everything else, whether it is in the cloud or local - performance - the ease of the administration - targeting all kind of users, not only technical - cost
It is a terrific tool, but it needs to be wielded by employees with a certain level of expertise in general IT experience. Personnel throughout the enterprise can learn more about processes within their own business of which they were not aware before purchasing this product. It can point out bottlenecks as well as highlighting processes that are performing spectacularly.
Pros
It can easily integrate with other Oracle products and even 3rd party software via adapters
It scales quite well and can handle the biggest enterprise level solutions we throw at it
The ability to use previous requirements as templates is invaluable
Cons
Again, it takes a decent amount of IT knowledge to realize the full potential of the Oracle BPM Suite
It can tend to feel sluggish unless you slightly exceed the minimum system requirements
There are so many features that it can be difficult to know which ones to use and which ones not to use in a given situation
Likelihood to Recommend
Business Architect lacks documentation or examples of how to use it, so unless your department has self-starters and those who like to learn on their feet, you may require some assistance. However, in the right hands, it can be an epic tool for your organization. The pricing structure is fine for large organizations, but the licensing can be overly burdensome for smaller companies who may wish to pursue other alternatives.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
We've implemented BPM solution for a very large client who uses multiple Oracle Cloud and On-premise applications including but not limited to Cloud HCM, Cloud Finance, Cloud procurement, Cloud Sales and Planning & Budgeting. Because of BPM Suite's extreme complexity and non-user friendliness, it is currently being used only as a pilot for HCM. The purpose of using BPM Suite is to identify the redundant and inefficient processes and streamline it for better overall efficiency.
Pros
Capacity to integrate well into a whole lot of apps and databases
The studio is quite helpful to configure the business processes especially if it's a standard flow. The drag and drop, although quite buggy, is good.
Cons
Extremely complicated to work with. The WYSIWYG is of no help either since it very buggy and poorly designed. If you are a business or functional user, you will have a hard time using the application.
The Oracle's "Using" and "Implementing" guides are nearly useless with no examples and case studies and there is no documentation available to learn or understand the process.
Very few skilled developers are available in market who really understand how to implement Oracle BPM suite.
Likelihood to Recommend
Unless your organization has a big budget and needs to streamline the business processes, you would want to steer clear of Oracle BPM Suite. It's a nightmare to use and implement. Especially for a small company, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Professional Services (501-1000 employees)
We use Oracle BPM Suite in the preparation of documentation related to our projects. The BPMN notation opens up a channel of common understanding between our engineers and the engineers of our clients. Quite apart from the Oracle BPM capabilities for diagramming business flows, the tool allows the use of real-time analytics to impress our clients.
Pros
Business flows under the BPMN 2 notation.
Real-time Analytics
Import flows from Oracle databases
Cons
Internal documentation
The price may be higher than other similar tools
Lack of support to import from non-Oracle databases
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are thinking of using Oracle BPM Suite to import flows from a database other than Oracle, you may not be able to do so. The real time factor is quite useful and gives the tool a competitive advantage over similar tools like Bizagi.
Oracle BPM is being used to evaluate expediting the existing processes of describing and programming modifications and enhancements to our Oracle system by modeling the processes instead. Currently only the Human Resources Information Systems department is using Oracle BPM, both because it's being evaluated and because only a few people have received training and know how to use it. However, if the pilot is successful, BPM is expected to be more widely used in the future.
Pros
Oracle BPM is particularly strong at drawing and modeling business processes with drag-and-drop tools
Cons
It's a very complex piece of software and documentation is poor. Examples and explanations appear to be non-existent.
Likelihood to Recommend
In my experience, Oracle BPM Suite is better suited for larger, more complex projects in which a visual model is intuitively easier to grasp than a document containing, for example, multiple levels of conditional processing. It's especially well-suited for projects in which process time and labor costs need to be calculated and justified.
My team and I at Mythics, Inc. provide consulting and implementation support for the Oracle BPM Suite to many customers in the Federal, State & Local, Higher Ed., and Commercial sectors. Typically the implementation starts at a smaller scale within a particular department within the organization, and after some initial success it quickly spreads across the organization. Usually the Oracle BPM implementation is the result of a business process modernization or automaton effort and is almost always accompanied by SOA. The SOA could be pre-existing or coupled with the BPM implementation. The biggest challenges Oracle BPM addresses are redundant, manual, inefficient and disconnected business processes. Implemented properly Oracle BPM provides a platform for efficiently automating and managing end-to-end business processes.
Pros
The web-based Process Composer and BPM Studio IDE is very user friendly (for both tech and business users) and gives you a nice WYSIWYG interface for modeling and building business processes.
There are many adapters that provide easy integration with many third-party applications, databases, files, email, social and other integration points.
Process Accelerators are available for many commonly used business processes to provide a "jump start" for organizations with a common need - they are releasing new accelerators regularly.
Many of the commonly used basic and advanced work flow and process activities are easily configured through the Composer or Studio and advanced features can be easily developed by users with expertise in XML and Java.
Cons
There is not a very clean or efficient way to upgrade from BPM 10g to BPM 11g since they are built on very different platforms - while this is only an issue if you have made significant investments of time and resources in BPM 10g, but still something that can be improved upon as many organizations want to take advantage of the new features and capabilities of Oracle BPM 11g, but do not want to take on the task of migrating their existing BPM 10g as it is overly complex and time consuming.
While the tools are moving ever closer to being "Business User" friendly, they are still more geared towards technical staff - savvy business users that have good understanding of BPMN and basic understanding of XML can proficiently utilize BPM 11g, but for the vast majority of busines users, the tool is still too complicated.
Likelihood to Recommend
Oracle BPM is well suited to organizations and environments that have a good understanding of their business processes and organizational structures. Trying to introduce a tool such as Oracle BPM into the organization without a good grasp on how the business operates is a recipe for disaster as the implementation will uncover all of the dirty secrets of an organizations business processes and bring them to light. BPM is not to be utilized for smaller service orchestrations or technical service implementations, these should be handled by the Oracle SOA Suite using the BPEL process manager, leaving BPM to handle the organizational business processes, referring to and including lower level services and BPEL processes as needed.
