What is our primary use case?
The core use case is rooted in a non-financial risk program. For people reading who aren't involved in financial services, there are both financial risks within financial institutions making credit and lending decisions and non-financial risks, which are similar to those faced by many enterprises. These are the elements within life which can negatively impact a business that are not related to finance. A really good example is COVID in the last couple of years, which caused fundamental shifts in operating models. Therefore, our program is seeking to address the non-financial risks within our environments, which is being done through initially capturing the processes that power the bank.
At the end of November, we recently completed a migration into the cloud solution provided by Software AG. As a consequence of that, we jumped a number of versions to 10.15.
It is a private cloud SaaS solution provided by Software AG.
How has it helped my organization?
We are still in the early stages. We are in year three of the rollout for ARIS with this use case. Although it is still very early on, we are starting to see, as a result of the deployment of ARIS, the building out of end-to-end processes used within the group have much stronger cross-team, cross-divisional collaboration, e.g., it has a very clear, specific focus and outcome. So, there is a purpose to it beyond the theoretical need for people to work together.
We are starting to see the beginnings of a more robust operational resilience capability within the bank. That will be delivered in stages and phases over the next two years.
We are also beginning to see, across a number of business divisions, a more effective early-stage analysis of business processes. Then, that leads to the optimization of those processes and the removal of customer pain points. Without a shadow of a doubt, right across the business, that is happening.
What is most valuable?
ARIS by Software AG for the most part is incredibly intuitive at the mapper and business division level. We have had many cases where we work with our colleagues across the bank who have been experiencing using solutions like Visio. Once they have a core understanding of its processes from a visual sense, they can very quickly and intuitively start to use ARIS. As you get more into the complexity of the analysis, reporting, and administration, then that intuitiveness is less obvious. However, that is a case where you receive more training and are undertaking much more complex tasks. As a tool that is used by non-technical colleagues within the business division, the first line within the bank can strongly recommend it.
This solution gives us an easy way to enable visibility for our colleagues across 11 business divisions, and a couple of countries that we work in, on how the bank operates. We are in phase two of a multi-year program to build out those processes. What we are starting to do now is build out end-to-end views. As processes, data, and customer contacts span multiple parts of the bank, we are building out full end-to-end views so colleagues will have visibility across the group.
One of the many advantages of ARIS is that it is supported by a very strong BPM community, which is critical for us. Although Business Process Management has been in business for many years, it is still at an early stage of evolution. There are so many instances where your specific use case or requirement for using ARIS hasn't necessarily been matured across the sector. So, you need access to a very active community to help you explore possible solutions and ways in which ARIS can be used to achieve those use cases.
What needs improvement?
The areas of ARIS where we see room for improvement are actually related to the background services that support it. Over the last number of years, Software AG has moved from an on-premises solution into deploying a SaaS solution to their enterprise base. That has been really successful from my point of view, as I have been a customer of ARIS, managing the relationship, for a couple years. Certain support functions around the knowledge base, customer service, and the information available on modules within the core ARIS component are lagging behind the SaaS movement.
Traditionally, enterprise software is sold by sales people pitching to customers individually. Once you move into the SAAS environment, everything becomes more digital, and they haven't yet fully moved into that space.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for four years within the bank.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had no issues with the stability of ARIS in the cloud. We had issues with the stability of ARIS as a hosted solution internally, but that reflects on our capability rather than being a reflection of their software.
We have a COE (Center of Excellence) that both supports the deployment and maintenance of ARIS, and more specifically is part of the non-financial risk and operational resilience team. So, we have a CORE team of about 18, but very few of those are specifically focused on the maintenance and support of the deployment of ARIS. There are only two or three people within that COE team who are required for that task. The wider task is the support of business colleagues through a hub and spoke model. Within the small COE team, we support the acquisition and enhancement of those skill sets within our business division colleagues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
ARIS has very much enabled us to start small and grow with the use of the solution over time. We have adopted the approach, as we roll out ARIS, of taking small pilot proof of concepts and extending them wider across the business. Software AG ARIS has really facilitated that rollout, both in terms of the technical support provided and also the licensing that has been available to us.
This is critical for any enterprise taking on an enterprise-wide BPM program, moving into a business-as-usual (BAU) function, to be able to take it in small steps. I know colleagues across the globe in different enterprises who have done this. They have picked initial areas of small-scale deployment, then extended them over time.
We have something in the region of 100 to 200 users. We are still midway through a wider deployment.
How are customer service and support?
Recently, there was a switch to a new platform that had one or two technical challenges, which seemed to have interrupted it. Any transition to a new support platform is always a bit problematic. Because they haven't yet fully picked back up, I would rate them as seven out of 10.
Broadly speaking, over the last couple of years, the customer support has been really good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
ARIS is the first time that the bank has deployed an enterprise-wide BPM solution.
The reason that we have ARIS in the bank is because one of our vendors recommended it.
How was the initial setup?
For our setup of the recent migration, which we completed over an eight-week period, we found the migration of our ARIS instance into the cloud to be really smooth and well-supported by the Software AG Professional Services team.
What about the implementation team?
The initial setup of ARIS within the bank was held and managed by a different team.
What was our ROI?
If you were to look at the return on investment that the bank will make in terms of its use of ARIS, it can't be measured in financial terms. The use and deployment of ARIS across business divisions gives us the capability to understand and monitor processes enterprise-wide. This is improving dramatically our operational resilience, which is both a regulatory and operational requirement for us. We haven't attempted to put a financial measure on that outcome.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Software AG facilitate a gradual and phased approach to enterprise deployment so take full advantage of that. In addition (and obviously in 2022) opt for their Cloud solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
ARIS is best of breed. We are obviously aware of other solutions globally and there are a handful in the space that have specific capabilities that would have loosely matched what ARIS can do for us. Time and time again, we come away with the impression that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to move from ARIS. More specifically, we have visibility, as do any of their customers, into their roadmap over the next couple of years. We are very comfortable with it continuing to be exactly what we need.
We haven't used the governance, risk and compliance component (the GRC component) within ARIS. The introduction of ARIS into the risk part of the business through the non-financial risk program happened after the bank had already committed and put in place a risk register, which is powered by IBM OpenPages. So, we work alongside that.
We have an RPA capability within the bank that preceded the introduction of ARIS. That is embedded within our operational model and continues to be the case. As with every bank that has a long legacy of serving its customers, over the last couple of years, we have accelerated our RPA capability to the point where, in Europe, our bank has one of the most mature RPA capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
Because of our use case and the level of detail, where we are currently operating and mapping processes, we have no requirements for the solution's mining capabilities.
One of my colleagues worked with Software AG for years. So, within the CORE team, we had an embedded set of knowledge on ARIS, which is unusual within one of their enterprise customers. Within the wider business use, ARIS absolutely provides us capabilities that we didn't know that we needed until we saw them. However, the Group is in its infancy in terms of understanding ARIS's power of process analysis and improvement.
Overall, I would rate the solution as eight out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
*Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
