ARIS BPA Reviews

We use ARIS BPA for various operations and processes.

ARIS BPA has a good directory option, which helps to keep track of all of your metadata, and that's very useful.

It would be helpful if ARIS BPA could have a simple database to get the extract of various attributes.

The solution should include a simpler database where one can select the required columns or attributes to be downloaded and various reports. Also, the report formats could be simpler.

I have been using ARIS BPA for three years.

ARIS BPA is a stable solution.

ARIS BPA is a scalable solution. We have close to 20 to 30 end users working on the solution.

The solution’s technical support is good.

SAP is better than ARIS BPA because it has some positive features.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

It is easy to maintain ARIS BPA. The solution is deployed on-cloud in our organization.

ARIS BPA is a simple-to-use solution with good cloud-based support.

Overall, I rate ARIS BPA an eight out of ten.

We have three main use cases. One is process management and the second is ICS (internal control system). Our third use case is very important for us: to evaluate the operational risk situation of our company, not only of the company itself but of the whole group. It was one of our requirements to find a system that could, on the one hand, evaluate risks for each company in the group, and on the other hand, conglomerate these risk situations for the whole group.

We use ARIS Risk & Compliance Manager (ARCM) for our ICS. There are different people who have to evaluate the risks and actualize the processes. We have a workflow implemented so that there is a reminder for the people who have to evaluate the risks and the controls, once a year. We also have a workflow for the process owners to assign a process model.

For our ICS, we used to have an Excel- and Word-based solution. It was very complicated and it was not really digital. Now, it's very simple for the people who have to evaluate the risks. They get a reminder from Outlook that a certain risk needs to be evaluated and they can evaluate it and send it to the risk owner. It's a more digital process and has improved things.

With our ICS we didn't have control of the controls, and this is something we are now working on. It is very easy in ARIS to model it and evaluate it. This was something we learned about and a capability we didn't have before.

The browser-based modeling tool is very awesome. It's very easy for the people who use it. One of our aims was and is to use ARIS in a decentralized way. That means we want our business departments to be able to publish their processes and to evaluate risk and controls. For that purpose, we have ARIS BPA and ARCM, which are connected. We model the risks and controls on the process diagrams, and the evaluation of risks and controls take place in ARCM.

ARIS BPA provides very good visibility and control of processes because we have a concurrent license system. As a result, every person in our company and group is able to look at the published processes. We have also built a tree from a process map so that people can navigate through different steps to the process model itself. That works quite well.

The intuitiveness of ARIS when it comes to business process management and modeling is not quite there. We have invested a lot of time and money in building a very usable system. The modeling part is very intuitive, but there are so many possible elements you can use. We had to invest a lot of time to reduce the elements to those we want people to use. If you take all the elements and all the modeling types that ARIS has, it is not possible to model in an equal way.

Also, we are part of a community that has one or two events per year where we can talk about our experiences with the solution. From these meetings, my impression is that a lot of customers do not use the current release. Migration to the next release is very tricky. You can't do it without support from ARIS or from a software kit. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to migrate. My impression is that a lot of companies do not migrate regularly because of that issue. There are always a lot of bugs, especially when you adapt the system to your needs. It's very complicated.

We have been using ARIS BPA since 2020.

The stability has been okay. We haven't had any interruptions so far and the concurrent license model works very well. We have enough licenses that people don't have any problem getting into the system.

The scalability is good because it is a modular system, and that was another factor in our decision to go with ARIS. You can buy additional modules to adapt it to your needs.

The solution enables you to start small and grow its use.

For small problems, their tech support is okay. 

For larger problems, it's more complicated to explain to their tech support what we really need. Our experience has been that it's better to buy two or three consultant-days with the consultant who knows our system, because he developed it together with us. He can identify problems very easily. With the regular tech support it takes a long time to explain what the problem is.

Neutral

Casewise – EA & BPM was the system we had before. It was a system that wasn't fit for our decentralization goals because it was very complicated. There were a few specialists in our company who could work with Casewise, but it was really a system for specialists and not for business departments.

The initial setup was complex. Ours is a complicated environment and we had complex requirements. But we had really good trainers from Software AG. They have a lot of knowledge and they were able to help adapt the solution to our needs. But it was a very long process to get the system to where we wanted it to be. It took about a year for the implementation.

We have done two migrations since we deployed the solution. One migration was during the implementation phase, and the second is being done now. As I said, the migrations are very complicated.

We looked at Signavio, in addition to Casewise, among the solutions we looked at in an intensive way.

Signavio was okay, but it didn't fit our needs when it came to risk management, and their licensing system also didn't fit our requirements.

We deployed the solution on-premises because our IT security team is very strict. We don't have any cloud solutions so far. This was one of the topics that influenced our decision to go with ARIS. Other solutions prefer the cloud or develop cloud products in a more efficient way. Our aim was to have a product that works on-premises.

We do not have a lot of experience because we implemented process management, as a strategy, in 2019. Before that, processes were not really the focus of the business departments. IT had processes in mind, of course, but they only used drawing tools that were not management tools. There is now more awareness of process management in our company, not only in IT but in the business departments as well. Still, at the moment, people see it as additional work, but I hope that will get better.

We have three main use cases. The first is that ARIS is our central repository to document our standards, meaning our business processes, our organization, our data, and our IT capability landscape. 

The second use case is to manage our application landscape. We have all the applications that we use inventoried in ARIS, about 3,000 of them. It's used to manage all the information related to those applications, such as where an application is used, how many users there are, what the current version is, as well as the contracts connected with this application and who the product or solution owners are.

The third use case is process mining. We are using ARIS to reconstruct a process as it has been effectively executed and to automatically calculate some key performance indicators.

In my previous company, we used ARIS to document local processes in different countries. It helped us to identify what were the main differences in terms of processes, identify best practices, and give visibility to everyone in the company into what those best practices are.

ARIS gives us a place where we can have a single source of truth. Instead of having business processes documented in different software, in Word or in PowerPoint, and described in different ways, ARIS provides a framework and a central repository where we can find that single source of truth. It gives us a consistent content structure for all processes. This is something that is very valuable. In that way, indirectly, it saves us time when looking for that single source of truth.

It's an enterprise application that is used by many people across our organization: the business process owners, the data owners, and the IT owners. And they are enriching the content. It is also used by anyone in the company who wants to look at our standards.

The solution has also provided us with capabilities we didn't know we needed until we had them. One of the functionalities that I really like is the ability to use ARIS for application portfolio management. In addition to our applications, we have also stored, in ARIS, the footprint of where those applications have been implemented. That means we know in which country a given application has been implemented. With embedded geolocation, we have a very visual world map, where we can see the footprint of each application.

Aris BPA is a very comprehensive and intuitive solution. I like the user experience very much, including the user interface. The ARIS platform is really an enterprise solution that eases the collection of all aspects of a company. ARIS has made a huge improvement, in terms of the user experience and intuitiveness. If I compare the very first version that I used in my previous company and the one that we are using now at my current company, there really is a big difference, big changes, and big improvements.

One thing that could be improved is regarding the handling of the content itself. Maybe ARIS could provide a set of best practices, or best processes, so that people do not have to start from scratch.

Another area for improvement is the homepage. Today there is one homepage for everyone. In the future, it would be good to have the ability to design homepages for different populations of users.

I have been using ARIS BPA at my current company for the past 18 months. I used it in my previous company from 2003 through 2016.

It's very stable. We have had no issues with its stability and no complaints.

The solution is unlimited. You can scale it as much as you want. In terms of scope, you can focus only on processes, but after that, you can add data, you can add your organization, and you can add your systems. You can build different views. The scope is unlimited.

It enables you to start small and grow in your use of the solution over time. That is what we are doing and there is no other way. You don't go for a big bang. You start by focusing first on processes, and maybe not on all processes but the most common processes. After that, you grow and add the systems related to these processes. You can then add your data and your organization and, progressively, you enrich the content in the database. Because companies are changing all the time, there are always updates that need to be made in the solution.

We have 25 named users who have the capacity to make changes in the tool, but the application is open to all of our 460,000 employees. Those 25 people are responsible for the maintenance of the solution but that's not a full-time job. Every person who has a designer role in the organization has the ability to make changes in ARIS when needed. It took a bit of time to configure and set up the framework initially. But now that we have done so, it's a matter of enriching the content on a day-to-day basis, when required.

We plan to increase the usage of the tool internally, for sure. We want to have everyone using ARIS, moving forward.

The technical support has been very good. We haven't had any issues with it. We have had great support from the Software AG teams.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex, but it has to be logical. If you want to have all the benefits of the ARIS platform, which is an integrated platform, it's essential to set up all objects properly from the very beginning. If you don't have a clear idea of your target architecture, you may face difficulties in really leveraging ARIS.

While there is a beginning to the deployment, there is no end. We can always enrich ARIS with more and more information, and we can always involve more and more and more people in the tool. The usage of ARIS is unlimited.

The implementation strategy starts with the transformation journey, and we are implementing ARIS to support that journey.

We are leveraging Software AG's resources. The application is intuitive enough to use without external support. Having said that, it's very true that there are very limited resources for ARIS on the market. It's an issue. We are working with integrators on other systems to implement, for example, our ERP, SAP, et cetera. We are asking our integrators to document the processes and the system interfaces in ARIS and they are not trained for that.

There is no return on investment with this kind of solution. There is definitively a huge benefit, but no return on investment, per se. In a large organization, you need to have a reference, and ARIS helps to give us this reference.

The solution has a fair price for the value it delivers.

There are no additional, or even IT costs, beyond the standard fee. After that, there are the labor costs to input and maintain the content in the application, but that's not really a cost related to the application itself. It's the same for any type of software.

I have used many different solutions. In this field, ARIS is probably the best compromise, in terms of coverage and functionality. There are solutions on the market that are probably better than ARIS in certain areas of their scopes. But if we look at the full scope, with all the modules, ARIS is probably the best application that there is on the market.

Before selecting ARIS, we looked at four other solutions, all within the top-five on the market. We concluded that ARIS was the best one.

The biggest lesson I have learned using this solution is that if you want to properly and fully use the capabilities of ARIS, you need to have a very good understanding of the infrastructure that you are targeting.

ARIS is really a toolbox. After that, it really depends on what you want to do with it.

We have used the platform to describe purchases and the organizational structure in the company.

I personally use it at home as well as in the company. I received a key for the application, which I won based on a competition when version 7 of ARIS was being tested. I sent in some test cases where I had several failures during that test.

My organization's market is only in the Czech Republic. We don't have any experience using the solution globally.

I like working with ARIS because I have some experience with it. I understand what is on the forums. I know how the user interface works, how to create a repository, and stand up this tool.

I am an advanced user. ARIS BPM is intuitive for me because I know the UML, BPMN, and EPC methodologies implemented in this tool. It is very easy to create processes for restructuring a company with some descriptions. 

From the start, there were some difficulties on how to create outputs since there wasn't a repository tool in version 6. However, in version 7, there has been a tool for creating standards for a company, and that tool has been very intuitive.

While I have been using this tool for several years, other people just starting to use it find the learning curve steep. This tool is very robust and accommodates many roles, where people can participate from compliance, IT designers, etc. This can create problems for users who have no experience with similar tools. It took me a year before I felt comfortable with this tool, because when I came from university it was the first or second tool that I worked on. It took me a year to run every feature or use it for every possibility since this tool is very robust.

We sometimes have to create the link to the server and the repository twice because it is deleted once for some unknown reason. Though, this is not a big problem.

There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports.

We were using this solution until last year.

Our company had 400 people when we started with ARIS. Now, we have 800 and everything is twice as complicated. It is very hard to see relationships between objects.

I use ARIS Community. When I have some problems, I first go to www.ariscommunity.com. I have an account and can usually find an answer to my problems. I haven't used it for two years, because usually the problems that need to be solved in version 7 of ARIS were during the installation for some servers and linking to other applications. We haven't only used ARIS Architect and Designer as a tool for some information inputs to the repository, but we also have used ARIS Business Publisher to publish the information. When links between the ARIS applications are created, there usually isn't a problem to use ARIS. However, when you install it once every five years, that could be a problem since nobody can figure out how to do it.

This is the best tool. I am from the Czech Republic. When our company bought this tool, there were only two of these tools on the market that had Czech language methodology. Other tools are enterprise architects with only English language. These two tools translated the Czech language not only on user interface, but on the repository. Although other tools now support several languages, ARIS was first almost 14 years ago.

The installation and deployment of this solution were handled by our IT department.

As an insurance company, there are some laws and requirements that we have to follow. We use a third-party integrator to give us some advice on the models to use.

We did see ROI with ARIS version 6. I don't know about version 7.

When a process is created, it can be reused to save time.

10 years ago, we bought two or three licenses for the tools that we wanted with a year of support. After that, version 7 has been working without cost. I don't know the current price of the solution.

Usually, our company buys technical support from the Software AG site. We bought the technical support for the first year of usage for ARIS version 6 and 7. So, when we migrated to ARIS version 7, we bought support only for the first year. Then, we didn't use it the next year. Our experience was that we use it only one to three times during the first year. Therefore, there wasn't much value for us to buy this service because we have no problem with using ARIS after the first year. Usually, we need to buy or use this service only when we install it on our servers. First, we go to ARIS Community, then we go to the support of Software AG. After a year, we find that there is no added value. If we really need it, then it is better to buy it piece by piece, not over a time period.

Because of some organizational changes, our company is discussing changing our platform. There are several new people who have experience with other platforms. 

We use ARIS BPM as a modeling tool and also ARIS Business Publisher. This tool publishes models inside the organization. New employees within the organization have recommended a new platform that doesn't have a tool for publishing process models. We are now discussing the added value of changing the platform. Or, if it would be better for new employees to learn how to work with ARIS. 

Microsoft Visio is a tool without a repository. If you create objects from a different point of view, then you have to create it five times with different names or descriptions. Therefore, people imagine there are five different objects, when in reality, there is one. I can't even imagine the time that we saved using this tool over the past 10 years. 

ARIS is the best tool for business from my perspective. If you buy ARIS, you can do every model for arrays, organizational structure, processes, knowledge, etc. With different tools, the best edition is mainly for IT guys. If you want to use those other tools for business, then you need to buy a special edition for business. ARIS goes from business to technical stuff and other tools go from technical stuff to business. This is the main difference from other solutions that I know are on the market.

I am on the business side, so ARIS is better for me than other tools because we buy IT services for our business models. Our company has no IT department, so we have a partner company that offers us IT services instead. 

We create our process models in both the Czech and English languages. We have a repository in Czech and another in English for some objects. Using both, one model is created. We haven't used translation automation because in the insurance market we use special technical terms and don't believe that automatic translation can translate the way that we can.

A potential user will need to explain to management the added value of this tool. Our management didn't understand the value of this tool. We had problems with the implementation because not all departments wanted to participate in the creation of the solution's models. With only half the company buying into the solution, you will not see the other half of the company. So, the decision needs to be made at the management and company levels to use these tools because there is no added value if only one department wants to use it.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10. 

We use it for creating a structured record of our processes and for updating them. We also use it to analyze how strategic changes in our company may impact these processes. 

We work with the cloud solution. We don't have to have anything installed on our computers locally. We designed the processes and the framework ourselves.

With ARIS: 

• We now have a better view of how everybody works in our organization and it helps us to see that everybody is doing the work they should be doing.
• We have more standardization, compared to when we first started, when it comes to describing processes. When we started, we saw that different people in the same unit, who should be doing the same work, performed their work in different ways. ARIS enabled us to achieve more alignment there.
• The solution also makes it easier to solve problems, and similarly helps when there is a strategy change or a new product. It's easier for us to pinpoint where the differences will be, compared to the current way things are done. It helps us respond more quickly to things we change in the organization.

The last point helps us to identify where we have to focus when things change. There are no surprises. We know what our processes are now and, if we know where we are heading with the changes, we can use ARIS to see where the changes need to be made. It helps us to speed up the rollout of transformation processes.

It has also definitely helped us to save time on business process analysis. It's now easier to find processes. We have them clearly described and we don't have to work through a pile of Word or PowerPoint documents. We just go to ARIS and we can search and navigate in the system. It's easier to access things. We are now doing more work with the same number of people, without these people having too much on their plates. We're more efficient and we all benefit from each others' best ways of working.

A basic feature that most other tools like ARIS BPA have as well, is a database with all of the relationships in the system. It makes it easier to have more standardized processes across the organization. The database also makes it possible to run reports and do analysis, which is kind of cool.

What also makes it good is the way we have set it up so that we not only have the processes in place, but we also have relationships specified with our IT systems and our organizational chart. That makes it possible to analyze things from the systems point of view and regarding the organizational part of the company. It all comes together in one tool and that is what gives us the most value at the moment.

We use the modeling technique called BPMN, which is a standard way of describing processes. It's independent of ARIS, but ARIS facilitates working with it. All the objects are available in ARIS, which makes it quite intuitive. For me, ARIS BPM is easy to use because I have known it for quite a long time. Others need some training before they can use it properly. They need a basic understanding of how the tool works. But overall, the intuitiveness of the solution is quite good.

Also, access to the solution is good because it's a cloud solution, and the performance is quite good. It's well-organized.

There are reports available in ARIS and you can modify them a bit if you want something more specific, but it's not that easy to adjust them and make modifications. It would be nice to have some kind of tool to do that, something that is more user-friendly for people who are not too technical, so that they could create reports the way they want them. That would be a good feature. That would also help in the adoption of ARIS.

At this company, I have been using ARIS BPA for a year and a half, but I'm quite experienced in using the tool, having used it for about 10 years.

The stability of the solution is quite good. I haven't had any issues with it. Maybe years ago it was less stable, but it's quite stable now.

We don't have that many users, so it perfectly suits our company. ARIS enables you to start small and grow the use of the solution over time, although it's quite expensive. So if you want to start small, it's quite an investment for a small company. But it's perfectly suitable for growing.

I am the administrator of the solution and we only have a subscription for 10 other users and two other designers.

We have used it very extensively over the last 18 months, but due to our strategy for growth, which is a little bit different, and because of what the pandemic has caused, we are not really growing the process area. We may have even turned it down a bit. That's a shame, but we have to focus on other parts of the organization at the moment.

The technical support is quite good. I have had a few interactions with them by email. There are formalities to the process. I have to put my issues in a certain format and then they will respond. 

It might be easier if I could have direct contact, just easily pick up the phone or chat or just write a quick email, so that we could find a solution. There might be some room for improvement there.

Positive

When I started here, we didn't have anything other than descriptions of processes in Word on PCs around the organization. We wanted to have that available in a more structured way.

I have a good deal of experience in setting up an ARIS environment, so I knew quite well what I needed to do. For me, it's not really that complex. We set it up for our needs.

We had it ready within one month, approximately. It's quite important to think about what you want to have, which areas you want to touch, and what you want the results to be. 

It's important to take some time to do a good implementation of the tool. Our implementation strategy involved investigating, defining, and describing what we wanted to have; what we wanted to describe with the tool, and what benefit we wanted from the tool. In that way, we could set it up, from the start, in a way that we wouldn't have to rework it in a few months or a few years. It's better to take some more time to set it up well than to start in with it directly and then see, in a few months, that you're missing some parts.

I created a framework in which we could capture all of the processes across the organization, from IT to delivery to logistics to HR and finance. Gradually, we have been filling it. We have defined five layers of detail. I interview people who are working with the various processes in the field, and I try to describe them as they are right now. When there are changes within our organization, when we have a new product or we have a new strategy, we also look at the processes and see where these changes will impact them. Based on where the impact might be, we can more easily pinpoint what we need to do when adopting a new strategy or a new product.

There is not that much work involved in maintenance of the solution. The maintenance of the content, on the other hand, depends on the business you're in. For us, it's our day-to-day work, making sure that all the processes are in place and correct. But the maintenance of the tool itself, the more technical part, does not require that much work, about half a day per week.

I did it myself. Because of my experience, I didn't need other people to help me with it.

The ROI depends, for our company, on how big we grow. The intention is to grow and we need a tool in place, like ARIS, to make our growth happen. We have to be in control and we need an overview and insights. If we can achieve the growth we're thinking about, the return on investment should take a few years.

In the future, ARIS might help us save on development costs associated with business process transformation. At the moment, we just describe the business processes without going too much into detail regarding the technical IT solutions. That connection is there, but not too extensive at the moment. But if we improve that part, we will definitely see some cost savings there.

If you want customized reports in place and you cannot create them yourself, you have to get them done externally, so that would be an extra cost.

We briefly looked around at what was in the market, but with my past experience with ARIS, the choice was quickly made to use this tool. It might be a bit more expensive, but it has a lot of possibilities, so we didn't spend very long searching for other tools.

If you start working with ARIS, first investigate very well what you want to achieve. You can use it for different kinds of goals. You need to know what you have and what you want to achieve. Then you have to create a setup. So the requirements are quite important to the design, before you start working with the tool. That's the most important thing you need to do.

The tool functions quite well and you can put every process in it, but it's also important to look at your organization and make sure that people are willing to work with processes. That means you have to do some educating, in addition to the technical solution ARIS provides. Be sure that all the management positions participate in describing their processes and that managers encourage their teams to work in and use ARIS, and to do their work in the way things are described. There are these kinds of change-management issues to be aware of.

The fact that ARIS has the largest BPM community worldwide is not that important to me, because I don't use it very much. I only use it to pose some technical questions. I have used some other frameworks, such as the eTOM APQC Frameworks. So I generally get my knowledge from other sources, rather than from the ARIS community.

When I came into the company, I immediately started to implement ARIS, so I don't have a clear view of how things were done before. But everybody in our organization is more and more aware that we should use ARIS and that we are benefiting from it, although I can't clearly define the benefit compared to how things used to be.

I'm very happy with the ARIS solution. The ARIS Advanced product we have would work quite well for most of the companies. A very big company, like a multinational, might want to have something that is on-premises, and to customize it a little bit, but for most companies, what we have is good enough.

I work at a beverage manufacturer. We use ARIS BPA to design and publish our core processes.

ARIS BPM has helped us speed up our business process transformation by centralizing everything instead of everyone working within a silo. I can't say precisely, but if I had to take a wild guess, I would say that it has sped up our transformation by about 10 to 15 percent. At the moment, it hasn't saved us much time. It has the potential to save us time in the future by giving us a firmer basis to work from. However, we're not saving time on analysis at this stage. ARIS provided a solid basis for our company to manage its assets and by that, I mean its processes. It also helps our customers to have a Single Source of Truth for processes and related information.

The two most valuable aspects of ARIS BPA are the shared common repository and the whole governance cycle. The shared repository allows for cross-functional cooperation instead of doing things in a silo. You can operate cross-functionally and really work end-to-end, instead of dividing everything up on a functional basis. The governance element is important because functions can be managed in a controlled manner. There is a stacked database, and we can move things in a controlled manner from the development environment to the publication environment.

The standard out-of-the-box solutions for modeling are not so good. You have to do some configuration to make it easier and more user-friendly. There are a lot of options, so that can get confusing, but if you filter some things out, then it's easier to use. After you customize it, the end-user has an easy toolset to work from. Another feature I would like to see is the complete visualization of the connect portal.

I've been using it since around 2018, but I think my company has been using it longer.

ARIS is scalable but costly. You can start small and grow the solution over time, but you have to demonstrate the benefits to the leadership before scaling up. Otherwise, it's a one-off, and we aren't looking for a one-off. We're looking for sustainable solutions. Therefore, it's important for us to start small, show the benefits, and then expand.

I would rate Software AG's support six out of 10. It depends on who is providing the support. If you are dealing with support engineers in the Netherlands, it's okay. However, if they refer you to a shared service center, they usually don't know enough to give you proper support. 

Neutral

We purchased the license for ARIS a long time ago, but the central team was dismantled. We revived it back in 2018. Deployment wasn't too easy. We didn't have a maturity roadmap in place, so we were building it step by step. I wasn't able to see the end state or the steps we needed to go through to grow more mature. I'm not blaming Software AG for that. That's just how it went. The deployment process wasn't intuitive or transparent in terms of the next steps we should take. It was also complicated by the fact that our needs as a customer changed from month to month and year to year.

ARIS is quite expensive.

I've previously used QPR. I would say the advantage of ARIS is that it offers more possibilities, but it's also a more complex and costly solution. 

I rate ARIS BPM six out of 10. 

We use BPMN for process design. We check our processes. There is the start event, then there are the tasks and steps as well as risks on the steps and controls. In the end, there is a result event of the process. There is a hierarchy model through the processes themselves to locate, classify, and build a whole tree off of the complete process design. So, we try to get the complete process model in all the layers. It is not only about flow diagrams. You also need the hierarchy system in the process design to get an idea of which business area it is, which products we handle there, etc. This is to get some kind of a systematic approach to a wide area of the complete company, e.g., which services are delivered from whom and how it is organized.

We separated the fields. We had some kind of internal control system, which was one use case for us. We had risk management and how to get a picture up of the actual risk evaluation. We had the policy management separated. We started process management. This is all integrated on the technical side and the tools' side. We tried to get the different solutions out of the one system to see them as different solutions with different responsible people with different roles behind them. 

It fits all together, so there are no completely loose ends, where there is one philosophy and one architecture behind it. We managed to get it a little bit separated, but it has good connection process management, internal control systems, and a risk system. It is very well-integrated.

We are using Connect and ARCM. ARCM is the ARIS governance, risk, and compliance module to do workflow-orientated stuff, e.g., how much is your risk.

Another use case is value chain processes. These are in a hierarchy built up through the company and our business use cases since we have export and capital market services. At the bottom, we decided to use only a business process model notation (BPMN), which made it possible for us to integrate on this flow chart. This integrates risks and controls directly on a flow chart, making it easier for non-super process experts to get an idea of the steps, controls, and risk as well as how this all fits together to get a good overview at the starting point when working with these processes.

In normal, day-to-day business, when a process is drawn, our expert team can review the processes, risks, and controls. They can do that completely themselves on a technical level. There is a review step from the process expert to her/his boss, then it is approved and published. After that, we use the risk evaluation and control execution using ARCM Risk and Compliance Manager, where they can do everything with the risk, e.g., how much is our risk? How much is the risk now? They evaluate that and do a controlled execution. We use the ARIS APG programming to get the approval and publication processes. 

Now, we have a fully automatic-supported risk evaluation each quarter. I only need to take the results and put them together for the board's report. That is a big improvement. 

The implementation of the completely decentralized process management, meaning that business departments can simply document their processes and flowcharts to improve their businesses, is now in one system. They have a list of business applications that are used within the process documentation, where there is one list of organizational departments interacting within this process. It has everything that we normally would want to have if we use an integrated process management system that works fine. Therefore, we have possibilities that we did not have before. 

If you ever tried to draw a picture in a browser app or with a cloud service, it is normally a painful death. ARIS works perfectly on diagrams in the browser, so I was excited. I like it because there have been so many bad experiences in the past with drawing or doing something in a browser. Normally, it's always painful because it's coded badly. With ARIS, it is really well-implemented. It's simple. 

We only get emails if something went wrong or the semantic checks are integrated, which means you can't publish it. If there is the smallest mistake in it, then you can't publish it at all. It is only allowed to get the symbols which are permitted. Therefore, everything is perfect on the technical side, and on the control side, no mistakes are published. You can check the deep semantic process. For example, if it does not make sense, but it is formally correct. If it's correct on the technical side, but it does not make sense when you have to read it. That is the human interaction that you need. However, what is technically possible is implemented to get good results.

I had this decentralization mission where I had some friendly fights with the consultants of Software AG. My opinion was the business department should be able to publish their processes and do all their evaluation stuff in ARCM themselves. It has to be a one stop shop. I want a one stop shop to go from ARIS BPM to ARIS ARCM, because having everything go through that would be an improvement due to the inputs that we made with Software AG. They will make it possible that the trigger sent from BPM to ARCM will start their object generation. Although, they did something in SR 16 for our business needs, and that was great.

The process needs to be straight-through. This means, if the process experts say, "Okay, I'm finished. I sent the process to my boss," and the boss says, "Okay, it's great. The documentation is right," and they can give approval. Then, the process experts can click on it, and five minutes later, they will get the risk for the evaluation. After that, the process expert says, "Okay, it has this and those risks. We could lose this amount." So, they send it again for approval back to the boss. The boss reviews whether the risk evaluation is right, then it is approved. Finally, it is finished in one hour (in a best case scenario). The yearly process documentation can then be completed without the action of any central process management board. 

We have been using it since Autumn 2020, which is about a full year now.

It is a stable product. 

We did one upgrade throughout the project. Now, we want to wait until the end of the year for SR16.

There is almost zero maintenance to maintain its design from a central process management or risk management team standpoint. Decentralized business departments can do their jobs all by themselves. Sometimes, there are questions, like, "Can you help me? I'm lost. What am I doing here?" For example, if you have new bosses in new jobs, then they do not know what to do. 

In 2020, we did a lot of presentations, videos, and training. They had to do these on the training systems to evaluate risks and processes. We knew if they did not do it themselves, then they would learn nothing. If they did it themselves, then it was possible to learn to work with new tools. So, the normal maintenance should be really low. 

We have a concurrent license system. We have about 80 persons in-house decentralized in all the business departments who received their training. We have a lot of information, material, and how-to videos to ultimately support them so they can do the processes themselves. It is completely decentralized. Once finished, they can send it to their boss to approve it, then it is published. We have a central expert team in process management, who cares about how ARIS should be used.

Because we use it within a concurrent license system, everyone within the group can read the publications of errors and do risk evaluation at the same time. We now have 15 to 30 people (out of 500) who can use it at the same time. 

The help desk of Software AG is great. We had some problems. This happens in projects, where you do something stupid, then it does not fit together. The data is not useful. You try to do some test cases and put something in the system to determine how it works. The support was always really professional. The software developers and help desk did a really good job. I am really a fan of Software AG because they are a very competent business partner.

Positive

Before, we used Casewise from London for centralized process management. That was our old tool, which wasn't bad, but it was only for three heads in the central team. It limited us completely. Then, they were bought by erwin in New York, and erwin is on the data governance side. Casewise was now a small part of a big company and wasn't being developed or improved as ARIS is. Therefore, it was quickly clear to us that we would go with ARIS.

We started with the idea at our company in February 2019. We got in contact with Software AG around June 2019 to do some kind of proof of concept, learn about the design, the idea, and philosophy, e.g., how to solve such problems and how to get process management within a fully integrated tool. 

Before, we had Excel lists and some types of Visio diagrams, which were put together based on the process description. That wasn't okay. We always had to do it on a central basis, take the documentation, work it through and give it back.

This solution was really an improvement on the efficiency of our process management, documentation for end-to-end development, business processes, and business departments, who complete freedom and empowerment to do it themselves. That was a big improvement.

Luckily, we had Software AG implement the ARIS Connect platform, the web-based platform, with this broad possibility to use it in a concurrent way. In 2017, that was what we wanted. We wanted the system to be used by the business experts and leaders in the business units in a decentralized manner. 

When you start the solution, you eliminate every useless variant that you do not need, then it is really simple. At the starting point, you need to learn how the philosophy of the solution works. You need to deal with the solution as if you are taking a normal car through the woods. You can't normally. You have to think, "Okay, what is it built for? How is this model designed?" You then need to get in contact with the design and philosophy. After that, you can do a good job. It is a big mistake to say, "No, they have to code everything around our old company stuff because we always did it that way. So, we need to stay with the old way." Then, you are lost and will never have any kind of success. 

At the start of the project, we set up some testing and development implementation. It took us one to two weeks for our IT and Software AG's IT to get it up and running. Before we were productive, we had to edit the publication database as well as all the backups, restore processes, and all that stuff in a production environment. We also had to put brain power in it. That was for part one and two of the processes (installation and implementation), which both took one to two weeks. That was net five to 10 consultant days or IT expert days to get up this step in performance and excellence. The implementation was about two days. 

We put a lot of brain power and personnel power into the project. We also had consultants who supported us very well through the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, we had the chance to implement it quickly.

Go with a consultant. In every solution, e.g., ARIS, there are a lot of consultants with experience over the years. Many companies bring in their experience to provide general solutions for general problems, since these problems are not individual to a company.

From the mid-2019 to Autumn of 2020, we always had support consultant days remotely or a consultant who visited us to develop the method as well as do all the processes and risk management stuff, which have to be customized.

We only worked with Software AG, who integrated the consultants, e.g., IDS software developers. They brought them to us because we needed to implement some improvements on the ARIS ARCM governance, risk, and compliance model. We did their multi-object handling, which means you can approve 20 risks with one click. So, it marks all the risks on the list as okay, pulls them through, and then they are finished, which we loved. There were also some user interface optimizations for mass objects. 

We have seen ROI. The quality has improved enormously. You do not always get faster because if you want to improve quality, then you have to sit in, think about and work with it. Therefore, you need a good tool. 

The management board really likes it because it is well-adopted by employees with no problems using it.

On our evaluation list, we also looked at Signavio Process Manager, but there were so many differences. They were millions of miles between ARIS and Signavio Process Manager. Therefore, we did not think about which tool to take. It was completely clear that we should get ARIS because it was the best solution for us.

The process could be so simple. The question for the business units is always, "Okay, let's think about this." If the process is what we brought into ARIS, then how can we make it better? They shall use their brain and time to improve and think about their business. ARIS is only a tool. They should not be focused on, "Oh, how can I work with this tool? I'm so confused." Everything should not go into the tool. They should use their brain and energy to think about their business. 

We are still developing our process management method. We are still using it, but we are also improving it to get it more integrated, have more detail, and have process management be more connected with our internal control system. 

It was hard to do process management on a yearly cycle on an annual basis. It was helpful for us to have ARIS as a tool for this, but we also learned that it is a really complex job to do process management through the year on such a high quality level. You have to think about a lot of questions. These are all processes approved every year. All the stuff seen is, "Okay, I have to do that, and I have to do that. I have to check that they looked it through for the first half of the year. Then, they have to do the rest in the second half of the year." All this gets operationalized. With this tool, we now had process lists that we could deal with. 

You need a clear aim to reach for and it should not be too big. You should separate it in some way. If you want to do more than one thing, then handle it as if you want to reach for aim one, two, and three. This makes it easier than doing big bang projects where you never get to an end. 

Separate your aims and focus on them. For example, we started with different starting times. In September 2020, we started risk management. In November, we then started with the internal control systems. Step by step, we are now pulling our process management up. We are still improving on the methods. 

This solution has been my baby the last three years, so I would rate it as 10 (out of 10) because I gave everything to make it the best.

ARIS was used to capture current business processes in ARIS EPC through a series of workshops. Level 1-3 VACD, Level 4 EPC (Event-driven Process Chain) and FAD (Function Allocation Diagram), Activities, Roles, Metrics, Risk and Control, RACI, etc.

It was used to operationalize new business processes and also in preparation for a case management system migration to Salesforce. The management, team leader, and staff were trained to read the EPC process model and taught how to navigate ARIS in the production environment. 

The selection criteria for ARIS as the preferred BPM was questionable in my opinion.

The main reason it was chosen is that it was on the government "approved" product list.

The solution was too complex/advanced for the organization's requirements and a big team was hired to manage the administration of ARIS and maintain it.

The choice to model the business process in EPC instead of BPMN was made by the organization and no fault of ARIS; ARIS is most certainly capable of modeling in BPMN. There's a lot of time and effort spent to help staff get their head around how to read an EPC in ARIS.

The EPC modeling is very detailed, the semantic check is helpful, and auto-layout simplifies the formatting.

The process interface is valuable for identifying the upstream and downstream processes.

The approval process for the ARIS EPC from the design, staging, and production environment is pretty good. You can obtain feedback on the process model; however, this functionality seems a bit limited by today's standard as some other BPM allows you to comment on the objects within the process model, which makes gathering feedback and making changes easier.

ARIS EPC & FAD features and functionality does not feel like they are not designed for business users. Instead, it feels like they are geared for Process Modelers and Technology users who are focused on System Interface, User Interface, Risk and Control, etc.

Trying to read an EPC in a screen Top-Down while dragging the screen is next to impossible. 

The model graphics can be exported in PDF, but the model is too small to read.

In my experience, once the organization creates the process model in ARIS EPC, it will take approximately two years before most organizations ditch any effort to update it. It takes more effort to maintain it than the value that an organization gets out of it.

The requirements for events after the rules, whilst accurate, simply take up too much space and makes the process model difficult to read.

Connecting the upstream and downstream process interface is a pain.

The auto-layout is a great feature but does not work as expected all of the time, as lines appear to overlap and can be confusing to read unless you click on the line to highlight it.

We have been using ARIS BPM for two years.

It's pretty stable, at 95% in my experience. There was the odd occasion when the system was down and it took 48 hours to resolve the issue.

More licenses can be added as the demand grows, it just costs more.

Visio was used initially prior to ARIS. Visio lacked the BPM functionality.

It was implemented through an ARIS vendor and the level of expertise was good.

I would suggest trying at least three vendors and obtain written quotes.

The setup cost and pricing depend on the license (Modeler, Viewer, Administrator).

ARIS was the only government "approved" software that the organization was "allowed" to purchase. This was a questionable decision.

My advice is to try different BPM providers and download the demo for 30/90 days to see if it meets your organization's needs. A basic tool means that you will outgrow it quickly, whereas top-end solutions may be too costly and difficult to implement.