ARIS BPA Reviews

I am part of an IT service organization and working in capacity of Advisory Consultant where various customers seek advice for Business Process Analysis. The primary use case is Business Architecture Modeling, however, I've suggested ARIS BPA as an upstream to many implementations. 

I have used ARIS Architect, Designer, and ARIS Connect for various other models to complete overall Enterprise Architecture Modeling be it Applications Models, Information/Data Models or Technology/Infrastructure Models. 

ARIS-Solman Integration is another useful use case when it comes to ARIS BPA.

ARIS BPA supports various model types for business processes, customer journeys, organizational charts, applications, information, and technology views along with product and service views. It brings transparency and 360-degree views of end-to-end processes. 

Also, it avoids needing heavy documentation to maintain attributes/properties of processes, organization units, roles, positions, applications, systems, data clusters, and products and services. This list is still not comprehensive. We can easily customize attributes based on our needs and keep the information up to date. This is another important benefit that ARIS BPA has bought.

ARIS BPA provides a variety of features, however, the feature to look at the same model from a different perspective is amazing. We can show the information/view which is relevant to specific stakeholders. This also helps to avoid creating multiple views of the same model and saves a lot of time. 

Also, creating various queries, ad-hoc queries, and reports (what you see what you get) helped us in analyzing the information which is captured on these ARIS models and helped with rapid impact analysis for our application and role rationalization project.

Simulation is one area that is a bit complex. Nowadays, we are talking of digital twins. We should have simulation functionality offered in a simple way and promote process twin. Also, dashboarding is another important area where some other BI tools provide very aesthetic looks to different dashboards (e.g. PowerBI) - although ARIS Process Mining can bring us that. 

In ARIS BPA, if we are providing a dashboarding feature, aesthetics could be improved and dashboard templates can be added for easy and quick consumption.

I've used the solution for more than ten years.

This can be easily scaled. They have 3 editions that start with a Basic, Advanced and an Enterprise edition. Basic provides all essential features like modeling, sharing and optimization. Advanced will give comprehensive features, provides full flexibility of method and access control. Enterprise addition is complete stack, provides full configurability and integration capabilities.

Customer service and support are flexible and help to guide you through simple queries. If you are implementing the first time, they can assist. For complex implementations, you can always count on them to meet your needs.

Positive

I have used various other solutions as well. However, ARIS BPA provides 200+ model types that give me the flexibility to use different models depending on the context.

The initial setup was not that complex; we could manage it with an installation guide. ARIS Connect is plug-and-play. It is a SaaS offering.

We have implemented everything in-house.

ARIS BPA provides complete suites when it comes to the discovery, design, and analysis phases of implementation. Therefore, the cost it has is just not for modeling. The licensing models are very innovative. You can go with whatever it suits to your organization. The environment starts with basic and moves on to advanced and up to an enterprise-level offering.

I have evaluated multiple other options before selecting ARIS BPA, however, I would prefer not to disclose the product names.

The whole ARIS BPM solution is a bit special, because from the very beginning it was targeted more to Business users and the Management. Its core focus was to, at the end provide a neat tool for the Management to use as get a grasp about their Business Processes, more easily determine their strategy and also sometimes do analysis and parametrization of the processes. This is all possible, as ARIS, unlike Visio for example utilizes a database system, where it's possible to model all kinds of relations with different metadata and information. If used with clear strategy, it can provide a really powerful tool to analyze the whole Enterprise, from IT, Processes and Organization.

It has improved the organization where I work currently, in a way that the processes are more transparent, then before when they were present only in documents.
Advanced modeling, structuring and visualization capabilities of ARIS made this possible.

The main "drawback" of ARIS is that it is not targeted towards the real implementation and running of certain business processes.
It does not have a real workflow engine beneath that can make things actually run. This is also due to it's different focus from the beginning. And also, this comment might be a bit subjective, as I'm more interested in this technical aspect of a BPM system.
Some improvements have been done, after Software AG acquired ARIS, but I don't believe it's still integrated with the other tool WebMethods in a perfect way.
Also, ARIS can be very hard and costly to integrate with other tools, as there is no programming API or web services exposed, except from the integrated report API which is targeted to be used for creating reports from the ARIS database. It's not targeted towards integration.

I've used the solution for more than 6-7 years, in different scenarios. Starting as a consultant implementing the solution and modeling the processes, but also as a Business & IT analyst barely using it as a common user to facilitate my work.

No. The standard system is usually very straight forward to deploy.

ARIS Business Server and the modeling tools are pretty stable in general. Some issues and challenges can occur when using it in an extremely large environment when the Business Publisher needs to serve more than 5,000 users. Then the load balancing comes in to play, and it needs some improvement in the Publisher tool.

It's probably one of the most scalable solutions in the market currently.

The effort in changing the whole architecture in versions 9 and 10 to enable this is tremendous.

The technical support is very good, and has extremely improved over the years.

ARIS is a very simple tool to set up if you are using just the basic platform: Business Server and the Designer tools. In case you are going for a more advanced approach, with additional modules, the solution can be quite expensive to set up. As the vendor consultants are not very cheap, :)

Basically, the main point is to be very clear about your expectations and why do you want to use the tool. If your focus is primarily on the business users, and making company wide business process mapping and improvement initiatives, that's pretty much where ARIS is really good. But, if your focus is the implementation of the business processes, integration with other systems, you should probably evaluate other tools, like Webmethods, IBM BPM, Bonita, Bizagi, Pega,etc.

EPC is by far the best notation to process modelling form. The idea of the corporate repository with all business information connected has no competition!

The ARIS Connect Collaborative Portal is a good idea, too!

• Thousands of AS-IS models documented
• Analysis and re-design
• Go to TO-BE models with semantic checks

Scripting has room for improvement and the documentation is a "must".

Model-to-execution methodology must be improved, too, IMHO.

I have used it for seven years.

We have encountered deployment issues. All the products have issues, but really, the quality of ARIS is spectacular, at a level that strikes excellence. Unusual in proprietary software.

I have not really encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Well, the Software AG helpdesk is not the best in the world, but the Software AG salespeople are very willing to help and push to accelerate the solution.

I rate technical support higher than usual.

The principal reason we switched was EPC Notation. This notation, IMHO, is the best option to design the whole organization, it is Software AG property, and the other tools can´t use it.

You can start from scratch in a very easy way and after that, increase the complexity. The tool supports it.

An in-house team with vendor team support implemented it.

• 2.000 designers design ARIS models and don´t create large Word documents.
• Thousands of models to publish to the citizens, hot documentation and short time-to-market.
• Reduces the misunderstanding with countries and users.
• Removes bottlenecks and barriers.

The pricing is not my business but they have a large catalog of license models. It isn´t possible that they don´t have a specific license for you.

• MEGA
• Casewise
• SAP

ARIS with Alfabet is the best EA/BPM solution in the world; no competitors. Somebody might say to you that the x tool is the best or that the y tool is the most stable tool in the market, but believe me, it will be bull. ARIS is unbeatable!!!

We use it for enhancing systems. 

The solution is user-friendly and easy to use. 

They should make improvements as per customer requirements. 

I have been working with Aris BPA for three years.

It is a highly stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. One hundred users are using the solution. 

The initial setup is straightforward. It does not require much maintenance. 

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

The process modeling capabilities are what we use this for primarily.  

ARIS is probably the most mature product I know of in terms of modeling an enterprise architecture so that it has context. When you need to make changes to processes, there is a view where you can actually see what other processes within different use cases or different functional areas use the same process and what those changes can affect. Workflows can be used across different business areas and that gives a really good, holistic view of what modifications end up affecting.  

Some of the interactions with different versions of browsers caused a little bit of angst because there are certain corporate SOEs (Standard Operating Environments), which do not lend themselves well to representation in the latest version of ARIS. The product is sort of one version behind with current trends, typically.  

I have definitely seen better UIs, but the crux of why we use the ARIS process modeler is because we have everything all one suite. When you talk about enterprise architecture, application architecture, process architecture, or whatever else you want to model and monitor, these processes are all in the same place. You can make cross-references or create links between processes, you can link part of a model to an application, you can link to a capability view, et cetera. As an enterprise architecture tool, there is probably very little they can improve on at least compared to other modelers.  

Because you keep on working with different versions of a model, the only way to maintain a record is to take a snapshot. Certain things are still in design or still in the conceptualization stage. Other things have already gone into production. At a glance, it is quite hard to work out which processes are at a particular stage. The overview is very flat. Having some form of a hierarchy in terms of approvals or a sort of ranking would be good. This could show whether a process has been deployed or not, or if it is still just a conceptual model. Some sort of formal approval process that defines a released version of your models could be incorporated into the workflow approval process to help visualize what stage a process is in.  

I have probably been using ARIS (Architecture of Integrated Information Systems) BPM (Business Process Management)for about four years now. I used ARIS BPM before coming to this company, but quite a while ago. That was about a year ago, and that was version 10 or 11 or something in that range.  

Stability is very much dependent on the network. If the network is not so good, then you might experience some stability issues. It would be good if you had an offline version or some means of caching development. I am not sure whether that is in the ARIS roadmap. 

All BAs (Business Analyst) use ARIS, especially for process modeling. We have a team of probably 50 people who use ARIS modeler to see the process flows, but there are different roles. I am an architect so I can see everything. BAs can only view or read, they can not contribute to the capability models. The roles help scale out so the right people get the appropriate access without causing development issues.  

We have our own administrators here who maintain the product.  

The initial setup and installation are very straightforward. The administration is a bit clunky because of the way it is set up as a Software-as-a-Service. There was not really a Single Sign-On capability for the tool. You have to maintain your login separately and that is a little archaic.  

Because it was already running, there was not really a deployment to get me going with the product. It was just a matter of adding me as a user.  

I definitely recommend the product to users seeking this kind of solution, especially for the architecture practice. If you want to have a knowledge base or a repository for architects it is very good for an overview of the enterprise architecture. Normally in a new business venture — that being a business case, a new software offering, or a new capability — the new process needs to be introduced to an existing architecture. Companies will already have a mature backend with legacy applications and integrations. It is good to keep a repository of the development to make sure that the history of that evolution stays within the company's knowledge base for later reference.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate the ARIS BPM solution overall as a product as probably an eight-out-of-ten. It is not rated higher because the user interface is not as modern as other modeling tools like Bizagi, which looks nice. With ARIS you are quite limited when it comes to the look and feel.  

That issue with look-and-feel becomes more important when you try to present something to executives. When it looks like your ten-year-old has done something to present in grammar school, it is not the right thing to be showing at a high-level meeting. The content is all there, but it just looks like it is just scraped together rather than properly designed.  

I used to work for the company who set this solution up for customers. However, I am now an end-user, and perform the role of system architect.

The most valuable features are business process modeling and reporting. They show all of the business and operational processes, which are banking processes. It also allows for managing and reporting on them. The entire bank can follow and manage their own processes.

I would like to see a simpler process for integrating with other tools. When we tried to integrate ARIS with other external tools, it was not easy.

I would like to see the reporting aspects improved.

We have had some problems in terms of stability, although technical support has always helped. Overall, I can say that it's stable.

My impression is that this solution is really scalable.

On the configuration side, we have six users. One architect and the others are designers. We also have people that publish in the company library, and all of the employees follow the processes from there. We have approximately two thousand end users.

We are very satisfied with this solution's technical support. They answer quickly and try to solve all of the problems. They are the best.

My understanding is that the initial setup was easy.

In terms of pricing, it would be nice if it were more affordable.

I would recommend this product because it is really easy to use.

This is a good solution, but it needs better integration with external tools and it is expensive.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use the product for modeling business scenarios and processes. It helps in designing BPMN and functions.

ARIS BPA is customizable as per specific business requirements. It is flexible to structure and arrange essential components in business models.

The platform’s most valuable feature is object reusability. It has occurrence copies, which help us reuse any object in any model.

The product is difficult to use for someone without prior knowledge of working with it. It requires a certain level of administration training.

We have been using ARIS BPA for three years.

It is a stable product and quick to use.

We have 30 to 40 ARIS BPA users in our organization. It was highly scalable the last time I checked it with the technical advisor.

We have deployed the product on the cloud.

I rate ARIS BPA an eight out of ten. I advise others to appoint an executive with specific knowledge about the product.

The solution has come up with a web portal that makes it easy to model and show to clients. 

The tool's installation and configuration part needs to improve. 

I have been working with the product for a few years. 

The solution's technical support is good. 

Neutral

The solution is complex to install. The solution's configuration part is heavy and complex. The tool's setup takes one day to complete. You would need two to three people which would include, the technical lead, project manager, and developer to handle the deployment. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.