ARIS BPA Reviews

ARIS BPA was underutilized because they used the ARIS modeling paradigm, including value-added chains, EPCs, and functional allocation diagrams.

ARIS BPA is coming up with a centralized repository of local business processes that could be referenced for design work and operations.

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are the centralized repository and the automatic rendering of diagrams.

ARIS BPA’s usability could be improved.

I have been using ARIS BPA for almost three years.

I rate ARIS BPA a nine out of ten for stability.

ARIS BPA’s initial setup was straightforward.

ARIS BPA is too costly from a licensing perspective. It is also too costly to maintain, configure, and integrate.

I am using the latest version of ARIS BPA. Do your due diligence to ensure that this is the product you need from a feature and cost perspective.

Overall, I rate ARIS BPA a seven out of ten.

ARIS has many modules starting right from strategy to dashboarding. However, the primary focus of using ARIS is for Business Process Modeling/Analysis - although it is not just limited to process but can cover the entire enterprise architecture for an organization.

We have used ARIS for multiple projects with different objectives, including E2E process modeling, managing IT application landscape, support for eTOM frameworks, managing risk/compliance, rules modeling, et cetera. 

We have leveraged it for multiple client engagements with different objectives of the program, including digital transformation journeys, IT landscape rationalization, process transformation, process improvement, process automation, S4/HANA Migration, process rationalization, legacy modernization, and much more.

ARIS provides the basic foundation for any digital transformation an organization decides to take. 

Firstly, it helps to create the business blueprint for any organization. With clear and complete documentation of the processes, different departments and people involved can build a common understanding of processes. It helps in reducing duplication since there is only one single source of truth across the organization. 

It greatly reduces the modeling effort of the processes since it is based on a relational DB which supports the concept of library objects. For example, you can create a central repository of applications, risks, data, products, capabilities, services, interfaces, technical infrastructure et cetera. You can create them once and reuse them multiple times as required along with your processes. This helps the multiple dimensional analysis of your processes. 

ARIS provides many functionalities and capabilities, including:

1. E2E visibility of the processes which are typically cross-functional

2. Multiple hierarchies of the process provides a different level of abstraction

3. Multi-dimensional view of the process can be created to further support analysis from the system, data, capability, product, interface, infrastructure et cetera.

4. Provides a single source of truth for a process consumed by different departments/functions

6. Strong governance and release cycle management with a built-in workflow

7. Process simulation capabilities to perform what-if analysis

8. Seamless collaboration using built-in mini workflows 

9. Out-of-the-box connectivity with SAP

Although ARIS is already a leading tool in the BPA space for years, in my opinion, there are a few areas that can be made even better, For example:

1. The reporting capabilities and the ability to create custom reports need to be simplified and made easy so that people even with a good functional understanding of the tool can leverage it to create their own custom report. Since, at the end of such BPA/BPM implementations, higher management typically wants to see the value coming out of ARIS and all the modeling effort and this would make it more adaptable for our customers as they would see the value coming out of the tool.

2. As the world is going the way of low code/no code, they should also think of modernizing the report creation in a similar fashion.

3. The integration capabilities with other COTS products should be better. Since every organization uses many applications/systems for day-to-day operations, the easy integration with such systems like SNOW, SFDC, et cetera, will make the adoption easy for the client rather than seeing ARIS as a standalone system with separate license and maintenance costs.

I've used the solution for 12+ years.

The ARIS SaaS offerings are very stable and secure since they are hosted on Azure and AWS platforms which provide state-of-the-art hosting. 

With the SaaS offering, organizations can start exploring the basic functionalities with a subscription-based license. The license can be upgraded and the adoption of the tool can be increased within the organization as needed.

They offer excellent support and customer service. 

Positive

We have used many tools, including Signavio, Bizagi, Visio, Nimbus, Mega, et cetera.

I personally found the modeling very easy to start and adopt even for a beginer as ARIS provides a very clean and simple interface to work with. 

The kind of versatility and flexibility that ARIS provides is unmatched by any other tool in the market.

The initial setup is quite straightforward since the Software AG teams take care of the provisioning and intial setup of the SaaS instance based on the requirements. 

Organizations do not need to get involved and invest time and energy in figuring out the infrastructure, security, and access-related issues.

The SaaS offering was handled by the Software AG team itself.

Although not quoting a number, ARIS brings huge value for Organizations that have implemented it. For example, it's bringing E2E transparency of how the business process works in a department/unit since they are typlical cross functional in nature.

Different stakeholders can talk and understand the same language since ARIS provides a single source of truth for processes across the organization. 

Although the largest customer base for ARIS is in large enterprises, the SaaS offering from Software AG starts right from free trial to basic, advanced, and Enterprise versions. Organizations can start small and rapidly scale as required.

We looked at many tools, including Signavio, Bizagi, Visio, Nimbus, MEGA, et cetera.

Since there is a free 30-day trial, I certainly urge anyone looking to invest in process modeling or analysis tools to try out ARIS.

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.

Our customers have generators on their facilities, and we manage those generators to provide services to the grid and reduce their costs. It involves peak shaving and that sort of stuff. We use ARIS BPM to essentially automate the communication to the grid and the generator and then update all of the account information regarding those transactions.

The ease of use is the most valuable. I have tried a number of BPMN packages, and I find the user interface of ARIS BPM easier and more intuitive than others. If your team is knowledgeable on BPMN, it is really pretty easy to figure out on your own because it adheres to the standards extremely well. I have tried Bizagi, BizFlow, and a variety of such solutions, and I just liked ARIS BPM better.

I use it strictly for developing the business process model. I don't use it for the actual automation. I do that with Vtenext. I have standardized on Vtenext, and I don't use ARIS BPM anymore. The Vtenext UI is just as good, and it is much more tightly coupled to the underlying object model. I can get more done in one session with Vtenext rather than first going to ARIS BPM, then importing, and having to edit it for tight coupling.

I have been using ARIS BPM off and on for six months.

I would not comment on this because we use it primarily just for the business process modeling and not the automation. So, I really can't comment on scaling. We have four users who are using this solution.

We never contacted them. Its user interface is good and pretty intuitive. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

I would recommend ARIS BPM depending upon the use case. I would generally recommend Vtenext first. I found Vtenext on GitHub as I was looking through and trying out lots of BPMN and BPA stuff. I used their product, and it is a really good product. We've now partnered with them.

I would rate ARIS BPM an eight 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.  

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. 

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 tool defines the processes. It's the documentation of everything. 

The solution's processes are huge and it is not easy to get an overview of how things work. It needs to improve the interface. I would like to see the product include a better overview of processes and improve search. 

I have been working with the product for three years. 

The product is stable. 

The tool is scalable. 

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I would recommend the product to only enterprise companies because of the pricing.