ARIS BPA Reviews

We are a solution provider and ARIS BPM is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

The most valuable feature in the latest versions is the connect portal, where you can do modeling in a very simple manner using the web-based portal.

If you look at the administration function, it is rather complex.

If you want to create new reports then you have to use JavaScript, or ARIS script as they call it, which is beyond the competencies of most people.

I would recommend to Software AG that they move to SaaS as soon as possible. Currently, they have a cloud offering, but they don't really have a SaaS business model in place. They are still thinking in terms of licenses and my recommendation to them would be to stop doing this and move to SaaS ASAP because all of the other competitors are moving in that direction. As a SaaS, they might reconsider the positioning of the ARIS portfolio in the markets and to have, for example, specific pricing or specific environments for mid-size companies, instead of just a single implementation for enterprises.

I have been working with ARIS BPM for between 16 and 20 years.

In terms of stability, it depends because there are several possibilities for how it is hosted. If it is on-premises then I can't say anything in terms of stability. However, the Amazon cloud is quite stable. We offer our own cloud environment and over the past four years, it has proven to be really stable.

Overall, if you look at the environment, it's quite stable, and if you look at the product, it's also very much improved in the last years.

My clients for this product are enterprise-level companies.

There is room for improvement, especially in the communication area. If you have Software AG as technical support in a partner environment, there is obvious room for improvement here.

I have worked with a lot of similar products including BiZZdesign, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, and Bizagti. We are also currently doing a lot with GBTEC BIC.

At this time, I would recommend the BIC product from GBTEC the most because it comes down more or less to a newly developed ARIS environment, but in better shape. The core code of the product is new, and you might say, in general, that this is a better product. Also, if you look at the functionalities that they are building, it is less complex. It's more of a SaaS product and it's much easier to use.

This product is rather complex to set up.

Currently, ARIS is just targeting enterprises of, for example, one-billion-plus companies. For these organizations, the price is fine. This is absolutely not the cheapest solution in the market, but for large companies, the price is fine.

If one were targeting companies of perhaps a hundred million and a billion, then the price might be a bit on the high side. For companies below a hundred million, then it's too expensive I would say.

My advice for anybody who is implementing ARIS BPM is to have a good organization in place first. You really need to have ownership because if you implement ARIS and start using it there you have quite a few admin functions that you need to have in place. For example, looking at conventions, filtering, reports, account management, etc. There's a lot of work to be done and ownership in this regard is very important.

In summary, this is a good product but there is room for improvement in several areas.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

One of the main demands that we have at the moment from our customers is not only to map and share their diagrams but also to govern them and automate them. Our major customers come from the banking sector and we also have 2/3 of the telcos and some insurance companies of our country on board. We are a partner with ARIS and I'm the senior manager. 

I really fancy the fact that this solution makes it so easy to have a clear understanding of how the objects you are mapping are used in your database. You can select an object and have a list of all the diagrams that it has been re-used and you can also have it output as an Excel file. There is also the ability to sort via multiple criteria to identify the relationships you need for a specific object and also find correlated models. This is one of the strongest features of the solution. It's better than having to do all the mapping and the analysis using your office tools. It is really powerful, especially if you have a large team that can spend a lot of time working on new solutions and new use cases. Competition has increased in the last few years and there are now clones of ARIS on the market but they don't go as deep as ARIS, so the ARIS product is still far ahead. 

Most of our customers and myself would expect that the next complementary step for this platform would be to offer easily customizable content governance. Mini workflows provided out of the box should be open to be easily adapted by customers.

There could also be improvements to the automation part which some new -with the BPM practice- customers find a bit overwhelming. Other vendors are promoting that they have diagrams automated within the same platform. For this to happen with ARIS there is an extra step required to export these diagrams in the webmethods platform, which can be overwhelming for customers because web methods is a very huge though very powerful automation engine and they hesitate to deal with it.  

It's clear that there are different skills required for mapping compared to those required for automation. In an ideal world, you'd have a mixed team working in automation projects. It would be nice to offer them just one tool for satisfying these two different audiences.

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

Very reliable 

The initial setup is pretty easy but in most cases of large enterprises adaptation is required based on their LDAP Integration and SSO needs. It's the first step with every customer. Software AG'' s team is always willing to help us out in any situation even in the most demanding cases where functionality customization was requested.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

We primarily use this solution for process design, improvements, and publishing.

This solution has helped us in terms of discovering business processes. We analyze them and create to-be scenarios for implementation. We then design IT solutions aligned with business processes, and finally control the implemented solutions, closing the cycle.

The possibility to align Strategies, business, and IT with the architectures of support and SDLC, starting from the requirements management until the IT delivery.

Integration with third-party tools should be improved (e.g. based on APIs).

We are now using ARIS BPM long-term. We are using it as the default tool for our team analytics. For meetings, we use ARIS BPM. For some of the meetings, we use EPC, but we're planning to move to ARIS BPM. We also use ARIS BPM as the solution architect with those models.

We are currently reviewing the accuracy of ARIS BPM in moving data to the enterprise for analytics.

At the moment, there is a cut on hiring in our company. Hence, we decided to go down the road of outsourcing for these areas. We prefer to let these areas make their business purchases individually. 

We found out that just the two of us were making all of the business purchases for the whole organization. We need to support staff of over 8,000. It's quite a lot for two people.

We decided that each business area will be responsible for internal meetings and business process management (BPM). We will only manage the quantity of the documentation, as far as updating the models, using ARIS BPM.

The main features we like about ARIS BPM are related to research:

• We do a filter for meetings to make sure that people don't end up using multiple icons. 
• We have another skill for generating models. 
• We also use ARIS BPM for querying information to see where everything is.
  

With ARIS BPM, the script creation is quite cumbersome. With version ten, the typed ones were quite extensive where we needed our developers to do scripting. If they can improve on that so that we just outline analytics and then produce the required scripts, that would be ideal.

I've not fully looked at ARIS BPM because we are only now evaluating the management of business processes. We've been more focused on AP, so we are seeing less to be utilized as for BPM capability. We've been planning that late for our part.

There's currently an issue where we don't have people in direct communication, even with the reviewing models, using ARIS BPM.

Another issue that they could improve in their functionality is the guidance, i.e. if they look at the processes that you have running or not. They will clear you in the interim going into business system areas, highlighting the information that you need the script to support.

ARIS BPM generates functions according to need and creating the script from the start could be improved likw having those functionalities as part of the system.

The stability of the ARIS BPM platform is quite good. The nice thing about it is the central database, where we can use all of our data. We can even manage users. 

We are no longer operating as a business process network. We are no longer extensively involved in that sector. 

We have handed over the functionality of ARIS BPM to other business areas to do their internal analysis or just show/generate documents for these requirements.

Scalability means extending ARIS BPM to other platforms. One of the reasons why we wanted to integrate product was to be able to pull information from other platforms. That never materialized because there were some technical issues around the area. That's one of the mishaps with this tool. In version ten, there are improvements.

The required buying of little components for scalability also makes ARIS BPM a bit expensive to utilize. I've seen most of the departments within the government to be good. They find it more affordable, i.e. when you are making the first analysis of an extensive process model or a business process analysis. Then it's easier to use ARIS BPM. 

ARIS BPM needs to look at its pricing model. We prefer not to buy everything in pieces, rather just buy the whole product in full for the organization. ARIS BPM should look at that.

At the moment we have just started with ARIS BPM, but the technical support has been very good. The company that we have contracted with is here most of the time. They are also able to do remote support. That is one of the advantages.

When I got the ARIS BPM introduction, we were already using the platform.

We just bought the licenses for nine members. Each will be responsible for their uploads, their business area models, and the business process analysis. In our area, there are three of us. We are responsible for managing the models to show that they are tied to the standards.

For business process management, the time should be reviewed with all of the analytics. Overall, ARIS BPM is a total BPM tool.

I would advise anyone to consider the pricing model first. ARIS BPM is one of the good tools which offers BPM functionality. We are planning to go the route of attaching documents so they can upload them. In this way, we will be able to meet our needs where they are located so we can print and use materials. 

ARIS BPM is a good program. It's one of the leaders in the management of business processes. They should consider centralizing the team and the management of their business processes. 

I would give ARIS BPM an eight to nine out of ten. If I rate at ten then I would be overlooking the problems that we have experienced over the years. There's still room for improvement. 

ARIS BPM needs to improve scripting to make it as easy to use as possible so that they give you support on most of the elements that you generate on the go.

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.

Our primary use case is for process modeling.

It has helped us design processes in a step by step, logical manner. It has helped in putting the product manuals, procedures, and policies all in the same database. It has clearly defined setting up the SLAs for each and every process and measures the SLAs at the end of the process execution for each transaction.

The most valuable features are the leveling of processes, interfacing of processes, extracting the reports, and process manuals out of the system; the whole landscape.

It takes a long time for a new user to start working with ARIS, so perhaps it could be more user-friendly in terms of the complicated construction conventions that it uses. Making it more customizable and easy to learn would be a benefit.

In the age of artificial intelligence, the system should make suggestions as to what to do, and how to do it, rather than depending on the book or relying on the trainer to figure out how to get started.

It is quite stable and there are no issues. We are using the three modules: ARIS Architect, ARIS Designer, and ARIS Process development.

In terms of scalability, it is quite easy. It is only a matter of procuring licenses and training people, and then they can start.

There are approximately six hundred users, including four administrators and five process designers. The rest are end users.

The solution is used quite extensively, and we plan to increase the number of users in the coming years.

Technical support from ARIS is quite responsive, and we get help whenever we need it. With the processes, it becomes a bit complicated because we have to refer it to our IT department and they have to open a log. Because of the time difference between the Gulf and the support team, it takes longer to get things resolved.

We hear back from the support team in 24 to 48 hours.

For BPM, we started with ARIS. We were not using a solution previously, except for designing the processes on Microsoft Visio.

The initial setup was a complex affair for us. We had to engage in six months of training, in-house, with a trainer. A group of people were trained and then finally started process modeling on ARIS.

Over the six months, it was easy, step by step, where we had to follow one thing at a time and there was a lot of time to practice.

We used a consultant for the deployment.

We did not look at another vendor. We had installed a core banking system, Temenos T24, and they were the ones who recommended ARIS, back in 2011.

As for staying with this solution, we have to look at the alternatives available in the market. If something better comes up, and we can make an evaluation and make a shift, why not, but as of now ARIS is a good solution for us, it is working well.

I do recommend ARIS as a tool for others. It is a very helpful solution for process modeling, process measurement, and simulations. It has the ability to scale up, as well as integrate with other systems within the organization to get real-time information from dashboards and reports. It has a lot of capabilities.

It has helped us in designing the processes, measuring the processes, governance of processes, making revisions and changes in processes, and incorporating the regulatory and statutory requirements into our processes very easily. It has very well served our purposes and needs.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The reporting by ARIS is clearly helps us see which resources are doing enough.

The most valuable feature is that you can relate different aspects of an organization to each other, and you can clearly define the rates seen in the application. And, with all of the reporting you can clearly see which resource is doing the most and which resource is not doing enough. So, there is an over or under capacity visualization.

One of the biggest challenges is to realistically enable the defined structures of the processes that you have in ARIS documented, and then actually implement them in the business. If you could see the way those structures and processes are not used then you could identify the bottlenecks that are the real issues and make the necessary changes. But, instead, there is a discrepancy between all of these group processes and all of the documentation that has been in ARIS. When you are going through the business, it's like "Oh, we did like this...How can  you ensure that those processes are actually really followed within your business?" How that is possible, I do not know. From our automation perspective, I think it will be easier because then you can link your EPS or whatever you want or two levels down to your actual application. This application is automated and then you can know "Oh, this piece of code is doing that task always like that." And, that would be great to be able to manage real process and code, as well as everything from ARIS. All of that information is difficult to implement and enforce.

In terms of room for improvement, it may be nice to give access to whatever information in ARIS for a non-process kind of person. And, if you do not understand the basic labels, then there should be training for those people. Perhaps provide simple graphics to help those training sessions.

From an operational perspective, it is quite stable. 

If you do it right, a good scalable product is what you come up with.

We had an ARIS technical person that would consult with headquarters when we needed help. She found it quite frustrating. They did not always understand what we were telling them and they always gave some answer that did not always provide the necessary resolution. So, that has been a bit frustrating for us. Eventually, the issues were resolved. 

Setup was straightforward. 

Obviously to bring knowledge and know-how that you don't have in house.  Also somebody that is unique. And,from a vendor selection perspective, if one could know up front "Okay I know you know you've done a million of these things and you support like a lot of people and you've seen it all, but don't lose that ability to see something for the first time for real and think outside of the box." I think that's key.

We also used Enterprise Architect.

It is used primarily as a process documentation and repository platform. It's also used to organise desktop procedures.

• It has allowed us to promote the awareness of process management across our enterprise.
• It has allowed us to model our enterprise process architecture.

• The reports capability
• Object relationships
• Architectural definitions
• Multiple model types
• Semantic check capabilities

• ARIS Connect capability: Ability to switch from a vertical step view to a horizontal.
• Displaying role allocation matrix models in ARIS Connect.