We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch by Redwood and Appian based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Process Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."What ActiveBatch allows you to do is develop a more efficient process. It gave me visibility into all my jobs so I could choose which jobs to run in parallel. This is much easier than when I have to try to do it through cron for Windows XP, where you really can't do things in parallel and know what is going on."
"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."
"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."
"Since we are no longer waiting for an operator to see that a job is finished, we have changed our daily cycle from running in eight hours down to about five. We had a third shift-operator retire and that position was never refilled."
"The user interface is really incredible."
"I find the BPM the most valuable feature."
"Even with an on-premise implementation, the scalability is still high, so it is easy to scale up."
"Appian helps you do a lot of things. It's easy to configure and build an application platform, and it offers a lot of features that you find in an RPA solution. It's flexible so you can reuse it for a variety of use cases."
"It has very flexible adaptation and the ability to save and automate processes."
"Appian also has very flexible local integration."
"Appian is a very low code platform. It's very easy to learn and use."
"The tool is very flexible."
"With low-code, we don't need a lot of coding, and then from the plumbing perspective, there is a complete CI/CD pipeline that exists within Appian that can be leveraged for open deployment."
"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."
"The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"I can't get the cleaning up of logs to work consistently. Right now, we are not setup correctly, and maybe it is something that I have not effectively communicated to them."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."
"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"Authoring tool is slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built."
"Appian is easy to set up, but JBoss is complex. JBoss is the application server for running Appian."
"The solution could improve by being more responsive when dealing with large quantities of data. Additionally, they can make the decision or rules engine better. It cannot handle too many rules or too many decisions at once."
"Offline capabilities and responsive capabilities could be better. The mobility features of Appian platform are still evolving."
"Occasionally, certain pre-made modules may not be necessary and customers may desire greater customization options. Instead of being limited to pre-designed features, they may prefer a more flexible version that allows for greater customization."
"Sometimes, clients expect us to implement ERP using Appian, which is very complicated. In such cases, I don't believe that Appian is a good tool for that."
"It would be nice if you could create your own customized apps when the business needed them."
"Even though the company has made great improvements in online documentation, featuring rich material which includes case studies of real-life use cases, the material could definitely be better in quality and coverage of use cases."
ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 6th in Process Automation with 35 reviews while Appian is ranked 3rd in Process Automation with 57 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while Appian is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Appian writes "Low resource consumption, easy setup, and stable". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, VisualCron and IBM Workload Automation, whereas Appian is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, OutSystems, Camunda, ServiceNow and Pega BPM. See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Appian report.
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