We performed a comparison between ARIS BPA and erwin Data Modeler by Quest based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Process Design solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It provides the discovery functionality, and you can have a simulation on top of it to get your design corrected to ensure that it is within the right state of parameters. It is a complete package that you can use from strategy to execution because you have the design layer, and within the design, you can also do analytics."
"The most valuable feature in the latest versions is the connect portal, where you can do very simple modeling using the web-based portal."
"BPA, the modeling tool, is the main module used because of our need for documentation."
"The most valuable feature is the process documentation. For us, ARIS is a lifestyle more than a tool. It helps us learn how to think and how to plan for our system."
"Objects can be reused across different BPMNs and processes, so we can design new processes quicker and easier."
"The matrix model makes building relations easier."
"You can relate different aspects of an organization to each other, and you can clearly define the rates seen in the application."
"Aris BPA has a lot of tools that are more professional than Bizagi."
"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"The data lineage feature is very valuable."
"The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data."
"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."
"The generation of DDL saved us having to write the steps by hand. You still had to go in and make some minor modifications to make it deployable to the database system. However, for the data lineage, it is very valuable for tracing our use of data, especially personal confidential data through different systems."
"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"An area where it lacks and can be considered for improvement in the future is if we can somehow automate or learn how we can automate different processes."
"ARIS needs to make a better user interface. The user interface sucks. The problem with ARIS is that they have two interfaces for the same product."
"Areas for improvement include sales, prospecting, shopping, customer service, after-sales (claims and advice for the client), and all processes pertaining to customer loyalty."
"There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports."
"Sometimes, ARIS BPA breaks down, and its stability can be improved."
"The tool must provide more documents."
"The user interface could be more intuitive and better designed."
"The user experience's usability (in general) should be improved as the tool is updated."
"The interface must be improved."
"It does not have a cloud application."
"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."
"There is a lack of local support in the China region."
"Although Quest Software has made tremendous strides in recent years, they need to evolve more in the big data arena; erwin Data Modeler could use a little more work when it comes to big database designs."
"The Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."
"The report generation has room for improvement. I think it was version 8 where you had to use Crystal Reports, and it was so painful that the company I was with just stayed on version 7 until version 9 came out and they restored the data browser. That's better than it was, but it's still a little cumbersome. For example, you run it in erwin, then export it out to Excel, and then you have to do a lot of cosmetic modification. If you discover that you missed a column, then you would have to rerun the whole thing. Sometimes what you would do is just go ahead and fix it in the report, then you have to remember to go back and fix it in the model. Therefore, I think the report generation still could use some work."
"I still use Visio for conceptual modeling, and that's mainly because it is easier to change things, and you can relax some of the rules. DM's eventual target is a database, which means you actually have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but in a conceptual model, you don't often know what you're working with. So, that's probably a constraint with erwin. They have made it a lot easier, and they've done a lot, but there is probably still room for improvement in terms of the ease of presentation back to the business. I'm comparing it with something like Visio where you can change colors on a box, change the text color and that sort of stuff, and change the lines. Such things are a whole lot easier in Visio, but once you get a theme organized in erwin, you can apply that theme to all of the objects. So, it becomes easier, but you do have to set up that theme."
ARIS BPA is ranked 4th in Business Process Design with 64 reviews while erwin Data Modeler by Quest is ranked 9th in Business Process Design with 37 reviews. ARIS BPA is rated 8.4, while erwin Data Modeler by Quest is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of ARIS BPA writes "I can usually find an answer to my issue on ARIS Community". On the other hand, the top reviewer of erwin Data Modeler by Quest writes "The product lets users import different types of models, but it is expensive, and the interface must be improved". ARIS BPA is most compared with SAP Signavio Process Manager, ADONIS, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Camunda and Bizagi, whereas erwin Data Modeler by Quest is most compared with SAP PowerDesigner, IDERA ER/Studio, Visio, Lucidchart and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. See our ARIS BPA vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest report.
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