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IBM BPM vs IBM Case Foundation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (6th)
IBM Case Foundation
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
30th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 5.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Case Foundation is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM BPM5.9%
IBM Case Foundation0.5%
Other93.6%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.
Nouman Nawaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Mature product in terms of security and stable product
The architecture is a bit difficult, but in BAW, they introduced the Business Automation Workflow. It's a bit easier compared to Case Manager. Currently, we use Case Manager, so it's a bit difficult to upgrade and handle, but BAW is comparatively much better and easier to handle. The limitation is only for customization because IBM doesn't support it. In some scenarios, if you want some business processes to be customized, we have already spoken two or three times with IBM representatives that we have to customize some of the features in this business process. They would say that if you want to do this automation at your own end, then okay, fine, go ahead, but we are not supporting all this customization. The only thing is the customization because it's a complete standard application.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a stale solution."
"We can scale by increasing the infrastructure which is currently running."
"The solution has helped us automate business processes."
"With the Process Center, I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing."
"This product does the job in terms of executing the workflow."
"The designer feature, compared to other solutions is easy to use."
"Previously, our company's business automation process was slow. IBM BPM's schedule and response functionalities are excellent...There are countless use cases in which IBM BPM proves to be a valuable tool for my clients."
"The most valuable features come in the bundle, the design process, creating services, creating BPDs, creating coaches, and UI/UX."
"The content management is great."
"The client and the IBM content navigation are the solution's most valuable features."
"A valuable feature includes seamless integration with the document management system, along with robust capabilities in analytics and reporting."
"The most valuable feature is the content manager part of the file as it is very stable, robust, and reliable."
"The most valuable features are those involving decision making, analysis, and anything related to event documents because those processes are related to content as well."
"It provides us the capability of producing b​​usiness processes for documents that are launched immediately when a document comes into the repository."
"It's very easy."
"The most valuable feature is its stability, which is why we are using it."
 

Cons

"I would like IBM to consider including AI-enabled process mining, robotic process automation, and very good OCR capabilities from the computer vision side."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"Performance on large scale requirements could also be improved."
"The options for customization could be improved. More customization using your own code would be beneficial."
"I would like it more documentation during the design phase."
"It is a really powerful tool, but its entry price is so high, which makes it a very exclusive club for who gets to use it. The thing that seemed to be the most intolerable was that you could put lots and lots of users on it, and it worked fine, but if you put lots and lots of developers on it, it sure seemed to have challenges. The biggest challenge was the development because of the Eclipse tool. It just seemed like irrespective of the development team that you put together, whether it had 10 or 50 people, you would end up having to reboot the development server throughout the day when you concurrently had lots of people hammering on the system. The development server just got sluggish. This was true for every project I was on. Once you got more than about five people working on the system at the same time, it would just get slower and slower during development work, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the server. It became just like a routine. Sometimes, we would reboot at lunch or dinner time, which is silly. After the cloud instances started rolling out, I never saw that again. That was probably the one big advantage of the cloud version. Instead of using an independent Eclipse-based process development tool, we moved to web-based process and design. The web-based tool definitely had greater performance than the Eclipse-based tool. I never got onto another project after that with 50 people, so I don't know how the performance is when you get a large team on it, but it definitely seems that the cloud design tool was a massive improvement."
"It needs more customization. We like to customize the screens to show more things related to our company."
"There is a need for more open and flexible integration capabilities, allowing seamless collaboration with a broader spectrum of business process management solutions, beyond the confines of IBM's document management offerings."
"Once a workflow is launched then it stays static forever, which is a problem because if there is a change in the business then you cannot change the workflow."
"90% of the feedback we receive states that the UI is not very user-friendly."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"The service as it currently stands is out-of-date and lacks flexibility."
"The solution can be quite expensive."
"The limitation is only for customization because IBM doesn't support it."
"The cloud version could use more stability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"The price falls in the middle range—not overly expensive but not extremely affordable either."
"IBM Case Foundation is a little expensive."
"This is not an expensive solution and we are using the standard license."
"Pricing is in the mid-range, it is not cheap, but it's not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise71
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about IBM Case Foundation?
A valuable feature includes seamless integration with the document management system, along with robust capabilities in analytics and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Case Foundation?
The tool is expensive for my customers; it is very expensive, more than other solutions. Some customers say it is more expensive. The license cost for Cloud Pak is per user and increases with the n...
What needs improvement with IBM Case Foundation?
We face some challenges with IBM Case Foundation from our customers, particularly with administration and configuration. We face many issues and open tickets with IBM regarding that, especially som...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Case Foundation, FileNet Business Process Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Suncorp Group Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. IBM Case Foundation and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.