ARIS BPA Reviews

ARIS was used to capture current business processes in ARIS EPC through a series of workshops. Level 1-3 VACD, Level 4 EPC (Event-driven Process Chain) and FAD (Function Allocation Diagram), Activities, Roles, Metrics, Risk and Control, RACI, etc.

It was used to operationalize new business processes and also in preparation for a case management system migration to Salesforce. The management, team leader, and staff were trained to read the EPC process model and taught how to navigate ARIS in the production environment. 

The selection criteria for ARIS as the preferred BPM was questionable in my opinion.

The main reason it was chosen is that it was on the government "approved" product list.

The solution was too complex/advanced for the organization's requirements and a big team was hired to manage the administration of ARIS and maintain it.

The choice to model the business process in EPC instead of BPMN was made by the organization and no fault of ARIS; ARIS is most certainly capable of modeling in BPMN. There's a lot of time and effort spent to help staff get their head around how to read an EPC in ARIS.

The EPC modeling is very detailed, the semantic check is helpful, and auto-layout simplifies the formatting.

The process interface is valuable for identifying the upstream and downstream processes.

The approval process for the ARIS EPC from the design, staging, and production environment is pretty good. You can obtain feedback on the process model; however, this functionality seems a bit limited by today's standard as some other BPM allows you to comment on the objects within the process model, which makes gathering feedback and making changes easier.

ARIS EPC & FAD features and functionality does not feel like they are not designed for business users. Instead, it feels like they are geared for Process Modelers and Technology users who are focused on System Interface, User Interface, Risk and Control, etc.

Trying to read an EPC in a screen Top-Down while dragging the screen is next to impossible. 

The model graphics can be exported in PDF, but the model is too small to read.

In my experience, once the organization creates the process model in ARIS EPC, it will take approximately two years before most organizations ditch any effort to update it. It takes more effort to maintain it than the value that an organization gets out of it.

The requirements for events after the rules, whilst accurate, simply take up too much space and makes the process model difficult to read.

Connecting the upstream and downstream process interface is a pain.

The auto-layout is a great feature but does not work as expected all of the time, as lines appear to overlap and can be confusing to read unless you click on the line to highlight it.

We have been using ARIS BPM for two years.

It's pretty stable, at 95% in my experience. There was the odd occasion when the system was down and it took 48 hours to resolve the issue.

More licenses can be added as the demand grows, it just costs more.

Visio was used initially prior to ARIS. Visio lacked the BPM functionality.

It was implemented through an ARIS vendor and the level of expertise was good.

I would suggest trying at least three vendors and obtain written quotes.

The setup cost and pricing depend on the license (Modeler, Viewer, Administrator).

ARIS was the only government "approved" software that the organization was "allowed" to purchase. This was a questionable decision.

My advice is to try different BPM providers and download the demo for 30/90 days to see if it meets your organization's needs. A basic tool means that you will outgrow it quickly, whereas top-end solutions may be too costly and difficult to implement.

The primary use for the solution is as an enterprise architect tool, but in the start it was about processing; modeling all kind of business processes. And that was before I even mention BPMN. Today, we have switched to using BPMN to do all the different kinds of business process modeling.

This product is supporting it very well.

I'm now working as an independent consultant, but in the past, when I was using it we could really quickly get a picture of what kind of business processes were being used across the entire organization, and which could be reused, and be sure that no one else is doing it another way. 

For example, the HR part, in that organization there were about 20,000 people working there. From an HR point of view, they had to do everything the same way, when they were hiring people, or when they were paying money, etc. There, we had a strong opportunity to define, describe, so that everybody could go in and see, "Okay, that's the way you have to do it. We have to follow these rules."

We could also create a good connection between the description of what we were doing the application. In this part, it was primarily SAP - and ARIS was coming from the SAP world in 1992, I think it was around then. They started as an independent firm, so they could do these things. That's why it's a very strong part, from when it started, but it has been developed now as an enterprise architect too.

The good thing about using this tool is the repository that gives us the opportunity: If you want to do modeling with the old notation form, ours was EPC, you can use the same object in the BPMN because the database is built in a way that you can use both things. So you only have to define it once, and if the notation form is BPMN and those kind of activities, you can use the same EPCs, so there is a connection between them. That is why it's a very flexible tool.

Furthermore, you can use this tool as an enterprise architect tool. So from an architectural point of view, when you're looking at the business area, you can find all the information you have to use as an architect.

The most important part of it, from my point of view - the way I work with it - is from an architect point of view. What I'm using it to handle, from the top-level management part, is where we talk about the strategy, then down to the business part, down to the information part, down to the application part, and to the technology part. So I use everything in the tool.

But, if you have to see it from a BPMN prospect, it will be the BPMN part of it. 

Also, the UML parts have been improved very much in the last two years. And it's very powerful now to combine the BPMN and UML parts in the product, because you can make a connection between them, so that you have the right interoperability between them. So if you're doing data modeling, you can use your class diagram and bind that to the BPMN part. That's a very strong part of it too. Had now implementet the Danish public ad on "Plusprofil" to the UML packed.

I have been talking with developers for many years, and it was before using your UML class diagram and those things for defining data. One of the issues is, when you are defining databases, the way they use entities and relationship diagrams, the way we can define data, like data models, there is still a part they could improve. By using the UML part, you would use that instead of the old fashioned way of an entity and relationships diagram. But there they have a still point where they could improve.

It is a very stable product. In all these years, I think once or twice in the beginning it gave me trouble, but never with stability. It's a very stable product. There are a very few bugs. When you find a bug, just give them a call or write to them and they will fix it. Today they are coming out with two major releases every year. They are really fast to go in and say, "Here is the update for that." So the stability is very good. 

It's also very good at scalability. If you follow what they are saying, how many users you should put on, etc., no problem.

The biggest challenge today is that people will not pay to have the right technology installation. For example, is there enough room for you at the network level to work with this product? In the new version where we can switch between the heavy one or the light one, the browser, there is no problem. It works. No problem.

The level of technical support is very high. Very good.

No, I didn't use a previous solution. If you ask me, if I have to choose between different kinds of solutions, I would prefer to use this. It is the most flexible and most user friendly product you can get. I would not switch. But, of course, when you are consulting, you also have to use other tools. Now, today, I'm also working with one of other tools, like HOPEX from MEGA. It's also one of the biggest tools that you can use. If I have to choose, I will choose ARIS instead of MEGA.

Of course, there are different things they can do, but I would still prefer to use ARIS. For the moment.

Every tool, like these - with so many different things you can do with these tools - you need, of course, education about the tools, and you have to make choices. What part of it will you use? It is always like that. When you work with it during one or two days' education, I think you will be very capable of using it in the area that you would like to work in.

For example, if you are using it in BPMN, one day of education and you will already be one of the best people to model BPMN with this tool. Still, BPMN is a big area to go into. Start small but think big.

You will never get a fixed price for this product because they will go in and ask you what kind of environment would you like to set up? How many people will you work with? How big is your organization? 

Today, they have a fixed price to say, "Okay, just to start the business area, buy two licenses for modeling and eight people that can look into the product." They have this kind of fixed price. It's 50,000 Danish Krone. If you divided that by about six, then you get the pricing in dollars.

From my point of view, no, it is not cheap, but it is not too expensive because you get this big organization behind it, technical support, and all those things. It's not so expensive to use. It's a Rolls Royce in this field, I know that. Even for small organizations, they can get so much effect from using this tool, in a very fast way, so the money will be back in the customer's pocket very fast. 

Still, when you are going out, negotiate and find the right price. You will never get a fixed price: "It costs this and, if you take ten of these, seven of these and eight of these, and then it costs this." No, you negotiate every time.

At that time, in 2002, it had to be connected to the SAP environment. The ARIS tool set at that time was one of the biggest in this area, and that's why we were choosing it. There was something else, but it was not as good. Not stable for the SAP environment. I think it was because of the SAP environment that we choose this product, not others.

Today, I would say, from an architectural point of view, it was a good choice. You will see that in the EU, they also use it in the customer area for defining BPMN processes and data. So, they are using this in the EU now as the main product for these areas.

It is not a challenge to implement the product, not even from a technical point of view, because if you have rights to do things, it takes less than two hours to implement the whole package. Download the product and then just run it.

You have to go to the top-level people and talk to them and say, "Okay, what is your strategy to get a good view of your business?" If they say, "We would like to have something help us to manage, what kind of strategy that we have, what kind of rules, principles that we have to follow, that can give us a picture from the top-level and then traceability down to business areas." 

For example, here in Europe, we have a new law called GDPR, data protection. That's coming in here in May, in the EU. This product can help you to be sure that you will not get in trouble when they come and ask you, "Have you completely made all these different kinds of process descriptions that show us where you are using, how you are using the data, etc?" Here you have a product that can support that.

If you want to have the full picture, also from an architectural point of view, then you should buy a product like this or something similar to this. You have to go up and find the best. ARIS is among the top in industry reviews, and I would recommend it. But I am also using one of the others up there as well.

Again: Where do you need it? That's a very important question to ask. Where do you want to put in? If it's in the BPMN area, use ARIS. It's a very easy way to use it.

Most of the use cases I worked with were for documenting processes and trying to do some visual analysis with the stakeholders involved in those processes. It was a very convenient way because the solution has a repository. It's an integrated database where you can see a lot of interconnected views of your whole enterprise, including applications, roles, processes, documents, risks, and controls.

You can model everything about your enterprise in an interconnected repository, which you cannot easily do with other document-based tools like Visio. An object you place in a document doesn't really have any connection to the same object with the same name that you place in another model.

The solution's flexibility, reporting, and ability to customize your set of models, connections, objects, and attributes was really a positive thing. That's why many customers use ARIS BPA, and we recommend it for those scenarios.

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting. You can use the solution to customize the whole set of objects and models. If you know a bit of programming, you can easily pull out or get data in ARIS BPA. You can even integrate the solution with other systems. The solution now has a REST API, which provides a lot of possibilities as the reporting does, but it's not quite there yet. We still depend a bit on the reports to integrate with other systems or fetch data from ARIS BPA very easily.

It's really a unified repository, and it's quite easy to configure and set up. Compared to other tools, the solution has good modeling, analysis, and visualization of processes. Currently, it has a really good process portal with a lot of nice functionalities. With the solution's search functionality, people can easily find processes relevant to them or where they are involved as someone executing some parts of the process or interfacing with another process.

A gas and oil company with oil rigs concluded that in the past, they had procedures always documented in some Word or PDF documents. It was really hard for people working on those rigs to follow these processes. They often disregarded or couldn't find relevant documentation. ARIS BPA improved their situation. People found it much easier to go to the portal, find their process, and link in more condensed documents. We can link some checklists to that activity. They find it much easier and user-friendly to follow and comply with the processes.

With the solution's process portal, you can present the whole content, and the users in the company can see how the process looks and what their roles are in the process. One company could even see screens of the applications that they need to use for that particular step in the process. It increases the documentation and serves as a knowledge base for the company employees on how to execute their processes.

ARIS BPA is a good solution for documenting and analyzing processes. We are really happy with the solution's reporting and documentation capabilities.

I always miss an execution module that is better than the current one. The current one is called ARIS Process Governance, and it's mostly focused on setting up internal workloads for ARIS and the process content. If you want to do some release cycle management processes, you would use the ARIS Process Governance module to create a workflow that sends tasks and emails to the users of ARIS.

ARIS BPA is not really a platform that offers you the opportunity to execute processes that you model. So, the model for execution is something that is missing. Typically, I wouldn't recommend ARIS as a process execution platform.

The solution is not built for automating and running workflows.

I have been using ARIS BPA for 15 years.

The awareness about business processes typically becomes much higher with the solution. Some organizations use Word documents, Excel, and PowerPoint to sketch up some business processes. This is typically done as a one-off exercise. Later, this gets forgotten, or someone leaves the company. Someone new comes, and then they may use a completely new methodology or way of modeling or working.

The positive thing about ARIS BPA is that you can easily set up and configure your methodology once. Then, everyone using it uses the same way of modeling processes, depicting different relationships between objects, models, roles, applications, etc.

You can establish a new unified methodology that can be expanded later on as you grow, or you want to model some other artifacts within your enterprise. It does help you establish a common methodology and a common repository to build your business process management and business process analysis suite.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

We use BPA for modeling and documenting in a central repository. We are customers of ARIS and I'm a process professional. 

I value the reporting as well as the information query features, they are both very useful. It gives us a common language and a common repository, and we're able to control the workflow and relevant key processes. We're also able to utilize all the additional data that we capture and provide a holistic view of how our processes impact other areas of the organization.

Although the reporting and the information query features are good, they could do with some improvement. I'd also like to see better control over the library assets. It takes a lot of effort to maintain all the different types of central libraries. I'd like to see a simplification of the automation in the next update, it's currently quite a complex process. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The stability of the system is good. We've had some minor issues when they're running maintenance activities but other than that, the solution is stable. 

The technical support is reasonable.

I've also used Bizagi quite a lot but I like ARIS because we're able to extract a lot more information. Bizagi has the ability to start executing processes via the platform, which is a definite advantage over ARIS. Once we model a process in Bizagi, we can configure it and create an executable web service out of it. 

The solution is deployed across the entire company, almost everyone uses it.
We currently have around 600 users, but we're planning to scale up to approximately 2,500 soon. We have around 30 people maintaining the data.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

My experience with the product was great. The tool has good navigation.

The tool must provide more documents. If someone gets stuck while using the product, the documents will help them to deal with issues.

I am learning the solution currently.

The tool is stable.

The support team resolved my issues. I rate the support a seven and a half or eight out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. The solution is deployed on the cloud. It took us a few days to deploy it.

The product is a bit pricey.

ARIS BPA is my first BPA solution. I heard about it and thought to start working with it. I saw some YouTube videos and gathered some knowledge about it. It was a great experience. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Over the years I have used ARIS in many ways depending on the project, and I have experience with many different versions of it. I've used versions seven, eight, and now ten. About ten years ago, I worked on developing ARIS and its standardization for six months.
When I first started using it, I used to build a center of excellence for a global project. We used it to document the expansion process of our company to the global market. There were a lot of Visio files and it was quite disorganized since anyone could edit the files however they would like. We tried to turn the Visio files into something more formal. For a year, we used a low-end tool to document the process. With ARIS, we documented around 2,000 processes. We used it to organize and create a publishment where people could find what they're looking for.

I like everything about ARIS BPA. I've used it for a long time and I think it's a fantastic tool. There is a list of things ARIS has that other solutions do not have.

The solution does not have an efficient way to track employees' work. It shows who worked on something last, but that overwrites the history of changes in a way. It is supposed to provide information on team activity, but it does not do that. The creators of the solution elaborated in great detail on quality control and thought about every possibility, but they didn't make that useful and simple to use. The overhead maintenance is good.

I have been using ARIS BPA since 2010. 

The solution is very scalable. A ten out of ten. There is nothing even remotely close to it on the market. 

ARIS BPA is an extremely stable solution.

ARIS' technical support team is great.

Positive

Many years ago, we used BusinessOptix at our company. 

The initial setup of ARIS BPA is simple. When we first started using it, it was deployed on-premises. The latest version was deployed on cloud and it only takes a few days. It promises to teach you how to do that, but that is not very helpful since your company's team and organization need to be suitable for this kind of complexity. It's web-based, but there are technical limits to what you can do with it. In a way, it encourages you to purchase more and more if you want to maximize its usability. It does not teach you how to use it and it's very formal. Although ARIS is a fantastic tool, it would be better if it was focused on the customer's success. It requires a lot of maintenance.

ARIS BPA is extremely expensive and the training time for it is extensive.

I had a hard time with ARIS' access and licensing policy. It requires you to pay for each step you want to take forward with the solution. To get the documentation, you need to be an administrator. If you want the license to read the documentation of the process, you need to be some kind of administrator/support account, but you will need to pay for the support. Even if I'm qualified they will not provide me with the documentation. Instead, they will ask you to print it out and send the request to them. I had to wait two months to get the account and six months to get the contract. All of that is extremely time-consuming.

I have seen how MEGA works and it is definitely more user-friendly than ARIS.

The requirements are extremely high and it takes a skilled professional to use it properly. Whether it's a big or a small company, it has to be used by someone who is familiar with its complexity. You should be aware before purchasing the solution that it is not simple to use and it takes time to learn. ARIS' free tool is much easier to use. I work in Germany, but I think they made ARIS less complex in other countries.

When it comes to ARIS BPA as a tool, I would rate it a solid ten out of ten. It's a fantastic tool, but it is not easy to achieve results with it. The chances of producing what is promised by the vendor are zero.

We are trying to define our business processes with ARIS BPA. We're just beginning the project, so we can't assess all the current features. We are using ARIS on-prem, not ARIS Cloud.

We chose ARIS because of its good reputation and familiarity with Software AG Tools.

Improvement should be made as per customer requirements.

I have been using ARIS BPA for the past six months.

We haven't had any stability issues with ARIS BPA.

The support from ARIS has been complete and helpful. The vendor's contact center is quick and efficient; we can work well together.

Positive

We can easily deploy the application and process. It's user-friendly. It took about one month to deploy the application and design the process.

The vendor provided a consultant, which was helpful.

Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.

We researched and compared other tools, including IBM, but ARIS fit our requirements better.

I don't use AI-driven processes with ARIS BPA yet because our metrics level is too low.

 It is an easily implementable solution, the design process is nice and easy, and it's quick to learn. I would recommend this tool to others.

Overall, I would rate this tool a nine out of ten. It's not a ten because no tool is perfect.

We use the platform for document automation and capture all the processes.

ARIS BPA has valuable reporting capabilities.

ARIS BPA's scripting language takes work to understand. Even a JavaScript developer has to learn the language to write the script. This particular area needs to be easier to understand.

The user interface could be more intuitive and better designed. There is a lot of unused space in the interface, which could be utilized. Additionally, the color needs to be changed to make it more user-friendly.

We have been using ARIS BPA for five to six months overall.

The product crashes sometimes. They could provide clearer documentation detailing the right GDPR releases for installation on laptops or desktops. This documentation should not just state a generic version like "JDK 11" but provide specific details, such as recommending a certified or tested JDK version like "GE 11.0.19. Given the frequent updates in JDK releases—such as those from Oracle and Java, occurring nearly every week—it becomes essential to specify the precise compatible version and any performance implications between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Additionally, aligning the development environment (potentially using JDK 17) with the executable's certification (such as JDK 11.0.19) is crucial for consistency and stability when users download and use the solution.

We have 20 ARIS BPA licenses in our organization. It is a nice software. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

We are also using an open-source VPN solution.

The initial setup is easy. We have deployed it on-premise and in the cloud. We are a large organization requiring an IT team to manage the installation. I rate the process a nine out of ten.

The product is inexpensive.

ARIS BPA's facilitate the visualization of change management during the development phase. We can extract the factory report directly. It is quite encouraging for the users. It has been in the best leadership position in Gartner since 2023.

I rate it a nine out of ten.