ARIS BPA Reviews

The solution has come up with a web portal that makes it easy to model and show to clients. 

The tool's installation and configuration part needs to improve. 

I have been working with the product for a few years. 

The solution's technical support is good. 

Neutral

The solution is complex to install. The solution's configuration part is heavy and complex. The tool's setup takes one day to complete. You would need two to three people which would include, the technical lead, project manager, and developer to handle the deployment. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

In Dubai, telecom uses it, and banks just for business process optimisation. We just got until the start of the other products with areas like process performance. They called it PPM, and we didn't have projects for that. But mostly, we used it for those basic projects of optimising the business process and documentation.

There is a module designer, that one is very powerful and it creates very good reports.

The pricing of the solution can be improved and the initial setup should be made easy.

I have been working with the solution since 2014.

It is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. Most medium-sized companies like Telecom, Banks and Aviation are using the solution for modeling and optimizing the business process. It is better for enterprise businesses. 

The technical support team is good.

Positive

The initial setup is difficult because it's that you installed the server version, and then you can run it. You have to play and run some SQL scripts out of the system for the database SQL Server if you are using and searching. But the new ones on the cloud have no installation. The deployment is quick overall. Only one engineer is enough for the deployment. Now the solution is easy to maintain because the method and the codes have changed. And less support is required.

It is an expensive solution.

The recommendation is that the enterprise companies has to go with a solution like Aris BPA and not Visual Paradigm. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

All macro processes and processes in the area of ​​continuous improvement were modeled in the company. These were done with the primary purpose of documentation and having a centralized place for processes.

ARIS is an important tool for my organization. This tool is the core of our processes and different business areas.

BPA, the modeling tool, is the main module used because of our need for documentation.

Areas for improvement include sales, prospecting, shopping, customer service, after-sales (claims and advice for the client), and all processes pertaining to customer loyalty.

Most of my projects are in business process management and digital transformation. I'm using this tool for authentication.

We're heavy users. We're using it to manage the marketing use cases, for example, requirements management, subscription planning, project management, and other tools to be deployed in our projects. 

The tool to be used in all our projects so internally we're using it for requirements management, project management, and for example, to maintain our ISO certificate.

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.

I don't know why Software AG is saying that it's for business process management. It's an enterprise management system that connects all the documentation and business processes. 

It's not only documenting. It's about executing and developing business processes, performance management, strategic planning, and project management. Limited use cases can be used for documentation and for generating analytics to identify gaps in the organization.

There is a lot of room for improvement. They need to increase the performance of the system flow. They need to support it more. ARIS Process Governance is still quite basic, and they are using an old BPM and process automation module.

They have a problem with the form. It's good but has limitations when integrating with other systems. This means that ARIS Process Governance or process automation is limited to the ARIS framework.

Integration with other systems is available with the ARIS API but isn't usable in APG. There isn't a proper workflow, and they need to merge their API module with the APG module. This will increase the capability of the form builder. Customization of ARIS will also be simpler and more user-friendly. They have tried to do that for more than ten years, but I don't know what they are doing now.

The installer could be improved to avoid multiple installations. For example, you have to run a script in the database site to complete the installer. So all those should be in one single point for installation. Enter all this data in the installer, and the installer will go and create the system database in the database. The price could also be better.

I have been using ARIS BPM since 2001. I might be one of the first ARIS users in the Middle East region. 

It's not a stable solution. Although you're able to import and export between other systems like Camunda and Juniper, it's not able to exchange the BPM location between ARIS and Mendix. This is not possible, and it will not be possible.

Technical support could be better. On a scale from one to five, I'd give them a two. Their response times are slow. They never commit to a time to respond to our queries.

Positive

The initial setup is still very subjective. But the installation is easy. It'll take about five to six hours to get it up and running.

We're an integrator, and we use the API module to enable full integration.

The price could be better.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give ARIS BPM an eight.

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. 

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.

• Fully-reportable database over Visio
• Heavy dashboarding with ARIS Aware
• Automation capabilities
• Direct SAP connection

Procedurally and architecturally improved analysis across the board.

• Price
• User interface (UI)

We have used this product for six years. ARIS products and releases from 7.2 through ARIS 10. We were even invited by SAG as a partner for version 10's sneak peek.

Rarely.

Best product for full-size enterprises and their efforts.

SAG could improve, but there is a vast network of community users.

Tried many BPA tools, but ARIS seems to be the best fit for the largest efforts we have focused efforts on.

You could walk someone through it, but I would not recommend trying it on their own.

It is well worth the investment in the enterprise.

Visio, Blueworks, Signavio, and ARIS. Absolutely choose ARIS or Signavio.

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.