ARIS BPA vs Avolution ABACUS comparison

The compared Software AG and Avolution solutions aren't in the same category. Software AG is ranked #3 in BPD , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 8.8% mindshare in the category. Avolution is ranked #8 in AM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Software AG users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Avolution users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ARIS BPA and Avolution ABACUS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, Software AG and others in Business Process Design.

To learn more, read our detailed Business Process Design Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Business Process Design

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Blueworks Live

Mindshare comparison

Business Process Design

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

AjarMathur

Global Innovation Director at Ernst & Young

Jul 5, 2023

An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease

IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

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Libor Černý

Process manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 26, 2022

I can usually find an answer to my issue on ARIS Community

From the start, there were some difficulties on how to create outputs since there wasn't a repository tool in version 6. However, in version 7, there has been a tool for creating standards for a company, and that tool has been very intuitive. While I have been using this tool for several years, other people just starting to use it find the learning curve steep. This tool is very robust and accommodates many roles, where people can participate from compliance, IT designers, etc. This can create problems for users who have no experience with similar tools. It took me a year before I felt comfortable with this tool, because when I came from university it was the first or second tool that I worked on. It took me a year to run every feature or use it for every possibility since this tool is very robust. We sometimes have to create the link to the server and the repository twice because it is deleted once for some unknown reason. Though, this is not a big problem. There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports.

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BPMexp67

BPM Expert at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Sep 15, 2019

Powerful and customizable, but the interface needs to be more user-friendly and it needs dashboards

The user interface needs improvement because it is not user-friendly. They need dashboards because I think that it is really important in the market at the moment. Dashboards seem to be the solid bridge between the business and IT departments, and I didn't see anything there. The people that are going to decide to buy the product are the top management, and they are not interested in seeing the everyday operational aspects. Rather, they want to see results, which is why you need dashboards. They have an open door for integration with the model, but that's all. Integration with third-party tools needs to be improved. We did some research on this, and they have open doors with certain tools, but at least in this assessment, it was not clear how to do it. They say that you can do it, but we could not figure out how. So, this is an odd part that I think they can make more clear. I asked whether they have APIs available, or whether we had to create them from scratch, but I didn't get an answer. There is a feature called the versioning of the models, and it is not easy. It is hard because it requires a lot of technical skill to work with a model, process, or another artifact. If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It enables decisions based upon processes that we do model, and ultimately move forward with."

"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."

"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."

"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."

"The licenses are transferrable between different users."

"The ease of documenting and digitizing the processes was valuable to us."

"In terms of the collaboration features, from the point of discovery, it was useful to go to load up the policies and the rule sets that the client had. And in terms of exploring options and being able to model a variety of different processes, that was incredibly useful as well."

"For me, what I find to be the most valuable is its simplicity and the association with Microsoft Office."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

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

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

"Business Process Analysis: We can simulate, optimize, and analyse business processes based on various business requirements. It assures our rolling out the best processes."

"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."

"One of the many advantages of ARIS is that it is supported by a very strong BPM community, which is critical for us. Although it has been in business for many years, it is still at an early stage of evolution. There are so many instances where your specific use case or requirement for using ARIS hasn't necessarily been matured across the sector. So, you need access to a very active community to help you explore possible solutions and ways in which ARIS can be used to achieve those use cases."

"Objects can be reused across different BPMNs and processes, so we can design new processes quicker and easier."

"The technical support is good."

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

More ARIS BPA pros

"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."

"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."

"The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."

"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."

"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."

"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."

"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."

"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."

More Avolution ABACUS pros

Cons

"The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people."

"I can't insert any images. For example, within the process map, if I want to put it in the box or rectangle, or circle. If I have to use one image or icon, that's not possible."

"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."

"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."

"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."

"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."

"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."

"Spaces are not well organized; space controls are lacking."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

"It would be helpful if ARIS BPA could have a simple database to get the extract of various attributes."

"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."

"I had this decentralization mission where I had some friendly fights with the consultants of Software AG. My opinion was the business department should be able to publish their processes and do all their evaluation stuff in ARCM themselves. It has to be a one stop shop. I want a one stop shop to go from ARIS BPM to ARIS ARCM, because having everything go through that would be an improvement due to the inputs that we made with Software AG. They will make it possible that the trigger sent from BPM to ARCM will start their object generation."

"The standard out-of-the-box solutions for modeling are not so good. You have to do some configuration to make it easier and more user-friendly."

"End-to-end visibility and real-time are areas that will need greater attention."

"ARIS BPA’s usability could be improved."

"The reporting capabilities and the ability to create custom reports need to be simplified and made easy so that people even with a good functional understanding of the tool can leverage it to create their own custom report."

"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."

More ARIS BPA cons

"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."

"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."

"The tool doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations."

"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."

"I use reference models, which are taxonomies, in my EA work. It is a reference model/taxonomy of things with capabilities, sub capabilities, and sub-sub capabilities, so you're working it down. I haven't yet found a simple way to implement that in Abacus. It could be that it is there, but I don't know how to do it."

"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."

"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."

"The reporting could be easier to configure."

More Avolution ABACUS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."

"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."

"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"The solution is very, very cost-effective."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."

"ARIS Express is free."

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

"Their license model is really difficult to understand, and licenses are quite expensive."

"It is on the higher side."

"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. 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."

"ARIS has different licensing mechanisms for different modules, but they are perpetual licenses. So you pay once."

"ARIS BPA is too costly from a licensing perspective."

"The price could be better."

More ARIS BPA pricing and cost advice

"It is expensive."

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"

"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."

"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."

"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."

"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."

More Avolution ABACUS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

15%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put an...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?

Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use...

See all answers

What do you like most about ARIS BPA?

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?

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

See all answers

What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?

Improvement should be made as per customer requirements.

See all answers

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?

The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?

It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel de...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?

The tool is quite extensive but doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, w...

See all answers

Comparisons

Visio vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 37% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 17% of the time

Lucidchart vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 15% of the time

ARIS Cloud vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 9% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Blueworks Live Competitors

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs ARIS BPA

Compared 27% of the time

ADONIS vs ARIS BPA

Compared 9% of the time

Camunda vs ARIS BPA

Compared 7% of the time

Bizagi vs ARIS BPA

Compared 6% of the time

Visio vs ARIS BPA

Compared 5% of the time

More ARIS BPA Competitors

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 26% of the time

LeanIX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 21% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 14% of the time

Visio vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 10% of the time

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 7% of the time

More Avolution ABACUS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

October 2024

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA

November 2024

Download ARIS BPA product report

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS

November 2024

Download Avolution ABACUS product report

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

ARIS, ARIS BPM

No data available

Learn More

IBM

Software AG

Avolution

Overview

IBM Blueworks Live is a cloud-based business process modeling tool that helps you discover, map and document your processes. It is easy to use, allowing you to learn and perform business process modeling in minutes.

With Blueworks Live you can:

Simplify business process modeling
Quickly build business processes in a straightforward, cloud-based interface designed for both IT and business users.

Improve process efficiency and accuracy
A central process repository eliminates version control and consistency issues by providing users real-time access to process workflows.

Enhance cross-team collaboration
A shared team workspace engages all business process owners, encouraging cross-team participation and continuous process improvement.

ARIS is the market-leading solution for professional business process management and modeling. Whether you want to document the "as-is" state of your operations for quality or certification reasons or design the "to-be" in terms of continuous improvement in your transformation program, ARIS is the best choice for establishing a single source of truth regarding all process excellence topics in your organization. It is for any organization looking to digitally transform their business, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution. ARIS helps you to make the most out of your processes with Process Mining, Risk & Compliance Management, RPA and much more.

What makes the difference?

The most comprehensive platform for process excellence in the market
Easy to use
Covers business & IT architecture from all angles
Full flexibility and >100 diagram types
Customer-driven development based on best practices
Strong partner ecosystem

ARIS is the market-leading solution for any organization and ideally suited to digitally transform the organization, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution.

ABACUS is the enterprise architecture tool designed to have the quickest time-to-value. You can use it to build and maintain rich visual models from existing company data. ABACUS comes with standard industry frameworks as well as advanced analytic tools and best-in-class roadmapping and reporting functionality.

With Avolution ABACUS You Can:

Strategize and analyze your organizational architecture with ease using data-driven diagrams
Enjoy connected data, models, and metrics across your whole enterprise
Work directly and securely in your browser, which is ideal for global teams and remote working

Avolution ABACUS Features:

Modeling and roadmapping: ABACUS offers a fully provisioned modeling environment for enterprise and IT architecture, strategic planning, and digital business management.
Digital collaboration: Avolution ABACUS includes a feature that allows you to set up dashboards so you can tell data stories using business-friendly visualizations.
Portfolio management: Anyone can update their own data, which, in turn, reduces the workload of the enterprise architecture team.
Data-driven architecture: ABACUS’s data-driven architecture gives you the opportunity to design and automate key calculations using out-of-the-box or simple no-code algorithms.
Collaborative data management: Using this feature, you can save time with single sign-on (SSO) and AD Integrations; You can embed directly in MS Teams, Confluence, or other workplace social software.
Dynamic data visualizations: ABACUS’s graph view allows you to navigate through systems in a dynamic environment, as opposed to static diagram views.

Avolution ABACUS Benefits:

Time efficient: Models and roadmaps automatically stay up-to-date, saving your organization a lot of time so you can focus on other priorities instead.
Centralized location: With Avolution ABACUS, you can connect all data in one place, keeping everything both consistent and accurate.
Full flexibility: ABACUS gives you full flexibility to adapt and configure your own metamodels with ease.
Complete visibility: Your whole enterprise can have visibility of the architecture through the use of digital collaboration and visually clear dashboards.
Machine learning: With Avolution ABACUS, you can employ machine learning to speed data management and analysis.
Spot dependencies: ABACUS helps your organization spot dependencies and impacts that might trip up your projects.
Fully customizable: Avolution ABACUS is fully customizable; Select, configure, or adapt your repository and metamodel. You can also automate metrics and analytics specific to your business.

Reviews from Real Users:

Andre W., Enterprise Architect at Enterprise Architecture Perspectives, says, "The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key.”

The Lead Enterprise Domain Architects at a financial services firm feels that "The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make.”

"There are plenty of features available, such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard,” says Suresh T., Enterprise Digital Solution Architect at a tech services company.

Sample Customers

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.

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Buyer's Guide

Business Process Design

October 2024

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