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ARIS BPA vs Planview Portfolios comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

ARIS BPA
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (6th), Business Process Management (BPM) (8th)
Planview Portfolios
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (12th), Project Portfolio Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

ARIS BPA and Planview Portfolios aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ARIS BPA is designed for Business Process Design and holds a mindshare of 7.0%, down 8.9% compared to last year.
Planview Portfolios, on the other hand, focuses on Project Portfolio Management, holds 7.1% mindshare, up 5.9% since last year.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ARIS BPA7.0%
Visio12.5%
Camunda11.3%
Other69.2%
Business Process Design
Project Portfolio Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Planview Portfolios7.1%
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management9.6%
Planisware9.5%
Other73.8%
Project Portfolio Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tamer Eldamanhouri - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowers teams with robust business process modeling capabilities
They should examine competitor solutions to identify differentiators. One issue related to ARIS BPA is its integration with AI; it has AI features for cloud solutions, yet many in the government sector in Kuwait do not view the cloud as viable. Software AG should focus on developing AI models for ARIS BPA on-premises, particularly in user interfaces, as well as creating predefined business processes for common areas such as HR and finance. This aspect is crucial for adapting to the market's needs and streamlining custom solutions. While they have been helpful regarding pricing, I cannot compare ARIS BPA to other business process modeling tools because I understand some competitors have significantly lower costs than ARIS BPA. To maintain market share, good discounts should be provided to customers.
EduardoMaya - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution that gives you all the information you need to plan detailed projects
The initial setup was just a little complex. I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten. Deploying the solution took two weeks. While deploying the solution, we had two instances, one for the IT team and one for the business team. And we had to connect the two and explain things to the team. Only two people were needed to deploy the solution, me and another person.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps the business make an informed decision."
"The stability of the ARIS BPM platform is quite good. The nice thing about it is the central database, where we can use all of our data. We can even manage users."
"The initial setup is easy."
"ARIS BPA is customizable as per specific business requirements."
"Platform that it supports covers legacy and new. Caters to moving older objects into an integrated DB, relatively popular ones: SQL, Oracle, etc."
"Objects can be reused across different BPMNs and processes, so we can design new processes quicker and easier.​"
"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."
"ARIS has a good collaboration function. You create a portal where any authorized users can work on the models. There are simple flows for making and approving changes."
"The data is the most valuable because the reporting that we provide out of Planview is priceless when compared to any other tool. The reporting has a variety of reports. It has the capabilities of Power BI. It gives us all these dashboards that we can show to our executive leadership, and they have been very well-received."
"Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority."
"Our reporting is much better. There is much more visibility on projects, schedules, tasks, and in our milestones. Now, we have a consistent way of reporting out to the committees and getting all of our schedules and milestones."
"The solution is flexible. Planview is always introducing new releases and functionality, which ends up being beneficial to the company. We are able to do some customizations on our own along with our IT department, and that's very helpful."
"We are able to see where everyone in the team is in terms of hours, where there is capacity, and where we can actually add them, e.g., other projects that they're not currently staffed to."
"Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API."
"The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting."
"The biggest impact for using Planview currently would be to understand the true costs of projects. We are trying to get to a point where not only do we take into account technical costs, but what the business cost is. Trying to integrate our business right now into Planview is helping us identify the true cost of the investments that we make so we can try and understand their value."
 

Cons

"​Training is one of the important aspects for process awareness. As soon as a process is rolled out, process training is required. If ARIS could generate output in PowerPoint, it would be great for business users."
"The solution is difficult and not very exciting to learn."
"I find it difficult to access the database as I want with direct querying."
"The interface is a little archaic."
"The governance mechanism could be better, as could automation."
"Since this is a design tool, seamless interface to make the process flows executable."
"I use it strictly for developing the business process model. I don't use it for the actual automation. I do that with Vtenext. I have standardized on Vtenext, and I don't use ARIS BPM anymore. The Vtenext UI is just as good, and it is much more tightly coupled to the underlying object model. I can get more done in one session with Vtenext rather than first going to ARIS BPM, then importing, and having to edit it for tight coupling."
"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."
"There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup."
"Configuring the UI in the content management system is too elaborate and too time-consuming."
"The reporting is absolutely shocking. It's not good reporting and requires improvement."
"I would like to be able to integrate with Oracle to supplement what we're currently doing with reporting."
"We have almost like a third-party group who has to do a lot of our configurations. It's a bit painful for us anytime we want to make a change. The other issue is that we have different groups all in the same instance. So, if one group wants to make a change, it impacts everyone. Then, we all have to come together, to say, "Yes, we approve this change, or no, we do not." Thus, it has not been as flexible for us."
"We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. Many times, we've had people give us attitude, there was a delay in the response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves then call customer support."
"Our challenge will be this tool is complex. It is not necessarily easy to start and learn from the beginning. How do you get people who are not professionals to adopt it, use it, and not be mean about it?"
"When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Their license model is really difficult to understand, and licenses are quite expensive."
"If you can afford it, it's the best so far."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"It depends on different parameters."
"ARIS enables you to start small and grow the use of the solution over time, although it's quite expensive. So if you want to start small, it's quite an investment for a small company."
"ARIS is quite expensive."
"The product is a bit pricey."
"I don't know about the actual pricing. I have not come across any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."
"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."
"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."
"We have several hundred licenses. It costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year."
"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."
"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
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.
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents. While it covers many blueprints and functions that I need, the document generation feature could be enhanced for better accuracy.
What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?
Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...
What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?
Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...
What is your primary use case for Planview Portfolios?
We use Planview Management to assess the current project portfolio, evaluate resource availability, and prioritize projects based on strategic objectives, ROI, and risk factors. Planview Management...
 

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM
Planview Enterprise One, Troux
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, Bizagi and others in Business Process Design. Updated: October 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.