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ARIS BPA vs SAP PowerDesigner comparison

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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:
 

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
IBM Blueworks Live support is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, with many users satisfied and rarely needing assistance.
Sentiment score
2.0
ARIS BPA customer service is responsive and effective, but inconsistencies and communication issues affect overall satisfaction and improvement needs.
Sentiment score
8.1
SAP PowerDesigner support is satisfactory but costly, with praised documentation, yet response times and communication need improvement.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
4.6
IBM Blueworks Live lacks key features like improved import/export functions, better ERP integration, and enhanced reporting and analytics tools.
Sentiment score
4.6
ARIS BPA requires improved workflow, integration, and usability, with a focus on automation, data analysis, and third-party compatibility.
Sentiment score
4.9
SAP PowerDesigner needs improved user-friendliness, database connectivity, team collaboration, UI modernization, and enhanced technical support for better usability.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
IBM Blueworks Live is scalable for large organizations, accommodating many users with flexibility and a straightforward learning curve.
Sentiment score
8.3
ARIS BPA is scalable and adaptable, though cost and complexity may pose challenges for expanding organizational use.
Sentiment score
7.9
SAP PowerDesigner is praised for scalability, effectively handling large models and teams of varying sizes with high user satisfaction.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
IBM Blueworks Live provides scalable, cost-effective enterprise solutions with flexible pricing and minimal setup fees, including free subscription options.
Sentiment score
5.5
ARIS BPA offers customizable licensing models but is considered expensive, with price negotiation recommended for enterprises utilizing its comprehensive suite.
No sentiment score available
SAP PowerDesigner offers competitive pricing for enterprises but may be costly for small consultancies due to setup and support fees.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
9.3
IBM Blueworks Live is praised for stability, high availability, and autosave, with minor concerns about cloud informational privacy.
Sentiment score
7.4
ARIS BPA is now stable and reliable, with improved updates, minor connectivity issues, and enhanced cloud hosting robustness.
Sentiment score
7.1
SAP PowerDesigner is stable and reliable, with minor issues in complex models, achieving high ratings for performance.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.3
IBM Blueworks Live offers intuitive real-time modeling, collaboration, BPMN 2.0 support, and cloud-based process management for efficient documentation.
Sentiment score
7.9
ARIS BPA offers flexible, comprehensive process modeling, integration, and analysis with strong reporting and usability features for diverse sectors.
Sentiment score
8.2
SAP PowerDesigner offers user-friendly extensibility, robust data modeling, bi-directional traceability, and strong database connectivity for effective data governance.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Blueworks Live
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (12th)
ARIS BPA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (3rd), Business Process Management (BPM) (4th)
SAP PowerDesigner
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (5th), Metadata Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Business Process Design
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

AjarMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Libor Černý - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective in terms of validating everything, but sometimes they don't allow us some flexibility and GUI could improve
I would recommend SAP PowerDesigner to others for data architecture management. It provides all the functionalities in terms of data modeling, so it's also a good tool for that. I see trends in terms of data classification, but I don't see this tool with the intelligence to do that automatically. So, like, with artificial intelligence. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because there are too many validations. Also, I found some gaps in terms of relationships; they didn't appear when you do reverse engineering. Also, this tool lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements and maybe also to incorporate some artificial intelligence in providing descriptions for each data element included in the solution.
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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
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...
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?
Improvement should be made as per customer requirements.
What do you like most about SAP PowerDesigner?
It allows us to have proper documentation in terms of the databases.
What needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature. Even if I have an ETL...
 

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint
ARIS, ARIS BPM
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

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.
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, Software AG and others in Business Process Design. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.