Visio and ARIS BPA both compete in the business process modeling category, with Visio offering a more user-friendly experience due to its Microsoft integration, and ARIS BPA excelling in process analysis and enterprise architecture support, particularly beneficial for large enterprises.
Features: Visio is praised for its seamless integration with Microsoft products, which enhances usability for those familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem. It offers an extensive library of shapes and templates suited for various diagram types like engineering and business mappings. Visio also incorporates features like flowcharting and process mapping, elevating its diagramming capabilities. ARIS BPA, on the other hand, is renowned for its advanced process analysis and simulation capabilities. It integrates with broader enterprise architecture frameworks and boasts a robust database system that supports detailed business process documentation and governance, making it ideal for extensive organizational needs.
Room for Improvement: Visio could benefit from better integration with XPDL to enhance workflow model translation, improved inking support, and resolving user interface challenges like layer management and hyperlink functionalities. As for ARIS BPA, while strong in modeling, it lacks a workflow engine for executing processes, leading to complexities in integration and higher costs. Its user interface could be more intuitive, especially to aid collaboration and automation.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Visio leverages the Microsoft ecosystem for effortless deployment across cloud and on-premises environments, with updates facilitated through Microsoft 365. Its customer service leans heavily on online resources and community support. ARIS BPA also supports various deployment models including cloud and hybrid solutions. However, its complexity often necessitates dedicated support for deployment, with ARIS users benefiting from structured assistance during setup and configuration.
Pricing and ROI: Visio offers competitive pricing with options for standalone purchases or subscription-based licenses, noted for its cost-effectiveness, especially when integrated with Office 365, though its Professional version may be comparatively expensive. It delivers a reliable ROI through substantial time savings in documentation tasks. In contrast, ARIS BPA has a perceived high cost justified by its comprehensive features tailored for large enterprises, with a complex licensing model requiring enterprise-based negotiation, but providing strategic benefits when fully utilized.
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?
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.
Visio is an innovative collaborative solution that enables users to quickly visualize data-connected business process flows with a host of integrated intuitive features that bring the power of Microsoft 365 to Visio. Visio allows users to easily create professional diagrams, graphs, and other visual data, easily anywhere, anytime, and with anyone. Users are able to confidently and easily transform data into creative powerful visuals. Visio provides dozens of easy-to-use templates along with thousands of customizable colorful shapes that bring a user's best ideas to life. Visio is available for all Microsoft 365 commercial users and is available on desktop and Web applications.
Visio Features
Visio can easily create visual data for today’s business needs. Some of its most useful visual data include:
Reviews from Real Users
“Visio has improved my workflow by making it easy to create charts, diagrams, and essential illustrations to use in my client reports and proposals. It has saved me a lot of time I would otherwise spend creating visuals for clients manually.” - Michael B., Principal Consultant at Lexington Consulting
“I use it for diagramming networks, racks, data centers, data flow applications, etc. It is a useful tool to map data flows, network objects, and computer science technology and to show to clients. It does what I need it to do. It's a tool I've used the longest, so I know it the best, and that's probably the claim to fame.” - Greg S., Director of Solution Architecture at Winslow Technology Group
“We use Visio for architecture modeling. We also use it to facilitate communication with other people. The feature I like most about Visio is that it acts as a facilitator of communication, as it displays information in a way that's easier to understand.” - Guy M., IT/Business Architect at a financial services firm
We monitor all Business Process Design reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.