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Avolution ABACUS vs Visio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Avolution ABACUS
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (8th)
Visio
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (1st), Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Avolution ABACUS and Visio aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Avolution ABACUS is designed for Enterprise Architecture Management and holds a mindshare of 3.9%, down 4.8% compared to last year.
Visio, on the other hand, focuses on Business Process Design, holds 12.6% mindshare, down 13.5% since last year.
Enterprise Architecture Management
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

BPMexp67 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Enas Selim - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 2, 2023
A software for drawing a variety of diagrams which include flowcharts, org charts, building plans, floor plans, data flow diagrams
Indeed, Visio should progress beyond its current stage of solely drawing diagrams and transition into a more advanced phase, possibly integrating with different packages or aligning with Microsoft's offerings. It could potentially evolve into a comprehensive business process management solution, comparable to tools like Addis or Signavio, thereby competing in the realm of process management tools. It might be advantageous to explore functionalities such as process simulations or benchmarking, introducing simulators to discern potential bottlenecks or errors within complex flow diagrams. This addition would prove valuable for business analysts seeking insights into the intricacies of their diagrams, aligning with the evolving trends observed over the past six years.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."
"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."
"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."
"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."
"The most valuable feature is how easy it is to use."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Visio makes it easier than with other tools to do such tasks as changing things or coming up with one's own visual style for presentation purposes."
"What I like most about the solution is that It's quite easy to use."
"The tools tab within Visio has been amazingly useful, and it is updated quite frequently. Along with how Visio handles components and everything else, I would call it an easy-to-use tool."
"The solution is easy to understand with some hands-on experience."
"What I like best about Visio is that it's flexible. Sometimes, if I need to draw quickly, I use Microsoft PowerPoint, but if I need icons, which Visio has, I use Visio. I also like that the solution gives me a much more powerful range of options."
"It is a standard and easy-to-use solution from Microsoft, and you benefit from the general functions of Microsoft solutions. It integrates easily with SharePoint, which is a useful tool from Microsoft."
 

Cons

"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"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."
"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."
"While this is one of the most powerful tools on the market it does not integrate well with Microsoft Office or others."
"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."
"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."
"The simulation is an area that requires improvement."
"Sometimes, there is a little bit of a learning curve with it, especially while doing complex network diagrams and getting the lines to snap the way you want them and not overlap or be confusing. It would be great if there was a built-in tutorial. It is not that you can't YouTube, but it would be nice if they gave you some free training. I've been using it forever, but every now and then, I got to do something complicated with it and I wonder how do I do that again. Maybe they do have such information, and I don't know. I have not done research on it because a bunch of people work for me, and some of them are better at it than I am, so I just ask them to do this for me."
"Portability from Visio to PowerPoint and vice versa could be simplified."
"Something that needs to improve, is the interface interaction with other tools."
"The tools panel at the top, et cetera, seems really complicated."
"The auto-routing feature could be better."
"They have to improve shapes. It has good shapes, but it certainly can have more shapes. There are no U shapes. It also requires more customizations. There are a lot of icons, but they can be modernized more. These icons have to be more customizable so that we are able to change the color and things like that. It should also have more integration so that we can use it with other tools on the web. We don't use Microsoft Teams. We use Discord, which is more for gamers. It would be helpful if Visio is integrated with Discord. I can then show my work to my team. We use Visio, and it is a must-have solution for us, but being a startup, we don't have the money to use the whole Microsoft system. Some day we will use Office. For companies like us, there should be connectors for other software. We should be able to use a connector with the software that we are using or with the new generation solutions. Connectors will make it very easy to transfer data."
"The solution's flexibility can be perceived as both a strength and a weakness."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"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."
"It is a free solution for us. It is integrated with our pack. We are trying to use the solutions that we already have."
"I haven't looked at the prices lately. We have an older copy, and it was a couple of hundred dollars for this software. That's a huge expense."
"The solution could be less expensive."
"Visio is a pricey tool. It's a five out of ten, cost-wise. It would be great if it had a pay-per-use licensing model because my company uses it sparingly."
"We probably have an M-365 E3 license."
"Visio is expensive."
"The popularity of a product is an indicator of its price. Because of the popularity of Visio, its price is on the higher side. We need better pricing for it."
"Now we pay about $200, which is maybe $10 per user per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating wit...
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 design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...
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, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations. ...
How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What do you like most about Visio?
The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
I purchased an older version of Visio and pay about twelve or thirteen dollars a month, but this subscription does not include Visio updates. For other solutions like project management or architec...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
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