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BIC Platform vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

BIC Platform
Ranking in Business Process Design
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (27th)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Business Process Design
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of BIC Platform is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 11.5%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

FS
Software client for modelling and web portal are both directly accessible through one interface
There are just some things in the new product that are not really functional issues but improvements that BIC will have to make. For example, there are some small features that I feel are missing as of now. From an administrative perspective, you might not have the ability to trigger specific actions on a set of workflows. For example, let's say the interface is showing you a list of currently active workflows. Sometime you may find yourself in a situation where you need to select many workflows at a time. An easy example would be that — for whatever reason — you have 1000 or 2000 active workflows and you need somehow to delete them or just to stop them. It is preferable to be able to do this in one click to apply the change to all of them. So I think this is something that is missing which could probably be easily implemented. Right now it just seems omitted. I don't know if the omission was possibly due to a performance issue or if it was chosen by design. But from an end-user perspective — especially as an administrator — this capability to make bulk changes might be a handy solution when dealing with a large volume of workflows that you have to apply a simple command to in a similar way. From my point of view at the moment, all the most important features I am in need of are available. All the tools necessary for daily business for process modeling are there. There certainly is room for improvement. Many other features might be important depending on the specific use case. For instance, there are many notification features that already exist within the tools. These could notify people with different roles based on the specific workflow that is being triggered, which is pretty nice and efficient. I think the tool is quite stable right now, which is positive, and I don't believe it does require further additional things — especially if these are small things and to get them in would be rushing the development. If that may somehow affect the stability and usability, I would rather wait. Something that would also be improved in the workflow is just a cosmetic change. But it could also be a functional change. As an end-user, I do expect to be able to make selections of a set of workflows and apply some specific action to the group. If you have a list, then you should be able to select all the list items or part of the list and apply changes to that selection. This might be just something very easy I believe, to fix from their side.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."
"The central dictionary is a valuable feature."
"This is low-cost and very user friendly. A variety of models are available depending on the needs of the customer."
"While this is a new product it has a mature feel from being built by a company with many years in the business."
"It has led some teams to do better code reviews - to be less focussed on coding conventions (syntax) and more focussed on the semantics because of the abstraction level clear design affords."
"It provides good utilization and it's a convenient tool for building exact architectural work."
"Sparx offers good flexibility."
"Ability to maintain cross-references for all models in all levels - great tractability."
"We have found the stability to be very reliable."
"We use it to develop and maintain the Enterprise Conceptual Model, migrated from erwin a couple of years ago."
"Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable. It has an incredible repository of artifacts to work with, and they're all cross-referenced. It works with a whole bunch of different standards. It works with BPMN, which is Business Process Modeling Notation, and it also works with something called TOGAF, which is the Open Group Architecture Foundation. There are different layers when you're dealing with architecture. There is the user interface, application, data, data servers, and all that kind of stuff. You have the infrastructure, hardware, and software layers, and then you have the application and business capability layers. You can model a business process and decompose it into all of the applications, data, and hardware to support it."
"Sparx has got a range of modeling features, and I am comfortable with all its offering. I've used a lot of tools over the phone. I found EA Spark, probably the most feature rich product all in all compared to other products. The solution is very cost-effective and that is its best feature. It's a very good delivery architecture tool, which also has enterprise architecture capabilities, and it's got full life cycle processes and software development. So for me, it's a pretty comprehensive tool"
 

Cons

"The product needs improvement regarding the confidentiality of the domain information for the key administrator."
"As the product is very new, some minor features are still missing, but everything is there to handle day-to-day process modeling."
"There's an issue with the current manual that they're working on."
"The solution could improve its connectivity to other systems."
"No way to implement data integrity and referential integrity constraints."
"I would like to see integration with Confluence or any other TRM, and the capability to integrate with the data storage, such as a repository similar to GitHub."
"In a future release, they should improve portfolio planning."
"More challenging than other tools to maintain documents and document versions for an architecture board review."
"The documentation needs a bit of improvement. What I find is that when I'm trying to do something specific for some part of a project, in terms of documentation, it's kind of hard to get at figuring out if you don't use it all the time."
"Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application."
"There should be a MATLAB-specific toolbox added to the solution with better compatibility. The connections currently are good but in the future, it needs a huge improvement."
"For data modeling, it is not very mature when comparing with other data modeling tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing will differ between enterprises based on needs such as customization, but the company uses a standardized algorithm for determining this."
"Scalability-wise, it is an expensive product."
"It's affordable. The only additional cost that we haven't yet figured out is the floating license. If you buy a floating license, you have to have a license management server, which comes at an additional cost that's not discussed. So, we haven't yet used the floating license. That’s because I haven't had a chance to figure that out."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"They have the price on their site for the enterprise version, and we do receive a small discount."
"In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used."
"The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin."
"I think our license costs roughly $1,000 a year, but I could be wrong."
"This product has a paid license, with a yearly subscription option."
"The license I use is on-premise. We haven't gone to the cloud where we have to pay monthly or something like that. Sparx is cheaper than most similar tools."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
10%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
17%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BIC Platform ?
The central dictionary is a valuable feature.
What needs improvement with BIC Platform ?
The solution could improve its connectivity to other systems. For instance, I need new connections to KPIs. KPIs are linked to processes, I can't access the dictionary of processes to make KPIs.
What is your primary use case for BIC Platform ?
We use the solution for drawing the processes.
What do you like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
 

Also Known As

BIC Cloud BPM, BIC Platform
No data available
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Daimler AG Siemens AG RWE Bundesministerium des Innern Uniklinikum Köln Vattenfall Ziemann Dermapharm AG Postbank LBBW EDEKA
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Find out what your peers are saying about BIC Platform vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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