BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

BiZZdesign and IBM are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. BiZZdesign is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.4, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.6. BiZZdesign holds a 2.2% mindshare in BPD, compared to IBM’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 77% of BiZZdesign users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM users who would recommend it.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Read 17 BiZZdesign HoriZZon reviews

1,997 Views
916 Comparison Views

77% willing to recommend

IBM Blueworks Live

Read 20 IBM Blueworks Live reviews

2,383 Views
1,542 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

IBM Blueworks Live

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

IBM Blueworks Live and BiZZdesign HoriZZon are key players in the business process management tools category. BiZZdesign HoriZZon has the upper hand due to its extensive modeling capabilities, despite IBM Blueworks Live's competitive pricing and strong support.

Features: BiZZdesign HoriZZon excels in real-time modeling, collaborative workshops, and architecture management, supporting standards like ArchiMate for enterprise architects. IBM Blueworks Live is valuable for its intuitive central repository, effective collaboration for process mapping, and features like BPMN compliance.

Room for Improvement: IBM Blueworks Live could improve process modeling, reporting features, and workflow management. BiZZdesign HoriZZon is costly and complex, requiring better integration of tools and more user-friendly interfaces. Both tools can enhance API and data exchange functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both offer cloud deployment. IBM Blueworks Live is praised for its responsive customer support, while BiZZdesign's customer service satisfaction varies, encountering some technical support challenges.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Blueworks Live is viewed as cost-effective with affordable licensing. BiZZdesign HoriZZon is expensive but seen as justified by its advanced features, appealing to organizations needing comprehensive architecture solutions with promises of high ROI through enhanced productivity and operational cost reductions.

To learn more, read our detailed BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. IBM Blueworks Live Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

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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

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Ranking in Business Process Design

11th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (6th)

IBM Blueworks Live

Ranking in Business Process Design

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 2.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.6%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

BijoyTalukder

Enterprise Architect at Tata Consultancy

Helps to get a clear overview of our enterprise architecture, especially when dealing with multiple departments

One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs. While the platform offers REST APIs, they have limitations when it comes to retrieving and exporting data. Obtaining detailed information at the individual application or component level, including IDs, costs, and deployment-related data, can be challenging through these APIs. This limitation makes it difficult to smoothly export such granular data. I have raised this issue with the BiZZdesign team, and they expressed interest in addressing it, but I'm not aware of the current status of this improvement effort. Nonetheless, improving the usability and flexibility of the REST APIs for data extraction is an area that could enhance the platform's capabilities.

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AjarMathur

Global Innovation Director at Ernst & Young

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I used BiZZdesign HoriZZon at two organizations. At Manchester Metropolitan University, I used it with a small team for architectural modeling of the student record system. We modeled teams, process objects, and their interactions with applications. We also used it to model a gradual rollout with plateaus showing migration over time. At the BBC, I used it to model software services for publishing content online. I showed key model views to senior stakeholders using Horizon, allowing them to modify and score applications and services."

"Among the valuable features is the ability to document standards. For example, we have mandatory operating standards that need to be followed by every application and every architecture. We use things like table charts and pie charts for documenting the costs incurred across the systems. All of these are good features."

"BiZZdesign HoriZZon is scalable, and I'd give it an eight out of ten for scalability. Our customers are enterprise level companies, but the solution is suitable for small and mid-sized companies as well."

"One of the main advantages of this solution is that they have representation in the Open Group Forum, which means that any changes in ArchiMate are immediately implemented in BiZZdesign."

"This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous projects and related data. It's definitely a strong collaborative tool."

"It is very easy to use. I can just click on an application component and find out if we are using this particular component. This provides us flexibility."

"The most valuable features are the application, portfolio, data, architectures, and modeling things."

"The enterprise studio where the modelling happens is valuable."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon pros

"The ease of documenting and digitizing the processes was valuable to us."

"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."

"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."

"The reporting that we can generate from IBM Blueworks Live has been interesting. We found the KPIs, risks, process modeling, format, and colors, to be very good. We use the EY template and it is interesting to generate reporting in this format."

"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."

"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."

"The licenses are transferrable between different users."

"For me, what I find to be the most valuable is its simplicity and the association with Microsoft Office."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

Cons

"One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs."

"The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult."

"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."

"Scalability is a bit of a problem for BiZZdesign. There is always a possibility it will failover."

"In HoriZZon, there are different matrices. In some of the cases, there is an option to aggregate them, but in other cases, we have not done this, e.g., to see the proper costs. For example, if I have 10 different matrices, then I need to create an aggregate view out of those 10 matrices somewhere. That is where we have been struggling a bit. We have a counterpart from the HoriZZon product team with whom we have bi-weekly discussions. We have suggested to him that this can be improved."

"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."

"There's room for improvement. When I finished using it over a year ago, I discussed implementing C4 notation with BiZZdesign HoriZZon.They've likely done this now, but I haven't seen it. Setting up interactive views for stakeholders to score services was a bit difficult."

"It should be more open to integrating with other existing tools. Although there has been progress in the past."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon cons

"The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people."

"Spaces are not well organized; space controls are lacking."

"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."

"The user interface is quite easy at first but process analysts soon run into roadblocks of limited functionality, which is disappointing."

"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."

"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."

"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."

"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"[The] Orbus... pricing model was based on every single functionality having a price. The pricing was comparable but if we wanted to scale, it would have ended up being a lot more expensive. BiZZdesign gave us one price with all of the functionality, and we could scale as much as we needed."

"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."

"We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about 2200 pounds a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes."

"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."

"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."

"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."

"The price is reasonable."

"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."

"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."

"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."

"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"The solution is very, very cost-effective."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous projects and related data. It's definitely a strong collaborative tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult. We don't use the chart functionality much, and I think that is quite problematic at the moment. We have...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

I use the solution in my company for all sorts of things, like enterprise and solution architecture. As part of our design process, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is used for road mapping. We also use it for ...

See all answers

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 any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.

See all answers

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 it very effectively.

See all answers

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Compared 32% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

April 2025

Download BiZZdesign HoriZZon product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

Also Known As

HoriZZon

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

Overview

Make smarter decisions and optimize outcomes by unifying all your strategy, capabilities, operating models and change portfolios in a single platform.

With all the data about your business in one place you can see the big picture and make properly informed strategic decisions to drive growth. Bizzdesign Horizzon brings together strategy, IT architecture, operating models, data, capabilities, change portfolios and ideas into a single, intuitive collaborative business design platform. Real-time visibility of key metrics and trends allows you to take action more quickly. Accelerating the speed and accuracy of your operations now – and into the future.

Core Platform Capabilities:

Multi-discipline collaboration
Data Integration
Advanced analytics
Models and Roadmaps
Governance & Security
Business Insight Graph

BiZZdesign

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.

IBM

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

Free Report: BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. IBM Blueworks Live

Find out what your peers are saying about BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. IBM Blueworks Live and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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