BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs Visio comparison

BiZZdesign and Microsoft are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. BiZZdesign is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.1, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. BiZZdesign holds a 2.1% mindshare in BPD, compared to Microsoft’s 12.5% mindshare. Additionally, 77% of BiZZdesign users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Visio and BiZZdesign HoriZZon compete in the realm of diagramming tools and enterprise architecture software. While both have strong offerings, HoriZZon has a distinct advantage in enterprise-level architecture creation due to its ArchiMate 3.0 compliance and integration capabilities with platforms like ServiceNow.

Features: Visio offers seamless integration with Microsoft Office, an extensive library of templates, and BPMN 2.0 validation for standardized business process diagrams. BiZZdesign HoriZZon excels with ArchiMate 3.0 support, robust modeling tools for enterprise architecture, and integration capabilities with SQL databases and dashboard features for collaborative use.

Room for Improvement: Visio could improve its cloud integration and expand its user interface customization options. Users wish for better scalability and compatibility with modern applications. BiZZdesign HoriZZon could benefit from more flexible APIs, improved user-friendliness for non-architects, and a more competitive pricing model to enhance accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Visio primarily operates in on-premises environments but is also available in the cloud, offering extensive documentation and community support. BiZZdesign HoriZZon supports both public and private cloud environments, facilitating collaboration. It offers specialized support, though some users find it limited.

Pricing and ROI: Visio is seen as reasonably priced, especially when bundled with Office 365, providing both one-time licenses and subscription options. Despite higher costs, users perceive it as a valuable investment due to its integration and time-saving capabilities. BiZZdesign HoriZZon's pricing is higher, potentially challenging for smaller companies, but justified by its enterprise architecture features, providing a solid ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Visio Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Visio

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Blueworks Live

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 12.5%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

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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Venkat Raju Mallipudi

Group Chief of Enterprise Architecture & S/W Engineering/ CTO at Aventra Group

Easy to implement, and it's reliable but restrictions in integration capabilities

Integration definitely needs improvement. There are some restrictions. We've seen that it doesn't integrate with everything we might expect. Out of ten products we want to integrate, maybe five or six integrate easily. The other four might face challenges due to lower investment in the products or compatibility issues. It's definitely not easy to achieve seamless integration for any product. We can only test to a certain extent, and issues could arise from either BiZZdesign HoriZZon or the other product. Another point is the cost of licenses. If they were a bit lower, it would be easier for businesses to acquire more licenses... something like an enterprise or bulk license model. Maybe different pricing tiers based on the number of licenses, like significant discounts for orders over one hundred. This could help clients adopt the product.

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IckyDu Buisson

Enterprise Architect at Employment and Labour; Compensation Fund, Unemployment& Insurance Fund

Good modeling and flexibility but object oriented features needed

Visio should be object-oriented to enable the reusability of objects across different models. Currently, changes made in one model do not automatically reflect in other related models. Having a repository behind the objects would significantly improve its utility, providing a structured environment for managing various architectural components and their relationships.

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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

"For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great."

"I like the two-tiered approach, that is, discover and then drill down to the main steps. You can right click and attach risk, policies, and much more. It is a user-friendly solution."

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

"It enables decisions based upon processes that we do model, and ultimately move forward with."

"It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles."

"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."

"We are you using the product as a process mapping tool and as part of a larger process improvement project. We use it with IBM BPM and IBM ODM. We get an automated workflow solution for our customers, an improved workflow automation."

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

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

"The initial setup of this solution was very straightforward."

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

"The most valuable features of BiZZdesign HoriZZon, from my experience, include its out-of-the-box connectors, such as integration with ServiceNow, Excel, and SQL databases, making data repository management more efficient."

"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."

"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."

"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 tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."

"The powerful editing function in teamwork project-based, common or shared modeling, based on a powerful repository and knowledge sharing in a portal are the most valuable features. These are the most important features for me. I can add the integration of individual modeling notations like Archimate plus BPMN and DMN, and so on. We travel from one location to another and the tool allows us to keep track."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon pros

"The ability to visualize a workflow is certainly an advantage over just tracking a process in something like Excel."

"The solution is easy to understand with some hands-on experience."

"The most valuable feature is that it is integrated with other tools in the Microsoft Office suite, as well as at the backend with products like SharePoint and Microsoft Teams."

"It is easy to use."

"They provide continual enhancements which are always very useful."

"It's a very flexible solution."

"Visio makes it easy to communicate your ideas from several areas of your imagination across several domains."

"Visio is a very easy tool in general, making it easy for anyone to understand."

More Visio pros

Cons

"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."

"The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex however you do need to know what you are doing."

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

"IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts."

"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."

"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."

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

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

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

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

"I have seen table charts where, if the chart is a little too big, it does not fit in HoriZZon and it is not at all visible... There have been several times where we could not publish a chart properly and we had to break the chart into small tables and create multiple artifacts, creating a complete mess. This should be seriously taken up by BiZZdesign because there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of usability. It's not at all good, unfortunately."

"It lacks capabilities with regard to infrastructure modeling."

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

"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."

"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."

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

"This tool is something of a beast - it takes a long time to learn, and it isn't possible for casual users and most architects. Unless a person spends 500 or 1,000 hours on the tool or does very concentrated sessions using all its functionalities, it's very difficult to master."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon cons

"They could improve the drawing function, other solutions provide easier drawing capabilities."

"To be able to extract a report for business project management notations would be ideal."

"The auto-routing feature could be better."

"As a user, it, unfortunately, lacks recognition by Microsoft products."

"I would like to be able to present diagrams in multiple ways, such as a Swimlane diagram."

"It is not flexible in terms of functions and modeling deliverables. When you speak of processes, the program has to describe the activities and the deliverables. You have to tell your robots how to deal with and input something, and you should have something more flexible from this point of view."

"The tools panel at the top, et cetera, seems really complicated."

"The performance sometimes lags and has room for improvement."

More Visio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not very expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"[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."

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

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

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

"The price is reasonable."

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

"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 price could be more flexible for infrequent users. If it's your main utility that you use daily, then it's a good price."

"It's not the cheapest product, but it's extremely valuable."

"The licensing process is actually a breeze. Simply buy the license and download it from Microsoft, enter the license key in Visio to activate the software, and you're done."

"We're in a Visio plan that is like $15 a month per user. At the moment, it is just the standard licensing fees that I'm aware of."

"There are some cheaper as well as free solutions."

"It has a lower price point than the competition."

"Personally, I think the price of this solution is too high."

More Visio pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Design solutions are best for your needs.

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824,067 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

Educational Organization

34%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

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...

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...

See all answers

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 pr...

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 ...

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 d...

See all answers

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 st...

See all answers

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 a...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?

One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about t...

See all answers

Comparisons

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 17% of the time

Lucidchart vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 15% of the time

ARIS Cloud vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 9% of the time

Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 8% of the time

ARIS BPA vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Blueworks Live Competitors

LeanIX vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Compared 14% of the time

ARIS BPA vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Compared 13% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Compared 8% of the time

Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Compared 8% of the time

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon Competitors

Bizagi vs Visio

Compared 16% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Visio

Compared 14% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs Visio

Compared 10% of the time

Lucidchart vs Visio

Compared 7% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs Visio

Compared 2% of the time

More Visio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

December 2024

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

December 2024

Download BiZZdesign HoriZZon product report

Buyer's Guide

Visio

November 2024

Download Visio product report

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

HoriZZon

Microsoft Visio

Learn More

IBM

Video not available

BiZZdesign

Microsoft

Overview

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.

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

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:

Flowcharts: Users can easily bring business concepts to fruition with Visio’s robust flowchart features. Visio provides a huge library of shapes, stencils, and templates to transform numbers and data into impactful, easy-to-understand business stories.
Organizational charts: Visio makes it easy to design articulate org charts to better visualize team, reporting, and hierarchy structures. Users are then able to seamlessly share the charts with stakeholders, teams, and employees.
Network diagrams: Users are able to creatively display how a system design processes function and visually illustrate how devices and networks interact with each other using a variety of network shapes, templates, and connector tools.
Brainstorming: Visio makes brainstorming simple and actionable with a wide range of templates designed specifically for interpreting problems and mapping out solutions, including fishbone and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) diagrams.
Floor plans: Users can design ergonomic workspaces, retail store layouts, new homes, and more with accurate, scalable templates and tools to help them better visualize function, flow, and overall aesthetic appeal.
Accessible: Visio is able to integrate with a wide variety of accessibility tools, such as Narrator, Accessibility Checker, and high-contrast support, to ensure Visio diagrams are available to your entire team.

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

Sample Customers

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Visio

December 2024

Free Report: BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Visio

Find out what your peers are saying about BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Visio and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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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.