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FICO Blaze Advisor vs IBM Operational Decision Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

FICO Blaze Advisor
Ranking in Business Rules Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Operational Decision Ma...
Ranking in Business Rules Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Business Rules Management category, the mindshare of FICO Blaze Advisor is 33.5%, up from 32.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Operational Decision Manager is 35.8%, up from 34.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Rules Management
 

Featured Reviews

PIOTR SHUBIANOK - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is stable and has the ability to extend the built-in logic, but is difficult to deploy
FICO needs to provide a better user experience and user interface. Unfortunately, our clients are not able to add customization by themselves. So this limits their ability to use the solution. FICO Blaze is a complex technology, so it's more about engineering work. This means that we need to hire developers who will learn FICO Blaze as technology and use it. Without development knowledge, it is impossible to use the solution. Our clients do not always have a budget to hire huge salaried engineers, and they want to be able to tune small changes by themselves, but unfortunately, they can't because again, Blaze is really a complex technology. Currently, the solution's interface allows for really simple changes to be made by our clients. I would like to have an easier user-friendly interface to allow for more changes to be made by the client without the need for an engineer. This is not true for all companies. We are talking about some real strategies when we have a lot of decision tables, rules, and decision graphs. Because it's really hard for our business users/customers to make low-level customizations by themselves. The main reason why we switched to other solutions is that we don't see the possibility with FICO Blaze Advisor and vector of FICA company that they think to improve this because they created the decision model. This is an extension of FICO Blaze with some new modern UI items, but it's still not working 100 percent. Unfortunately, we see that it's a huge gap nowadays with this old technology that's why we continue to search for new software which we'll use.
Bhasker ReddyPIdintla - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution provides an efficient, comprehensive way to manage polices for all the applications.
We use ODM to set complex business rules. For instance, we deploy this solution for most of our banking customers because there are frequent changes in the policies and business rules. These are complex to manage for enterprise applications.  ODM provides an efficient, comprehensive way to manage…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is customizable, so you can create your own data items and variables to suit your needs."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the IDE."
"FICO Blaze Advisor's most valuable features are the analytics, the code change is not required, and even a business analyst can do that change in the rules when we set it up."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is that it has a fast engine for decisioning."
"The rules management application is the best feature because BAs or even, perhaps, a businessperson, can directly create rules, change rules, and deploy them to production directly."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the algorithm they use in the retail version. The execution there is very optimized - so even though we have a huge service with huge counter rules, we still get the results in milliseconds. That is something amazing I found about this tool."
"It is a scalable solution."
"So far, the usability is great. It's also easy to set up."
"ODM has probably been one of the more stable IBM products I have used."
"The solution has reduced the backlog for IT."
"I like the fact that I don't have to deal with business rules, and then our business partners deal with it. I'm a developer, so I don't have to deal with that kind of stuff. I just make the code, then our business people take care of the business side. It's a great split."
"Its ability to use decision tables to codify the rules and manage them better."
"By using ODM, we get rules to our applications, then we get those applications to go to market a lot faster."
"With ODM as a centralized rules engine, it's easy to track. You can version the rules in the ODM engine itself."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more help on the internet and more training over the internet. They only have a few blogs there, so that should be increased."
"More online support such as a knowledge base should be available."
"FICO Blaze Advisor is still missing things for maintaining the version of something. For example, we have gates for programming, for storing, or scripts. In there, one developer can prepare a file or a piece of code or something, and another developer can work on the same code or on the same text file or something, and you can manage it. This is missing in FICO Blaze Advisor."
"FICO needs to provide a better user experience and user interface."
"The developer's tools on their optimized version should be a little bit more user friendly. Additionally, it really doesn't pick up the actual exception or error of what the developers are getting."
"Lacks notifications when code changes have been made."
"The initial setup of FICO Blaze Advisor was somewhat complex. The implementation took approximately three to four months. However, I left halfway through the process, I am not sure of the exact timeframe."
"The errors I get from time to time are not easy to debug or easy to understand. They are very vague because if a XOM file is missing or there is a deserialization problem, on the client's side I only get a 500 Internal Server Error. To learn where the problem is, I have to go on the Rule Execution Server and test it myself. The deserialization issue is very vague. The error messages should be more straightforward and easy to understand."
"One area for improvement is master data integration. That should be more fluid. The others are hierarchical drop-down lists, and hierarchical master data."
"Get to the cloud."
"Extracting specific rules could be better. We've had to do a lot of custom work on that. The testing, we've played a little bit with it, but we have our own testing methods. If it could be as simple as we have for our custom work, that would be great."
"The only thing we have trouble with is integrating IBM ODM with the cloud. The product is on-prem, and we need to migrate the rules to the cloud. It's a hectic process."
"If merging could be just like SVN, that would help. It should be a lot simpler. That's the only thing I don't like about ODM, merging from our local computer up to the Decision Server. I feel like it could be a lot easier."
"I would like to have integration of the user interfaces, and they are putting them together in the next version of the solution."
"I think it's stable, but if they could beef it up a little bit for bigger businesses, that'd be great, because we have so much in there. We have products that we have to split up because they are too big for it to handle sometimes. But that's just in development, within ODM. Again, processing has been fine, but I wish things were a little bit beefier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a starting price, it is around $40,000 for a perpetual license."
"The biggest disadvantage of Blaze Advisor is the initial cost... The price could be reduced to increase profit margins and the number of clients."
"There was an annual license required to use FICO Blaze Advisor. There were not any additional features."
"We made a lifetime purchase. We purchased it by number of PVUs for our stage and product environments."
"ODM's pricing could be more competitive as there are open-source business rules engines that are becoming standard."
"It was not a large cost. It was a one-time cost."
"It will definitely improve the cash flow of our clients, thereby it will improve the cash flow to us."
"We have a client who had a three-month ROI on this tool, just in additional sales, from sort of the next best action of what product that they should offer to their clients. ROI can be very quick with this product."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Insurance Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
33%
Insurance Company
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FICO Blaze Advisor?
FICO Blaze Advisor has two licensing models in addition to a free trial. One model is yearly maintenance, with regular costs and yearly payments. The other is related to payments for Blaze Advisor ...
 

Also Known As

Blaze Advisor
IBM Operational Decision Management, ILOG JRules, IBM ODM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aviva, Absa, Nationwide Building Society
Odyssey Transportation & Logistics Corporation, Swiss Customs, Athletes' Performance, L_elo, Versicherungskammer Bayern
Find out what your peers are saying about FICO Blaze Advisor vs. IBM Operational Decision Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.