Visio and IBM Blueworks Live are both powerful tools in the realm of business process modeling and diagram creation. Visio seems to hold an edge in terms of integration with Microsoft Office, enhancing productivity for users already entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Features: Visio boasts seamless integration with Microsoft Office, a comprehensive template library, and BPMN 2.0 validation for efficient business process modeling. IBM Blueworks Live excels with BPMN 2.0 compliance, supports collaboration and process mapping, making it ideal for team environments.
Room for Improvement: Visio could enhance its offering by supporting XPDL import/export, better pen input on Surface devices, and improving collaboration tools. IBM Blueworks Live users are looking for better simulation features and improved cross-platform integration.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Visio is typically used on-premises, allowing for smooth integration with Microsoft products, while IBM Blueworks Live offers a flexible cloud-based approach with various deployment options. Microsoft’s customer service for Visio is good but can be inconsistent, whereas IBM’s support for Blueworks Live is seen positively.
Pricing and ROI: Visio offers various pricing models, including a part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which might be expensive over time but value-added for regular users. IBM Blueworks Live presents a more cost-effective annual subscription model, especially appealing for smaller teams, offering a competitive entry point in digital process management.
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.
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:
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
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