Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform comparison

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs. iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

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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 iGrafx Process360 Live Platform is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 11.6%, down from 12.9% 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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SangameshwarKadole

Senior Process Engineer at Wells Fargo International Solutions

A reasonably stable BPM solution useful for process governance and process mining

The look and feel, along with the ease of use of the solution's web modeling version, is an area with certain shortcomings. The web modeling part can be a bit complex or difficult for new users of the solution. Simplifying the look and feel to make the web modeling part easy to use can greatly improve iGrafx.

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Milan Sterba

Senior Enterprise Architect at Deepview S.r.o.

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.

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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."

"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."

"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."

"You can use if from your mobile device or you can be on the desktop. It doesn't matter. You are always connected. It is cloud-based, so you don't have to install anything."

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

"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."

"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."

"In terms of the collaboration features, from the point of discovery, it was useful to go to load up the policies and the rule sets that the client had. And in terms of exploring options and being able to model a variety of different processes, that was incredibly useful as well."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

"This product fulfills ninety percent of our needs, and we're happy as users of it."

"Provides a valuable BPMN feature."

"Finding the right symbol and creating links, horizontal and vertical are the features I use."

"One of the biggest plus points of the product stems from the fact that I have never seen any glitches in it."

"Web diagramming and RACI have helped expedite the process, capture, and ownership initiatives of our organization."

"The solution's most beneficial feature is the 360 approach, where documentation, process mining, simulation, and automation capabilities are in one solution."

"The solution's technical support is of good quality since they offer fast and seamless services."

"Simulation is most valuable."

More iGrafx Process360 Live Platform pros

"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."

"The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."

"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."

"It is simple to build the first model for the solution."

"Large variety of profiles and frameworks available out-of-the-box without the need for customization."

"I have found the Meta Model tuning feature useful as it provides me with an overview of all my work needs."

"The profiles and ready-made templates are an extremely helpful feature. This is one of the biggest features that I find very useful in Sparx."

"It's like a repository. So far, we use it only for Information Modelling."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect pros

Cons

"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."

"The ability to create a very structured rule. With the capability that we have right now, Blueworks Live is more process focused. We should be able to enhance it to include a lot more of decisions as well."

"In the solution Signavio, they have a customer journey mapping feature that should be added to IBM Blueworks Live. It's valuable to map or document the customer journey to identify the pains and opportunities in this process."

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

"I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks."

"The objects that the solution creates are not unique."

"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."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

"One of the areas in the product with certain shortcomings where improvements are required includes the tool's reporting capabilities."

"Dragging and dropping shapes is not as user-friendly as in Visio. In Visio, it's very easy to work with shapes and in very few minutes you can plot a whole, multi swim-lane, cross-functional process."

"In the next release, I would like to see more layers like three, four, and five. It might be possible but I haven't seen it yet."

"It can be more user-friendly."

"It would be nice to have a Spanish user interface available to us."

"If customers want to change the color or the logo, they have to go through every page to verify everything is right."

"I would love to see a template and shapes for customer journey mapping."

"It would be helpful to be able to do more analytics and generate reports on historical documents that have already been uploaded to the server."

More iGrafx Process360 Live Platform cons

"When the model is large, it is a bit slow to render."

"It took me a while to figure out how to use the report generation features effectively. So, it would be really nice if they had a way to make that a little bit more interactive and a little bit more straightforward."

"Its usability needs to be improved. For non-technical users, it is a little difficult to understand how Enterprise Architect works. Users who are not engineers find it difficult to understand how this tool works. This is something they need to work on. They can develop a BPM model to simulate processes."

"The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean."

"I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team."

"The initial setup of the Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect It's very complicated. It's very difficult to start with the right templates because there are many possibilities. The deployment took approximately two days."

"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."

"The fact that you can do a lot yourself is a plus point, but it also becomes a challenge because you need an understanding of the programming languages to get things to work. It becomes challenging for those who are not very good at programming. You have standard reports, but if you want to make your own reports, you have to program it. Similarly, if you want validations rules, you have to take care of them yourself."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"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."

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

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

"I have heard that the solution's pricing is very competitive."

"The licensing part is one of the problems. Its licensing depends on the number of users, so it sometimes gets expensive."

"Earlier, the licensing part was complex because there were so many modules and elements in the tool. Over the last one and a half years, a lot of work has gone into how the product has priced and positioned its tools in the market."

"My company is trying to replace iGrafx because the license is a little bit expensive."

"Our license is a subscription-based model that is per user. The solution is not expensive, I believe a subscription-based model is $10 per user."

"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."

"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."

"I use my own license. So, I just bought the professional version, which costs $800 or something like that. In the company where I am working, we have floating licenses. They are probably more expensive. Its licensing is affordable, but we are talking about a large organization, and there could be modelers or viewers of the models. We don't know how much that would cost us."

"The licence has a costly upfront fee which gets you access. You have to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is less."

"Its price is very good for the value that you get with it."

"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect 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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824,053 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

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

17%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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...

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

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

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...

What do you like most about iGrafx?

The solution's technical support is of good quality since they offer fast and seamless services.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iGrafx?

I have heard that the solution's pricing is very competitive.

What needs improvement with iGrafx?

If customers want to change the color or the logo, they have to go through every page to verify everything is right. ...

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...

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 stra...

Visio vs IBM Blueworks Live

Comparisons

Compared 37% of the time

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

Bizagi vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 3% of the time

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Visio vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Compared 24% of the time

ARIS BPA vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Compared 21% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Camunda vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Compared 14% of the time

ADONIS vs iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Compared 7% of the time

More iGrafx Process360 Live Platform Competitors

Visual Paradigm vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Compared 17% of the time

Visio vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Compared 12% of the time

No Magic MagicDraw vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Compared 10% of the time

Lucidchart vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Compared 9% of the time

LeanIX vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Compared 8% of the time

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Blueworks Live

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

iGrafx Process360 Live Platform

Download iGrafx Process360 Live Platform product report

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

November 2024

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect report

Download Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect product report

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

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IBM

iGrafx

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Sparx Systems

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.

The iGrafx Process360 Live Platform is a comprehensive software platform tailored for organizations undergoing digital transformation. Its core functionalities include process mining, process design, simulation, predictive analytics, and AI-based automation. By leveraging these tools, businesses can gain valuable insights into their processes, streamline design and optimization efforts, and harness automation for enhanced efficiency. Whether analyzing existing processes, visually modeling workflows, simulating potential changes, or employing predictive analytics, Process360 Live facilitates a seamless journey towards process intelligence and management, pivotal for modern businesses aiming for operational excellence.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is an enterprise solution that helps streamline, accelerate, and integrate software, system, and business development. With this intuitive modeling and design solution, enterprises can stay in control of their workplaces, enable collaboration, support their teams and colleagues, and manage complex projects. Software architects, business analysts, project managers, developers, support staff, and testers can unite under a single repository. Through numerous view points and potential sub-systems, users are offered a unified view in a complex environment.

With Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, users are also offered a shared model option which can be accessed quickly and securely by in-office and remote team members through the Enterprise Architect’s Pro Cloud Server. Building a coherent, verifiable model can be done by connecting and integrating a variety of behavioral and structural information in visual form. As a result, Enterprise Architect offers high performance, flexibility, and the ability to model, manage, and trace every stage of the business development and modeling process.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Features

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect assists in creating a unified and accessible vision in business development by offering a flexible platform with a unique set of rich features. These features include:

Test and debug - Streamline software development and visualize software with the simulation process. Users can test and confirm correct behavior, set and oversee test points, and debug and examine software.

Track tasks - Track, prioritize, and assign individual and group tasks to assist in the model’s development. Users can visually monitor their progress through the Gantt chart.

Open standards - Users can visualize and analyze running software with integrated custom tools. They can also run advanced simulations, team-based repositories, testing tools, and version control. In addition, the solution supports enterprise architecture frameworks such as UPDM and TOGAF.

Simulation - Create and debug embedded solutions by simulating behaviors and state models. Users can specify events, triggers, constraints, and more. Users can also specify extensive and complex structural systems and create custom domain-specific solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect merges high-end tools, online availability, a dedication to open standards, and accessible pricing so enterprises can stay in control of their workplaces, whether remote or in-office. Users particularly like the architectural frameworks and the scalability.

Marc L., a principal architecture enterprise solution adviser at Cronomagic Canada, notes, "The product offers very good support for all mainstream modeling notations and architectural frameworks."

An enterprise architect at a manufacturing company writes, "Scalable solution for modeling, project sharing, and collaboration. Support for it is good."

Sample Customers

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

Multinational Bank

OmniLink

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs. iGrafx Process360 Live Platform