IBM Blueworks Live Reviews

We use the tool to document and re-engineer business processes.

It helps us to map core business processes that are in need of review. We utilize the IBM Blueworks Live tool to conduct analysis regarding the redundancies and other related issues within processes. After which we undertake benchmarking and create a new design using this amazing software.

The solution allows us to automate processes but also be able to seamlessly create a process with little effort compared to Visio, which we used years prior.

When using Visio, it takes a lot of time to design a process flow whereas the IBM Blueworks Live tool makes it easier to quickly design a flow.

The IBM Blueworks Live tool allows you to add key details to every step within your process design. For example, we were mapping a process that utilizes a number of forms. We were able to attach those forms and even legislation associated with particular steps within the process. This enabled the team to review these inputs in relation to streamlining the process.

There are challenges in ensuring that when a detailed process flow is designed using the IBM Blueworks Live software, the steps are easy to follow.  At times the system places boxes and lines in a manner that is very complicated and convoluted as the lines begin to crisscross. Sometimes you can't follow the steps in the map and it is difficult to structure them in a way that is not cluttered. 

In the Visio software, you can move boxes and lines to any area within the chart easily. In the Blueworks Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated.

I have been using IBM Blueworks Live for seven years.

I have not experienced any instability with the solution.

I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The online support is good.

Positive

We used VISIO, we switched because the IBM Blueworks Live software is more robust and offers greater functionality.

The initial setup was straightforward. We created our accounts and immediately began to utilize the tool.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team.

I rate the level of expertise of the vendor team from IBM a nine out of ten.

It's value for money. Our team has been able to create and re-engineer core business process more efficiently than ever before. 

Setup, costing, and licensing are reasonable considering the functionality of the tool as compared to other solutions.

I urge those planning to use the solution to join the online tutorials and the courses offered by IBM to understand the software and its functionality better. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

IBM Blueworks Live is a process management tool. 

IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place. 

The objects that the solution creates are not unique. 

I have been using the product since 2017. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

My company has more than 25 editors and 50 editors. I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. 

IBM Blueworks Live's tech support is good, but I have never had any experience with it. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten. It is a reasonably good tool. 

We primarily use the solution for business process modeling.

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.

In relation to sub-process links, the design is poor. On one process you can link back, but the system doesn't link it to the activity directly. It's not that obvious to people, and because of this, they have to read the different notes to find out more. 

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.

Process diagrams can sometimes be confusing. The starting point is at the bottom of the page and not on the top of the page where it actually should be.

It would be good if the control points were visible right away on your progress map.

I've been using the solution for about six months.

I've found the solution to be quite stable. It's never crashed or anything when I've been using it.

The solution can be used quite widely within different departments. This requires a bit of work for the administrator as they'd need to design different folders and access to them, but it is a scalable solution. Right now, in our company, we have about 50 users on it. Most are editors or contributors. I'm unsure as to if we plan to increase usage.

This solution is currently replacing Microsoft Vizio or other office tools such as PowerPoint, Word, or Excel within our organization.

The initial setup is easy. The solution is easy to use and doesn't require that much training. For deployment, we have a two-hour training session for users. We didn't deploy in an organized way because we weren't in a hurry to start using the tools. It could have been done better on our side, but even so, it was pretty straightforward. In total, it may have taken us two days to set it up.

The initial training was handled by a consultant.

We use the cloud deployment model with IBM as the provider.

If you are planning to use the tool wisely, it's a good idea to name conventions, terminology, and structures around doing so right at the beginning. Considering how you will use the tool will help ensure it won't get too messy. During the discovery phase, it's a good idea to create discovery tables. It will help keep you organized.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use Blueworks Live to put all our critical processes in one depository, within the bank.

We've been using Blueworks since IBM acquired it from Lombardi, so quite a while, and we're still using it, but there are quirks with it. That's why I'm here, at the Think 2018 conference, to actually talk with people, try to get some things fixed.

We use it as a process mapping tool.

We upload all our policies into Blueworks Live. It's used throughout the business for audit purposes, for backup purposes for employees.

In terms of it helping with process version control issues, I administrate our licenses. I don't actually build the processes themselves. So I don't know all the different processes within all the different departments, how they work and how they run everything.

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. My sales guy, Steve, he always picks up the phone when I call him. It's good to have somebody like him onboard.

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 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.

We'd like to be able to bring it on to our server. Because it's in the cloud I don't think that's going to happen.

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

Right now, our challenge is - I work for Citibank. Citibank wants all its information on our side of the wall. This solution is on the cloud. So I'm hoping... I just heard something about the private cloud, but the issue is that we want to bring this on to our server. That's what we're working towards right now because I guess Citibank feels a little iffy that all our information is mixed with everybody else's, and it's vulnerable.

So far, though, the solution has been stable.

It's pretty big. We want to make this our go-to process diagram application. There are other vendors that we looked at. So far, IBM is the one that we're mostly interested in, but like I said before, there are flaws. There are groups, especially in compliance - even in our engineering - they want to see where we can improve in a process, where we can cut things down. They want to see where we're doubling employees doing the same work. So we're trying to save dollars by using this.

We were looking at cost effectiveness, if it's intuitive or not to the employee. We went with IBM because it's intuitive and because of the cost.

Originally we were with Lombardi, and IBM honored the contract that we had with Lombardi. That was great for us.

Straightforward, but I had to get our IT people involved. Before, what happened was, you would log in to blueworkslive.com. That meant that any employee from our bank could go home, log in, and all our process flows were there. So what we did was we worked with IBM and we worked with our IT people, and now we've integrated so that we have to be actually logged in to our Citi mainframe in order to get into Blueworks Live. So that's one good thing about it.

TIBCO, they were at the bottom of the list. Sparx, they were at the bottom of the list too. The top two were IBM Blueworks and an application called AG ARIS.

Use it. Test it, use it. It's great.

It also has a lot to do with my guy at IBM. If we had this, and I had to call in to a number all the time, and it was just support out in India... It's great, but it's a pain sometimes. The guy that I deal with, I call him - he's a sales guy, and I call him with my problems - and he puts me in touch with exactly who I'm supposed to speak with.

It's a good tool. I like it.

We are using Blueworks Live mostly for process innovation and transformation. With most of our clients, we are using to it to capture the process as is, analyze it, and spatially, the analysis phase helps us. We then come up with a model. The other great feature from the tool is since it is integrated with IBM BPM it helps me import the process, making sure the business is always connected.

We have been using it mostly as an end-to-end enterprise transformation tool. We start with our discovery workshop and Blueworks Live plays a key role. We use this tool to discover processes, analyze those processes, and define them from a tool set perspective: Whether the process should got into BPM, ODM, cognitive, IAB, etc. 

This helps during the UAT phase because it becomes easier to clean the business process model in Blueworks Live, then fitting it on a process which is in IBM BPM or a rule which is in IBM ODM.

With the current account, or engagement, we have been doing a large process transformation where we have Blueworks Live with IBM BMP, BPN, ODM, and Watson (for its cognitive features). There is also Robotic Process Automation from Automation Anywhere, IAB, and third-party integrations with SAP.

The product is business-friendly. That's the key thing that resonates with most of our customers. By giving the demo of the tool in the first 15 to 20 minutes, businesses start to get a feel of how they can use the tool. 

It's intuitive, and it connects really well with business teams.

Collaboration is key. Therefore, you don't have a document sitting on a shelf for multiple years with nobody looking at it. It is a live document. Whatever you have, it is live and accessible to everyone. 

Multichannel: 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. People don't have hassle of installing, then updating, etc. It's always on the fly available for you on demand.

This becomes key, and it is a big differentiator.

We utilize the collaboration features of this solution, such as editing pathways and uploading documentation, especially the documentation which is a key part inside the solution. There are a lot of accounts with whom we work and they have all standard operating procedures. We are converting them into Blueworks Live models, uploading their documentation and screenshots along with having people to chat with on the fly. When the process is published, there are multiple people using the same process. This has become a key goal from the tool's perspective.

There are a couple of things which are not there right now:

1. 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. Right now, we can create a simple decision, not a complex decision, in tools like the business console, modeler, etc. 
2. In the file management feature, we get 50MB of space. Maybe that needs to be given out as an option to customers who want to purchase the extra space.
3. While using the tool, it is a lot like creating a structure in BPM and Compliant, though not like 100 percent the same. The rule part as well becomes much easier when you are not using IBM BPM as a run-time engine, but Blueworks Live only for process discovery. If you want JBoss as a run time engine, it becomes a more compliant tool set and will help to increase your footprint.

The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave. People do not keeping focused and save their information. Therefore, the information automatically getting saved, so it helps from a stability perspective.

We have the ability to use the tool from our iPad or on the fly. Also, when we are at the airport, we can still login and use it, which helps a lot.

It's a cloud-based solution.

We have used technical support, especially for Blueworks Live. There is an option to create a process app, which can be either a check list or a workflow. 

We were facing some technical issues with the execution of our workflow. We wanted to assign the task to a group of users, not to a single user. This is where we reached out to IBM support to help us out and improve the next release of Blueworks Live.

It's two minutes from a setup perspective. We get the I.D. created for our clients, give them the URL, and they are all set to go.

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. 

My hierarchy works only with IBM, but we do work with other products as well.

My first process model had 142 activities. This is humongous from a single process perspective. To model, it took us three days to complete. It helped with our process version control issues.

When we are working with one of our financial clients every quarter to do their financial reporting, the process changes. They had a lot of material weaknesses, so there are process changes. We keep on creating snapshots, so it helps us to to move them from a BPM implementation tool and put a governance structure around it. Creating snapshots helps us form a governance perspective.

We use a document repository. There are multiple places for how we upload documents, either by going to dashboard interface or by taking pictures/screenshots that can be put in the documentation tab. It goes into the file management of Blueworks Live. You can review them later, clean them out later. You have one single source where you have lot of documents which are used across multiple processes. Everything's stored there. It helps in that way, making it lean and having your documentation updated.

Our primary use case of this solution is for business process mapping for clients that come on board with us. We use it for engineering work, mapping their processes, evaluating their concerns with a process mapping exercise, and then providing recommendations for the engineering. I'm the director of professional services and we are customers of IBM Blueworks. 

Blueworks has provided us with a steady set of templates to utilize for mapping. We were previously using different platforms for some of the geos, but Blueworks has given us a consistent standardization across the organization to do all our process mapping on one platform.

I like the way this solution utilizes standards rules for connectivity. We develop a map which can't be done arbitrarily, it requires following a series of rules for adding decision boxes or connecting activities with one another, that kind of thing. I love the control factor.

I think the spaces could be improved, it's not well organized so it's really convoluted. Instead of having spaces represented by any sub-sections of a process, the space controls are lacking. If there were better user controls for user grouping, it would be simpler to develop groups and reduce visibility across the entire organization. Currently, people have access to processes they may not need for editing, but they'd like to view them, and those controls could be expanded. It's really about improving user management and space controls. It's really hard to litigate and control who has access to what.

For additional features, I'd like to see better tools for creating documentation associated with the processes, so that if you're looking for specific information regarding a process of the space, you could do a search and find it without having to go through a process. 

I've been using this solution for six years. 

I've been pleased with the stability. 

Scalability is good. It's gotten more complex recently, but adding users is very easy to do. It's not a problem once you get to the tech support people. We have seven users and they're business and technical analysts or project coordinators. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, it took less than two hours. The solution was implemented in-house. 

Mostly because of the usability, user management and space controls, I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

The primary use case is process discovery and modeling prior to process deployment using the IBM Business Process Manager (BPMS) solution. It includes the capture and management of process governance roles against processes such as process owners. This was in a publicly funded emergency services organisation.

It raised the process maturity of the organisation from a low level to a reasonable degree of awareness and introduced some process language and conventions to the organisation. The SaaS solution was quick to set up and use.

The solution is quite easy and visual to use for stakeholder collaboration such as during workshops.

It did improve process maturity and floated the idea of the process governance roles but the organisation lost interest and found new tools (toys) to play with.

Along with the IBM BPM solution, the costs escalated too much and were unsustainable for a relatively small organisation.

The most valuable feature is the support for BPMN 2.0 because it is an industry standard.

Blueworks is easy to use.  If you want a very simple quick and easy solution for fairly simple workflows, this is a good choice.

I believe that the APQC cross-industry process hierarchy and some linear single role workflows can be imported.

It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles. The 'milestone' models are quite good for discovering architecture and then moving into workflow modeling.

The models produced are not sufficient to be imported and used by IBM Business Process Manager - the developers will need to use the IBM BPM modelling functionality to design processes.

The user interface is quite easy at first but process analysts soon run into roadblocks of limited functionality, which is disappointing.  For example, anything but a fairly simple 'happy path' workflow soon becomes tangled with the process flow lines being routed automatically and looking messy and off-putting for stakeholders.  In the version I used (I'm not sure if this is different now), a modeller cannot move any of the model components and re-route the flows; this can be mitigate by using the 'milestone' functionality which enables you to 'stage' a workflow - but this has limited effectiveness and also has the side effect of introducing artificial stages into the 'milestone' view of the model.

The workflow management functionality is so basic it was almost pointless. I was looking for some functionality and realised there isn't any - it is just a list of tasks which get sent as emails to users.  Again, very simple 'happy path' workflow.  If that is all you need, then this produce is fine but there are other similarly-priced solutions that have more extensive user forms, document and email generation etc. that can be configured closer to a full SaaS application.

IBM had an alternative product that was more comprehensive in its functionality but this was discontinued.

I have used Blueworks Live for 24 months, with 12 months in each of two different organisations.

Very stable.

We had a few performance issues occasionally that frustrated the team.

Not too bad.

I've used this in two organisations between 2012 and 2017 - the functionality didn't seem to have changed much from my perception as an end user.

Very easy browser-based, cloud-hosted SaaS solution - the way most solutions are heading.

In the first instance, direct with IBM; in the second instance, via a reseller.

It's fairly cheap and scalable for simple process discovery applications.  It is easy to use.  There are more comprehensive solutions at a similar price.  Beware that there is a minimum contract period and some fixed annual costs.  With a larger number of users, it would like make sense to switch to a proper BPMS such as Appian (although I've not used Appian).

Not really, it was recommended by IBM as part of the IBM BPM package.  Other solutions (Hitachi) were evaluated against this but I was not part of that process.

Unless you really want a simple solution for process discovery only and value simplicity over the ability to exploit more functionality, I see Signavio as a much better option.  Of course, IBM may develop Blueworks.

This is the best process analysis tool on the market.

Blueworks Live gives insight into where processes can be more productive. It gives that, "Ah ha!" moment from a visual perspective. Since a lot of people are visual, having this is helpful as it provides the ability to tweak, update, and refine processes so easily in Blueworks Live, that feeds improvement.

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

The solution has improved our business processes.

The usability is easy peasy. Most of the users from the business who do use Blueworks Live have found the tool through me. I end up training them on it, and they have been using it ever since. They don't usually come back to me for needs after the fact. 

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

The stability is rock solid. I don't have any issues with stability.

I don't have any issue with scalability.

I haven't had to use the technical support, so that is saying something.

The initial setup was easy.

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

This is the only product that I have used in this space.

I would recommend starting small when using this product.

We are using IBM BAW. We are also using Automation Anywhere throughout the organization, so the sky is the limit. We are planning to expand automation in our organization. We have several onboarding processes and still have a plethora of manual processes that we have yet to automate. Therefore, the platform is only growing.

From the IBM DBA portfolio, we are using: BAW, ODM, RPA, FileNet, and Datacap.

The solution helps us indirectly with compliance or governance issues.

I attended the business track and client success track at the IBM event, tackling one of each. The biggest take away for me was the focus on journey maps and design thinking.