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Sr BPM Developer
Real User
​Process Modelling, simulation and optimization, integration make this a good choice
Pros and Cons
  • "Process Modelling, simulation and optimization, integration, UI components."
  • "User Interface components could be further refined to enhance and extend customizations dictated by end clients."

What is most valuable?

Process Modelling, simulation and optimization, integration, UI components.

How has it helped my organization?

I have had the opportunity to work with various organizations that can be categorized as medium to large scale. Was able to successfully deliver process optimization and system integrations that helped the customer increase their ROI and improve their process performance many times over.

What needs improvement?

User Interface components could be further refined to enhance and extend customizations dictated by end clients.

For how long have I used the solution?

Nine years.

Buyer's Guide
IBM BPM
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about IBM BPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Highly scalable, product offer two flavors: Standard and Advanced. Both these versions can be customized to support high-availability, scalable servers.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ivan Cardenas - PeerSpot reviewer
Expert engineer III at Sophos Solutions
Reseller
Top 10
Good tool for document sharing and management
Pros and Cons
  • "IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration."
  • "IBM BPM's price could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use IBM BPM for the life cycle of the automation process.

What is most valuable?

IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using IBM BPM for ten years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

IBM BPM's scalability is very high.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

IBM BPM's price could be improved.

What other advice do I have?

I would give IBM BPM a rating of eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
IBM BPM
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about IBM BPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Account Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Performs well for both us and our customers
Pros and Cons
  • "The performance is fine."
  • "I would like to see the solution be able to interact with other customer software solutions."

What is our primary use case?

Everything is possible with the solution. We use it for order, personal and production processes. We make use of it in the healthcare and food markets. There are no limits to its use. 

What is most valuable?

Owing to my lack of a technical background, it is difficult for me to state which features are most valuable. 

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the solution be able to interact with other customer software solutions. I am referring to interaction with SSP or other applications from the IT customer management database, in respect of integration in the IBM BPM.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using IBM BPM for six years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. While this varies with the needs of the customer, we have very good technicians and developers for IBM BPM. As such, it depends on our know-how, although I can say that our customers are satisfied. 

How are customer service and support?

I am not in a position to comment on the support. 

How was the initial setup?

I have never installed the solution and am not aware of the process involved. 

What about the implementation team?

I believe we have 20 persons on the BPM team, consisting of a manager, support people and several developers. 

What other advice do I have?

We use the solution both for our own needs and those of our customers. We have a contract with IBM for the solution, meaning that we offer both cloud-based and on-premises solutions. We provide these products and are partners to the vendor. 

The performance is fine. 

I believe we have 40 customers who make use of the solution.

I would certainly recommend the solution to others. 

I rate IBM BPM as an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Principal Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Its ease of use and off-the-shelf functionality made us adopt this solution
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the reasons for adopting this solution ten years ago was its ease of use. It had a lot of off-the-shelf functionality, and it did not need to be developed specifically for the project that we were implementing. That was the main reason for adopting it in the beginning."
  • "IBM BPM lacks openness, that is, the ability to become open for new options in terms of APIs, front-end development, and ecosystem. IBM BPM has been quite closed. One of the main improvements would be to somehow embed the rules engine into IBM BPM. Merging IBM BRMS and the rules engine with IBM BPM would be helpful. If there was some simpler way to define rules without having to put IBM BRMS on top of it, it would be good. It's something that we can get out of Camunda but not out of IBM BPM."

What is our primary use case?

We are consultants and integrators. We are also a partner of IBM. We implement IBM BPM in financial institutions for automatic support, process automation support, process digitalization, and process management. Our business cases are all around financial markets.

What is most valuable?

One of the reasons for adopting this solution ten years ago was its ease of use. It had a lot of off-the-shelf functionality, and it did not need to be developed specifically for the project that we were implementing. That was the main reason for adopting it in the beginning.

What needs improvement?

IBM BPM lacks openness, that is, the ability to become open for new options in terms of APIs, front-end development, and ecosystem. IBM BPM has been quite closed.

One of the main improvements would be to somehow embed the rules engine into IBM BPM. Merging IBM BRMS and the rules engine with IBM BPM would be helpful. If there was some simpler way to define rules without having to put IBM BRMS on top of it, it would be good. It's something that we can get out of Camunda but not out of IBM BPM.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using IBM BPM for around ten years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is quite resilient to failure. It's a good solution in this sense.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is quite scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

For common day-by-day support, they are good. For things that are a little bit more complicated and require highly-skilled knowledge, it can become complex and difficult to obtain support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex. It takes several months, and it requires expertise from IBM technicians most of the time.

Its initial setup could be improved. If there was a way to set it up in two or three clicks or there was a way to create a space or cloud infrastructure that can be available in several clicks, it would be a product gain. It would be nice to have something available as platform-as-a-service (PaaS) in cloud infrastructure. I don't know whether this functionality is currently available because we have stopped investing in this technology. 

What about the implementation team?

It requires consultants for deployment. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Consultant at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
A great BPM product for big companies. It needs to offer more configuration options than coding options.

What is most valuable?

  • The simulator of process execution
  • Toolkits and workspace for sharing resources
  • Adapters for different technological environments
  • SOA infrastructure, embedded ESB
  • Backup (export) and restore (import) system (Snapshot)
  • Speed and ease of deployment + governance / version management

How has it helped my organization?

The scenario was a process of renewal of customer contracts, the improvements were :
  • Faster: industrialization of the renewal process with the automation of certain tasks and a clarified organization can handle a case 3 times faster.
  • More efficient: the renewal part by weight of non-renegotiated contracts processed instantly and adjustments made possible by monitoring the real-time tasks significantly increase the capacity of quantitative and qualitative processing contracts.
  • Less expensive: the time saved as well as automated controls in place to avoid human errors and double entry treatments are examples of significant gains.

What needs improvement?

The tool needs to offer more configuration options than coding options. Develop the intuitive side to reach some functionalities (help).

For how long have I used the solution?

I used the solution for about 6 months to develop an application based on health services process.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Yes, especially integration and browser's version compatibility problems. We also had some performance issues due to the lack of technical architecture knowledge.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: GoodTechnical Support: Intermediate

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Did not use any other solution

How was the initial setup?

It was complex for some of us (IT but non technical profiles)

What about the implementation team?

We were the vendor team and worked with IBM

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

N/A (Confidential)

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No

What other advice do I have?

Be careful about the technical architecture and migration planning/resources
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ravi Suvvari - PeerSpot reviewer
Ravi SuvvariPerformance and Fault-tolerance Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees
Top 5Real User

Very useful info about BPM lamine Thanx for sharing

See all 2 comments
Partner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
It helps improve your process through continual measurement and have a online monitoring of the performance
Pros and Cons
  • "It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance."
  • "It helps improve your process through continual measurement."

    What is our primary use case?

    I was a consumer of the IBM products and implement IBM BPM in Latin America. I stopped being an end user of IBM products in past year, but still implement products.

    Primary use case is more than 80 percent financial services, banks mainly, but also insurance:

    • Banks or organizations use it for credit cards or for opening accounts. 
    • Insurance use it for checking insurance claims.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance. It shows the activities, who is performing the activities, and all the values around the activities: the when, how much, and how many. 

    It helps improve your process through continual measurement. The idea is to have a flexible process without too much programming.

    What is most valuable?

    It has an appealing DSA key interface. It is an out-of-the-box screen. It is uncommon among tools in the market. You don't need to switch between interfaces because everything inside the same tool. It provides a faster result for less money.

    An advantage of the BPM is you can complete the user cycle of a BPM solution to identify the process and model it, then compute, execute, and measure on the tool, and finally it will improve the process inside the tool. You can complete the whole lifecycle of a process inside the tool. First, you should identify the part you want to improve, set up a goal for that improvement, set the scope, and obtain a sponsor. Once you do that, you put a plan in place and the next step is to define the process, define each activity, and the roles. The next step is to define the screen for the end user and its relationship with other system, then put the process in place. This implies putting in place an application and developing over BPM which will have the activities, processes, roles, and screens. After that, it's only measuring and improving the process in the BPM tool.

    What needs improvement?

    The simulation feature is great and provides a lot of value, but its complex to use. People need a high level of statistics to use it.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    More than five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    IBM can handle anything. IBM BPM can handle a lot of variables on an environment when you pass through a lot of transactions simultaneously.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is extremely scalable.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The technical support is good. They have good people working for them at IBM, who are knowledgeable and responsive. You need to have also good counterparties on your side to ask the right questions.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I used to work with Oracle BPM, but they changed the product's landscape. Instead of retraining, we changed to IBM BPM (Lombardi at the time).

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup depends on your environment. If it's a standard implementation, it is out-of-the-box and could be done in a two hours. A more complex environment could be more difficult to set up.

    What about the implementation team?

    I am the implementer of the solution for clients.

    What was our ROI?

    The volume of transactions a team can perform or execute generally increases. For example, I worked with a company using IBM BPM to decrease the time for obtaining a credit card from three days to 15 minutes.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The price is not great. 

    The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from, like a VAR, partner, or sales team from IBM. There might also be push back from the hardware team to be on-premise.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I recently began working with Red Hat BPM JBoss BPM because IBM has became complex on its pricing.

    We also evaluate companies like BonitaDocumentum, and ProcessMaker BPM. We did also consider Bonita when we were looking at Red Hat, but they don't have offices in Mexico.

    What other advice do I have?

    It is the Ferrari of BPM tools.

    To implement this product, you should have a process department and an ERP. Without an ERP solution, the transactionality of the BPM will not work.

    IBM Case Manager can assist you if you have a process that is unstructured. It is a very advanced tool, but very expensive.

    When I am looking at selecting a vendor for my client, I consider:

    • The size of the initiative
    • The cost of the licensing or subscription
    • Training
    • Availability of a consultant to implement the solution.

    I was a previous IBM partner in Mexico and Peru.

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user742725 - PeerSpot reviewer
    BPM Architect/ SOA Architect (IBM BPM) Senior Manager with 5,001-10,000 employees
    Vendor
    Responsive UI makes implementation easier to adjust on demand

    What is most valuable?

    UI is amazing for development, and ever since they adopted responsive UI the implementation is easier to adjust on demand.

    How has it helped my organization?

    BPM has become a backbone of our organization, handling major processes. It not only automated the key processes but also highlighted areas that require improvement and acceleration points.

    What needs improvement?

    Though I am quite satisfied with the product, and especially the introduction of responsive UI, I still believe that the overall development environment must be desktop based rather web based.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Since 2009.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    None.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    None.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Dev Ops Applications at Delta Lloyd
    Real User
    By automating several tasks, we have already reduced a lot of work for the business
    Pros and Cons
    • "Technical support is pleasant to work with and always available."
    • "We made the transformation to agile. Altogether with BPM, it is the total package."
    • "By automating several tasks, we have already reduced a lot of work for the business."
    • "Consider an admin console during deployment. I would like to migrate single instances, not the whole bunch at once."
    • "The initial setup was complex."

    What is our primary use case?

    Automating business processes to reduce the amount of people in the business.

    For example, when policy participants go on pension, then we automate the process by sending letters automatically, setting reminders, etc.

    By automating several tasks, we have already reduced a lot of work for the business.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We made the transformation to agile. Altogether with BPM, it is the total package.

    What is most valuable?

    Ease of use.

    What needs improvement?

    Consider an admin console during deployment. I would like to migrate single instances, not the whole bunch at once. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability is mostly good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability is pretty good.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Technical support is pleasant to work with and always available.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We already had a bunch of WebSphere applications running, and have competence in it. BPM running on WebSphere allowed us not to have to build a completely new support team.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was complex.

    What about the implementation team?

    It was setup mostly by IBM.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    At the moment, due to a takeover, we are evaluating between TIPCO and BPM (which we love).

    What other advice do I have?

    Build in phases, then extend afterwards, piece by piece.

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free IBM BPM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: October 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free IBM BPM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.