IBM BPM Reviews

The power to understand and automate processes. 

It allows the business to make changes going forward. It gives them a bit more power and accountability for some of their processes.

The business would like to use the product with a lot less IT and equipment involvement.

Initially, we were using the cloud solution for BPM. As we keep building up the versions, it has become a better solution for us. There were some things we stumbled stumbled upon that we would have expected a bit more advanced information from IBM, but we are now more informed.

We are going to try out a hybrid solution: on-premise and cloud. So, we will see in the future about how scalable it is.

We were building isolated solutions using SharePoint or other tool. So, it seemed to make a bit more sense to say, “Can we use something that's more of an industry standard tool to utilize?"

The initial setup was straightforward, especially on the cloud.

We used an IBM partner for installation.

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.

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

Ease of use.

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

Stability is mostly good.

Scalability is pretty good.

Technical support is pleasant to work with and always available.

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.

The initial setup was complex.

It was setup mostly by IBM.

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

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

We use it for eligibility of inbound data, so anything coming from the clients, loading it into our system. We have a product called Peer, and we use the BPM tool within Peer for business monitoring, dashboard for business, so they can monitor the status of the files.

When a file comes in it has to decide whether it has to decrypt the file - some of the files are encrypted - or whether we have to unzip the file, and which platform to send it to - we have multiple platforms. It has some intelligent process built in, so it knows exactly where to send it. And there is a lot of reporting coming out of this product too.

We're not using it with IBM Case Manager or any other IBM automation tool.

There is a lot of visibility now. It used to be a black box, but with BPM business has more visibility into where the process is.

We like the dashboard feature.

The business side says it needs more visibility into the process. Right now it's the basic stuff, that's what they see, but they want to see more features. We are exploring what other possibilities are there. Currently, it shows them where the process is, right on the file, whether the main adjudication system is processing the file or not. But if something fails, they want to see more information, like where exactly it failed, etc.

It has been really stable the last couple of years. Initially we had issues with stability. It was not the product itself, it was the platform we had it on. But it's stable now, I don't see any issues.

We don't use heavy BPM processing with what we have. I know it is more scalable. We recently acquired another company, so we are trying to see if this can be used for all the eligibility stuff, but that is still in the initial analysis phase.

We have definitely seen revenue and income as a result of implementing BPM; it's basically the eligibility, the whole application, that flows through this product called Peer.

We had to use tech support a couple of times, when we had an issue with the application. There are a lot of MQs connecting to the main core adjudication system, and we had failures with those MQs, which was impacting the BPM processes. So we had to engage IBM at that time.

They were definitely helpful. Our SLA is for a tier-one application, so it has to be resolved within an hour. So we engaged IBM.

We worked with IBM for the initial setup.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor is stability and support.

BPM is an established tool, there shouldn't be any second thoughts about using it. 

• Workflow implementation
• It follows BPMN notation.
• Quick to automate workflows. Allows for quick design and build of the workflow.
• Strong integration capabilities in both Standard and Advanced version.
• In-built ECM capabilities as well.

It introduces process orchestration with adherence and process optimization into the organization. Also, it provides visibility and insight into the process within an organization.

• Development of user interfaces
• Load time (performance) of the user interfaces

I have used this solution for nine years.

• Product is pretty stable, if sized correctly with the right platform architecture.
• Even the version migrations have improved and simplified for IBM BPM 8.5.x.

No.

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

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.

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

Nine years.

No.

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

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

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

I've been using IBM BPM for ten years.

IBM BPM's scalability is very high.

IBM BPM's price could be improved.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It is extremely scalable.

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.

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).

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.

I am the implementer of the solution for clients.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Helped our organization move from paper work to automated work.

• Reach with Integration Adapters
• Support for adding custom Java code

• The product is extremely complex to use and administrate.
• It can definitely be improved in terms of performance and stability.
• Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward.

Under load, the server crashes and many of the applications become lost. You have to handle this manually. In some cases, we had to resubmit the applications from start.

Server crashes under heavy load.

Customer support is good.

The first level of tech support does not provide much assistance. You need the ticket to reach a high level to start to see results.

No previous solution.

Very complex. Too many steps need to be done at the database and server levels, and complex configurations. From what I see, a lot of these steps can be and should be automated.

Sometimes, after updates, the modules did not work and we had to remove the application and deploy as new.

Process Server is no more available than new products out there, but in general IBM has a high cost and complex setup.

My advice to others looking into implementing this product is "Don't."