IBM BPM Reviews

I work for an insurance company and we use BPM to digitize two of our main claiming processes, to make them paperless.

We use it as a workflow platform and little more than that, because they are interconnected with other platforms of ours: our legacy systems, our customers, our partners, providers, etc. There are two BPM applications we developed with IBM, as a partner, to follow the bottlenecks and those kinds of things. So, I would say that it is more than a workflow software for us.

One of the most notable things is how you can develop use cases with the customers, internal customers, but directly within. The software process model that BPM supports is really exciting in that aspect. The natural interconnection with other IBM products is sure: WebSphere Portal, FileNet. We interconnect all of those.

We haven't discovered what features could be added, yet. We are still in the early phases, and it has more features than we are using now.

The people working on the front desk are having some problem with managing the documentation. For instance, they get a picture, and if the picture comes rotated 90 degrees, together with a picture that is not rotated, they have some problems dealing with that, technically. There are some minor aspects that on the usability side that are still lacking. That has to do with FileNet, too, I'm talking about the suite together.

One of the processes, the one that we developed first, is running okay. The other one is not, but I attribute that to the fact that we are still in the rollout process, and it's still in the early stages of development.

In terms of ROI through scaling, one of the processes we automatated with BPM is running smoothly with fewer people than before, and in fact the size of the demand has scaled, very notably. We haven't calculated it yet, but it's really returning on the investment.

I think it will meet our needs going forward. And they better make sure it does.

Support is good. They had to escalate internally, in order to get some more expert advice internally, but it was okay.

We've been helped by IBM staff, but there was no problem there. We used BPM on Cloud for development, testing, and pre-prod, and we used the on-premises for production, and everything is working properly.

We're looking at automating and digitizing our processes. There are two use cases. One is centralization of account opening. That has been out there for just over a year. 

The second process that we picked is the consumer loans process, the loan approval process, the whole loan application. The loan application process has just been automated, so it's been there for about two or three months.That is what has been put on the BPM tool.

So we use it primarily for managing the workflow of the loan application or of account opening for a new customer who walks into one of the branches.

So far, the tool is fantastic. The challenge has been for our people, I think the ability to realize that the tool is only as good as the thought that you put behind it. So what my team ended up doing was using the existing process and putting it on the tool. Based on that, now they've realized that using the tool means there is an opportunity to rethink the process itself, as well. That's what we're going to go through. But the tool itself, the experience was fantastic.

We're not using it in conjunction with any other IBM products. This is a standalone application that we're using.

In terms of the process automation and the workflow improvement, although, as I said earlier, we did not re-engineer the process, just the fact that there are lots of times when there is back-and-forth between the branch staff and the back office staff. So all of that, now that it is all automated on the workflow, has significantly reduced the turnaround time for the loan application. Previously, if it used to take anywhere between 10 to 12 days on average, now it takes between two to three days on average.

There is a component of this BPM pool - I can't recall the name. What it does is, it allows you to create various scenarios and then run them quickly, before actually putting them onto a tool. So I think that part of the tool is really fantastic, because that enables you to create scenarios, create simulations, before actually going out and putting it into the tool itself.

At this point, we're still going through the process of exploring the features that we have. I think we're far from the stage where we can talk about new features.

So far, we have not put huge volumes onto it, so it's been working fine. I am not sure how it will behave when we put really large volumes onto it.

We will be scaling it up, especially on the account opening side, because we do end up opening about a couple of a million accounts a year. So yes, we will be putting it to scale and we'll be seeing how it goes.

So far, we've been doing it in a couple of hundred branches, we wanted to do it in a controlled manner. But starting in about the second quarter this year is when we're going to put it to test on a mass scale and we'll see how it goes.

In terms of scaling, it's not like you can see the return on investment in hard dollar terms, but just the fact that from a customer experience perspective, if you can turn it around in two days instead of 10 days, by default, that should hopefully translate into more loans that we book, better customer experience, and better word out there in the market. Obviously, you can't put a dollar value to that itself.

The technical team was fully involved in the process, and it was a fantastic experience.

I wasn't involved in the setup personally, but my team members were involved in it. I have seen the tool itself. It wasn't that complex. I think it required a little bit of programming understanding, but by and large it was reasonably easy to use.

We worked directly with IBM itself. They're the ones we deal with. We are the largest client for IBM in Pakistan, so IBM works with us directly.

Regarding when we implemented it, we should have started a few years ago. It's automation, digitization. I think the earlier you do, the better it is.

I think it's worth looking at the IBM BPM solution. Certainly, when it comes in combination with the other tool that I talked about, where you can do a simulation, I think it's worth it. One should certainly look at it.

We use IBM BPM for brokerage operations transactions, and workflow and process automation for those transactions. We use it for straight workflow and process automation. We have some straight through processing (STP), but most of it is human intervention. Therefore, we will start a process, which will start by requiring some sort of human intervention step, like a review or approval, then it will post to a system of record afterwards.

It has performed very well. We have had it for almost eight years. We will be hitting over a million transactions a day by the end of the year, so it is pretty successful.

• Easy to use
• Easy to develop
• It is transparent to business users because it is mostly picture based modelling.
• Easy for people to understand what the application is doing.

Turnaround time: It is easy to take a requirement, put it in the code, and deploy it. 

We have used a lot of out-of-the-box reporting on the process performance metrics. We have been able to make suggested changes to staff for this role or streamlining by eliminate some activities where people were not requiring a lot of work in the first place.

Some performance stuff around tasks and indexing. We know that there are changes coming in this space.

A lot of the management stuff: It is a rather thick stack because you have to have WebSphere skills, IBM BPM skills, and an understanding of how the product runs on WebSphere. A lot of this will start to get a lot easier as they put it in containers, which will allow the platform to manage itself in some regards.

Performance in the development environment space. I know that they have been taking it off the desktop version and putting on the web, and it is not 100% yet.

A lot of the features of the product are old. It would be nice to see those updated. They are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will get around to them at some point.

It wavers. We have some opportunities for improvement in this space, especially as we approach our target volume of a million transactions a day. It is tough, because it is not necessarily the product. It is more around the platform and infrastructure to support it, so the connectivity to the database, web sessions, and reverse proxies in front of that. Therefore, the whole environment plays into how the application performs.

It has been okay so far, knock on wood. We are in the middle of refreshing our topology right now. We are trying to figure out if there are potential advantages that we have not been able to look at before by orchestrating how we cluster and divide the deployment environment, so we will see what happens.

We started with some processes that were about five or six a day to our target processes, which will be about hundred of thousands a day. The big effort now is to taking models from MQ Workflow and putting those into BPM. Obviously, MQ Workflow has been decommissioned and is end-of-life (EOL) later this year. We had 45 or so applications on MQ Workflow and we have been moving those over to BPM. That has been most of the work right now. 

We log PMRs constantly and the technical support has been great about providing Level 3 support. We have had some direct interaction with Level 3 personnel who provide easy, quick answers that we did not know, then we can implement those changes right away. We have definitely been happy with their response time.

We did not have a BPM solution previously. 

The initial setup was very complex. This was back on IBM BPM 7.5, so they had just converted from calling it Lombardi to IBM BPM. It was new infrastructure for us. We had some security and infrastructure constraints unique to the product that we had to work in. We did not previously have a huge WebSphere or Linux presence. We had some custom code at the beginning, but we have mainly moved away from that, and are pretty much out-of-the-box IBM BPM at this point.

We used IBM WebSphere software services for the initial setup because it was a new platform for them. They had just acquired it from Lombardi and were excited about having a role model for themselves for setup. Also, it was brand new for us, so any help we could receive was appreciated.

We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did. That is one of the reasons we have been able to keep the platform around.

We evaluated two other BPM platforms and did a PoC with one of them. Then we decided on Lombardi, and they were bought. After that, we decided on IBM BPM.

We did a PoC with Pega and looked at Appian, but settled on IBM BPM.

We chose IBM BPM because of the management that comes with the product: The performance stuff out-of-the-box around how efficient is the process and how efficient are the people involved (or how inefficient). The ability to view these metrics out-of-the-box without having to do a lot of work on top of that. Everything is coupled together and comes as one solution.

It is more than just a new development tool for IT. You need a capability within IT to support it, run it on the right platform, and have the right developers to develop within it. It is somewhat of a unique skill set. It is not Java development nor web development, it is a hybrid of both. Most importantly, you need business partners who are process-oriented. Anyone can put processes in a line and call it a workflow, but if you have process engineers who can find eligible processes for management, this is really important. Your business partners should be willing to define metrics in the process and work on changing the process. Therefore, it is not a new development tool, but a whole methodology around managing business processes in the IT and the business side. It is a little more of an endeavor than just buying the product and saying, "I use IBM BPM now."

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Originally, it was ease of development and the model-based development environment. It was entirely drag and drop plus pictures, so business people could comprehend.

Ajax services are most important to me, but currently we've moved them more into status closed. This is because we are using the HL7 version of iBPM. Thus, the one thing that I love about them is that they make it easier to integrate with other systems, especially with the use of smaller files.

It's ability to hand over processes. There are stages of the process from one user to another, and also the ability of keeping a session. Because I'm in a financial institution, where you are originating an account for a customer and could possibly frustrate a customer. You have to keep the account's permissions process simple.

Previously, you find that 115 in the system would be for onboarding, and that was how to engage the customer's profile. Then, you have to engage with multiple other systems to actually pay that account.

The nice thing about the BPM is that it is able to hold all of those sessions to say, "Okay, this is one, two, three, then I take this process and hand it over to another system, which will also do some work, then once they are done they come back and then I pass on the information to another system."

So, the integration that the different systems use, it's what has been most valuable.

When you have to integrate files for enterprise applications. We call them ESIs. This requires a lot of work, because you have to first create the EF file and integration designer, which takes quite some time, before you can be able to consume a website.

I've been using it for two years now.

Yes, we did actually. When we were initially installing 8.5.7, it deleted the server. We encountered a lot of issues when we had to migrate processes in the old version to the new version. This was happened recently, because we only started with the 8.5.7 server this year around June.

It is quite a scalable product. On one of our projects, we are running something like 50,000 processes a day. We're able to actually handle that efficiently without a lot of hassle.

It doesn't require installation. The user doesn't have to install anything on their system. It's all in the update. So, that makes it easy to scale.

I'd have to say 10 out of 10. Because I have never called their tech support, but they always make sure they attend to whatever problems we face. Not sure that's why they attend to us only, quickly, or maybe just how their tech support team works, but from my experience, I would give them a 10 out of 10.

It wasn't complex. Putting an app on is quite easy.

No, they were the only option at that time. Also, in terms of keeping up with the industry, they're always bringing new updates and you get updates every two months. That was actually a major factor.

My advice for them would be to use the product for what it's intended for, and to not try to make it do anything rather than what it is intended for. Because there you will come across problems which you might not find the right software. Also, find people who are skilled in the product. Most of the time, when you come across problems, they were not caused by the product, but caused by the people using the product who are not very skilled in terms of using it.

We primarily use the solution to develop some internal applications and as a business process modeler. It is a way to prototype and start developing applications.

The solution provides an easy way to develop. It's simple to use. 

The solution is stable. 

I would like them to make the tool more user-friendly in order to make the development process even simpler. They use an outdated programming language. 

I'd like the tool to be more flexible. It should be modernized a bit. It looks outdated. 

The initial setup can be challenging. 

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of reliability. 

The solution isn't exactly scalable. I'd rate it two out of ten overall. 

Technical support is okay. 

Neutral

I am also starting to use Cloud Pak.

The initial setup is challenging. However, once it is done, it's done. It's not hard in the sense that you don't have a lot of other things to do. 

Right now, we are integrating from Cloud Pak. The cloud makes it easy to handle, and we have the help of IBM engineers. Once again, you do it once, and it is done. After that, you are just using it.

I'd rate the initial setup a two out of ten in terms of ease of use. That's in terms of IBM in general, as we have a lot of IBM products. This product has a generally much easier process, however, IBM is hard. 

We did not use a third-party consultant. We worked with IBM engineers. We talked directly to them and were able to set everything up. 

The solution is expensive. The company may not be of the opinion it is expensive, however, it is expensive when I look at the total cost. I'd rate it eight out of ten in terms of how expensive it is.

We are IBM partners. 

I'd rate the product as a whole six out of ten. It is okay in general. 

• The functionality to design UI to be responsive and can run on multiple devices. 
• Exposing of the process components as REST API: This enables consumers to easily integrate and get information on processes and their data.

Helps automate processes, also it easily manages and tracks the business processes. It has the ability to have a view of the performance on each process so you can identify the possibility of optimisation.

Integration with web services, especially in the standard version of the product.

More than three years.

Yes, on the Process Center (development environment), especially when you have too many developers working on it. Then, it becomes unstable.

Not at the moment. It is quite easily scalable.

Two things are valuable:

• The system integration layer is valuable because this enables an organization to create a single point where all the key organizational master data is held in different IT applications across different functions, that can be accessed and updated.
• Process orchestration allows an organization to model and execute its business processes across functions rather than operating in functional silos; this works hand-in-hand with the system integration layer.

On top of this, the business rule engine and common user interface allow centralization of any of the organizational parameters and a common corporate interface.

It enabled the development of a new safety critical equipment testing database and the integration of this with the inventory management system and the asset management system. As more systems are integrated, this solution enables a spider web (network) of the business processes so as to develop over time, creating greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

The product has developed considerably since I have used it. At that time, the use of system integration alongside the business process orchestration was cutting edge. Now, there are many more mature offerings including IBM BPM. I believe that the integration work was more difficult than anticipated at the time. Also, the product was orientated towards using other IBM technologies such as their IBM Db2 database technology; the solution didn’t play well with the Microsoft SQL Server and there was a stand-off between the two vendors blaming each other for performance issues.

I have mainly used IBM Blueworks Live (as an analyst) and worked with BPM developers who have used the BPMS solution to implement designs, i.e., for about a year.

There were performance issues with the solution, which were related to the IBM – Microsoft interaction (as described above). The browser-based solution does not work well at facilities that do not have reasonably fast networks. This would not be an issue now as easily available data bandwidth has increased dramatically since then.

The solution was probably overkill for the initial application, so I did not experience any scalability issues.

IBM put together a package which included the onsite consultants who were very effective. Apart from the IBM – Microsoft issue, the support was good. I expect that IBM BPM can play with the other server and database technologies much more effectively now.

This was a new venture into the Business Process Management.

The setup was quite complex because the solution was cutting-edge at that time and IBM invested considerably in the implementation, likely at a loss to themselves.

I don’t have information about the IBM BPM licensing but the process discovery tool, i.e., IBM Blueworks Live has three levels of licenses: Editor, Contributor, and Viewer (there is also a Community Member license but I don’t know what that is for). The Editor licenses are for around £80 per user per month. The Collaborator licenses are very valuable for increasing BPM maturity by enabling the stakeholders (particularly the process managers) to collaborate on the process capture and design. Blueworks does not allow a free HTML publishing option, but instead, a Viewer license is required which is relatively inexpensive but has to be bought in packages of 500 licenses. However, it may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet.

I believe that a Hitachi product was evaluated as part of the tender.

Start with the IBM Blueworks Live to get your house in order first. This is an inexpensive way of introducing BPM governance to an organization and it naturally leads to a BPMS deployment when the stakeholders recognize that the process models that are presented can be automated and the underlying data integrated across the organization.

The most valuable feature of the solution is IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation and how it's integrated with case management and the RPA and all these things with flexible deployment.

UI is an area with a shortcoming that needs improvement.

I have been using IBM BPM for six and a half to seven years. We're currently working on a migration project from IBM BPM Version 8.5.7 to IBM BPM Version 21.0.3. My current company is a platinum partner for IBM.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It's a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

In my current environment, the solution has more than 500 users.

I rate the technical support a seven or eight out of ten. Sometimes IBM support takes a long time to respond or responds wrongly on some issues, and there is some fixed practice at their end because of which they take some time to come. Hence, I lean more toward seven.

Neutral

I rate the setup a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. If you are using the UI to do the installation or setup, the rating would be nine. But if you're using shell commands on AIX or Linux, I think it should be almost two or three since I did the shell commands for the services. It also included some server performance tuning and stuff, like, database connections for BPM databases and all such things. It's not easy.

Since I am working in the banking industry, the tool is deployed on-premises.

The deployment takes around two days since there is a need to prepare a development environment.

One person can do deployment with help from a database person. Some database scripts should be deployed on Oracle or Db2.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten. It is an expensive product compared to other tools.

I evaluated options like Appian, OpenText AppWorks, and Pega. However, I prefer IBM BPM over other solutions owing to its level of integration and the already existing adapters, and how it is easy to create your files to be connected with IBM BPM.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.