IBM BPM Reviews

Previously, our company's business automation process was slow. IBM BPM's schedule and response functionalities are excellent. So, our customers are happy with it. We implement the solution for our customers.

My clients utilize IBM BPM for various business processes, ranging from correspondence management and vacation requests to expedited legal cases and numerous committee meetings. There are countless use cases in which IBM BPM proves to be a valuable tool for my clients.

Our customers have experienced a lot of benefits. So now, they have automation in place to implement internally or externally in their environment. This has enhanced the customer experience and made it good. The product has many BPM tools, which help eliminate bits of work. Also, information is now available and accessible according to their security or role in their businesses. They can now increase their process in the Middle East. They also do manual work using the tool. The tool also helps them ensure that they are able to follow policy compliance. In short, the tool helps in a digital transformation, and so IBM BPM increases the efficiency of our clients. All of the aforementioned reasons increase the revenue of our clients and our company.

Customers find the tool's capability to scan and compare it with other products in the market to be valuable. As a top business process management technology, it is comparable to the cloud-based automation tool BAO, which appears to be a fusion of two solutions, IBM BPM and IBM Case Manager. Customers can cover their work-related issues, or problems can be covered with IBM BPM. Customers can streamline their operations and automate certain processes while managing their security. So I believe there are a lot of advantages one can reap using the tool.

Currently, the tool's interface is created using a forklift upgrade, which is proving unhelpful. I hope IBM uses something from IBM Content Navigator to make the interface easier to navigate.

In the past, IBM BPM has worked on certain features to make it a container solution.

I have been using IBM BPM for four to five years. I work as a system implementer for IBM. Also, I am using the solution's latest version. We have a lot of customers using it since it is an affordable tool.

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

It is a scalable solution that can be scaled up or scaled down, including the components or processes of IBM BPM.

Our company handles ten customers using the tool.

The technical support of the solution is excellent.

The level of complexity involved in setting up the system depends on whether the business processes are simple or highly complex. Based on our experiences, we deal with the complex setup required for complex business processes. Our team has gained valuable experience in implementing the product and handling complexities with the help of our customer support.

The tool's deployment model depends on the country where customers are located.

The product itself has a feature to take care of the deployment process.

During the deployment process, the first stage involves development, distinction, and protection. In the second stage, servers are deployed on nodes. As someone from the development side, I do not handle the deployment myself. Instead, we install the solutions and configure the environment on our customers' dashboards. After that, we can deploy our solutions or applications on top of it.

We only need a few people to carry out the deployment process.

The maintenance and deployment of the solution are very easy. Also, installation of the latest release is an easy process.

I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones. Small customers may opt for another solution, a small one, or a resource. However, it's a reasonable tool for enterprise customers, especially for governance purposes in their space. Also, according to IBM's policies, the cost of the solution will increase as the need for it grows. Therefore, the cost varies for different companies. We have been working with many solutions for over 25 years, and we have a lot of enterprise customers in Saudi Arabia. Some of our customers have been with us for 25 years.

I would tell those planning to use the solution that they need to start using it gradually over time before scaling up to achieve the best value from the product. They can eventually implement or automate all of their systems. For me, it is one of the best products globally. Over the years, IBM has been able to merge two solutions into one. For Business processes or integrations and to deal with whatever issues customers face, IBM BPM can help to automate such business processes. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for multiple business processes and its quality of service feature.

The solution's most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products.

They should include coaches or forms from the back end. We get multiple forms as many implementations are involved, and attaching them to the business processor via phone takes a lot of work. The implementation process could be more accessible.

They should make the integration between BPM and RPA easier. We can have a systematic process using RPA.

We have been using the solution for four years.

I rate the solution's stability as a seven as we face issues with the snapshots in the processor.

The solution is scalable, as adding many offline and online servers is easy. We have 100-200 customers using the solution.

The solution's initial process is straightforward for professionals. It is complex for basic users.

Our team provides application support and administers the operations for BPM administrator.

The solution is highly-priced.

I compared the solution with Oracle BPM. The solution is better than Oracle as it's very stable and robust. With its help, you can easily develop, publish, and deploy your work.

It is a good solution overall. I rate it as an eight.

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. 

We use it to architect our core services and business processes. For example, my company is responsible for issuing licenses to oil and gas vendors who operate petrol and gas stations. This is a very complex process starting from submission of the license request to the approval by the minister's office, and then checking the localization policy to see where they can give approval. We use IBM BPM in a plethora of complex processes in different areas of our business.

Initially, the process architecture studio was very helpful and it was compliant with BPMN standards. In the beginning it definitely gave us mileage in terms of business process designing, but nowadays, there are very good and smart tools that have OCR and AI facilities. Currently, the tool looks quite ineffective in a digital transformation environment. We're a mix of proprietary and open source tools, and we don't find IBM very inclusive.

IBM, as a suite, is becoming more and more obsolete because it obliges the customer to buy multiple tools for the same purpose. For example, BPM is only for architecting the business process workflow, and then you need to integrate it with the DataPower solution to bring in the data. There are also other tools for the process mining part that are not a part of BPM. From a business perspective, to achieve one goal we have to license multiple IBM tools on-premise, whereas there are other competitive tools that are assembled and engineered on one platform, and can be utilized in a much simpler and more seamless way. That is why we're finding it very difficult to continue working with the IBM stack. They need to unify the process landscape into one engine.

AI-enabled BPM tools are more relevant these days, where you use artificial intelligence to understand process pitfalls and you apply that in your process design and logic. I would like IBM to consider including AI-enabled process mining, robotic process automation, and very good OCR capabilities from the computer vision side.

I have been working with this solution for five years. 

The stability is good. I would give it a seven out of ten.

The scalability of the solution is high. It's a seven out of ten. 

We have a team of about six people, our business analysis team, who run the solution. There are about 2,000 end users. 

From a user-friendliness perspective, I would rate it as a six out of ten. There was definitely a learning curve to adopt the tool and understand all of its features, but once learned, it was a very good tool for that period of time - about four or five years ago.

Our deployment was done by SBM, Saudi Business Machine, which is the Saudi partner of IBM Global. Our solution designer worked with a business process architect, middleware solution designer, and tool specialists from IBM. There were around eight consultants on the IBM team from different technical backgrounds. Our deployment involved the entire middleware with BPM and DataPower. It took around one and a half years.

Now, our IBM BPM maintenance is outsourced. There is a contract team of three engineers who are maintaining the software because a lot of processes are housed on IBM BPM and the processes need tweaks from time to time.

I would say the ROI is moderate because the license prices are high and the operation and maintenance cost is high. Just like Oracle ERP, you rarely see an ROI, but it becomes intrinsic to your organization. It's the same with any BPM tool. Even if you don't have a very high ROI, somehow you get captivated, locked into the tool.

I would say the ROI is a six out of ten.

The pricing is very high. On a scale of one to ten, if ten is high, I would say it's an eight. The total cost of ownership over a period of time is very high.

It is usually a one-year license. Last time, for a better price, we paid for three years upfront.  

I would rate this solution as a six out of ten.

I suggest that those looking into this tool do proper benchmarking and visit the Gartner and Forrester reports and PeerSpot reports before choosing IBM. Also, if they are going for this tool, it is better to have a strong in-house team for not only deployment, but also utilizing the tool later on.

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.

It's a solid product. It covers most of the pain points for clients.

It might not be suitable for entry level clients because it comes with a huge number of modules for processing that at times might not be necessary for upcoming clients. It's too complex, but it's suitable for the enterprise level.

I've been using this solution for 10 years.

It's stable. We haven't had any issues.

With the business process tool, it needs to be customized according to what the clients want. So, complexities will be there.

The pricing is high.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

I'm a consultant. We are working for a consulting company, and we initiate solutions in IBM BPM at the moment, mostly for banks.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the product. It has a lot of capabilities and potential. 

This is technology, and there's always room for improvement. It would be better to have a single solution. Trying to have an overview in terms of this solution brings together the concepts of BPM processes, customer journeys, and an automation part for KPIs. All of this working together and coming up with a single solution with privacy is more commercial than anything else.

Because when you try and initiate things, we see that it's two different applications. But there's an effort to combine all of these applications and have an overview of internal processes. I believe they are making investments in this part, but they are probably delayed a bit.

Adding a control app or something easier in terms of maintaining the versioning will help. Make it easier to manage the patches so you can just do it and move on to the next one. Every time we tried to meet to do some upgrade of a version of the solution, it was a lot of work. Even minor upgrades always required a significant amount of work in intensities and trials.

From our side and our core customers, we didn't get any complaints.

Depending on the geographical area you're in, depending on the relevance of your customer, and if it's a big customer, the support goes very well. We don't have many complaints. If it's a smaller client in a smaller country, sometimes the support is delayed a bit, and we get some pushing from their side to make sure that we have a proper response.

We also have projects in our systems and projects with Comunda, and we are doing some parallelly. We also have some experience in using the BPMO methods and Software AG. It's not great, but for small things, it does the trick in terms of the licenses model. Sometimes depending on the situation, it becomes much more interesting for some of our clients.

The initial setup is kind of a pain when compared with other solutions like Comunda, which is more or less like plug-and-play and quite easy. The solution is quite quick in terms of IBM, and it's a bit more complex. Especially if you're talking about having a more enterprise environment, it becomes a bit complex. You have to configure a lot of additional components from that infrastructure to make sure it's running okay, and sometimes it becomes a bit complex.

It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price.

If you're talking about smaller companies or smaller clients, probably they're going for something more simple like Comunda or something else because it's much cheaper. Even the support becomes much cheaper than getting a full IBM BPM solution. 

If you're a very big company or a bank or don't want any headaches, you would probably prefer IBM. You know the old saying that no one has ever been fired for buying IBM. It's one of those things, and that rule still applies. 

I would advise potential users to get proper training and figure out the most suitable version that they need. Because in terms of internal versions and support, they need to be careful. Like all software, the latest versions always include some bugs. Older versions lack some support. You need to be careful about that. 

Have a proper solution architect that knows enough about the BPM system's ins and outs to make sure that you have proper internal support in terms of projects. Apart from that, try to build a close relationship with the vendor.

People who come from different technology backgrounds have some difficulty getting used to working with IBM products. If you compare it with other products, it's probably not as easygoing or as simple to implement as the rest. But after you get used to it, it works.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM BPM an eight.

We use the solution as a business process management platform.

The integration and design are valuable features.

The interface is limited and should improve in the future. We are having to develop an extended application to avoid the limitation in the interface design.

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have contacted customer service when we had some issues and it took quite some time. They could be more responsive.

We have an in-house team that does the implementation of the solution.

When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors.

I recommend this solution to those who have enterprise companies. If the business is small then the price of the solution would not make sense financially because it is expensive.

I rate IBM BPM an eight out of ten.