IBM BPM Reviews

We are using it to automate specific processes in cooperation with robotic process automation. We have some manual tasks that we want to automate and are using this to link different tasks under one process.

IBM BPM and Automation Anywhere working together automate manual tasks with a reduction in FTEs, creating about a 30% reduction in FTEs by automating processes. Part of the benefit is due to the automated execution and the other part is due to linking tasks and their specific processes.

The integration with the robotic process automation tool that we are using. We are using Automation Anywhere tool, as it appears that the two product integrate quite well together. It was actually the reason we chose them.

I would like it more documentation during the design phase.

We would appreciate more user-friendly definitions of processes with a more user-friendly interface for documenting processes. Also, the ability to produce process documentation automatically in a readable manner.

It appears to be quite stable.

We haven't actually stressed it because we do small processes.

We did not switch solutions. We chose to purchase IBM BPM because it was bundled with the actual RPA program/solution that we decided to purchase. We decided to use Automation Anywhere tool (RPA), and it is was bundled with IBM BPM.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

We needed about a week of assistance from the vendor.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Price
• Sales support
• All the technical requirements or functional requirements of the product.

As a bank, any business processes which run on it:

• A treasury application
• A lost and stolen credit card application
• New accounts, etc.

There are many use cases that are now administrated through one BPM processor.

It has performed pretty well. One of the concerns, which is a question of our processes more than the product, we like to do a monthly release cycle and that is not fast enough for some people. Therefore, we have created a separate BPM that we call our DevOps box, which allows them to update it anytime they want. This is in production.

We use it as a combination of machine processes and human processes. There is a workflow, then somebody kicks it off and enters the data. Some decisions are made automatically, and other decisions are made by human beings. Just the mix of these two makes it a good combination.

We are incorporating ODM to some degree.

We are creating a new box because we have all these forms. They have to be signed, therefore we have not been able to take advantage of the ease of deployment. However, we now have separate boxes, which do not need all the same approvals in order to get something into production. You can just put it in whenever you need to.

I like the Process Center. I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing, the ease of deployment, etc.

Stability is good. We have had a few problems, but IBM has helped us to resolve them.

We had a weird problem that whenever the database would go down, even for a few seconds, it broke the connection. It would not come back up as it was supposed to. However, working with IBM, we were able to figure out a fix, then it came back up, even after an interruption of the database.

Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale.

Technical support is good. They are very responsive. It is usually me who takes more time to get back to them than they take to get back to me, which is good.

We did use Oracle for a little while, but we did not like the Oracle BPM product.

IBM BPM allow us to streamline manually processes.

I have been involved in the setup of this new box (DevOps). I installed and configured it, but I did not do the original install. I did the new install, which was complex. However, the documentation is good, and we did it pretty much without incident.

We did the implementation directly with IBM.

Try it out on a small scale. Do one project which is relatively simple, then work out the bugs this way. Do not try to put too much in it at one time.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We are a bank, so security is extremely important. We are looking for someone who is going to be here a year from now, and someone who will support us. 

The number one thing is support. If we are down, we want somebody helping us now, because we can't be down.

BPM is very horizontal solution, so it can be used across any kind of industry. Financial services is the largest one - banking and insurance would be the biggest sector for BPM. But really, it's anything where there's a situation where a request comes in the door and has to be serviced, or at least that use case fits most of the time. But my biggest project at the moment is telecom infrastructure for mobile phone tower installation of antennas.

In terms of how our clients use it for workflow, first of all they're just going to implement what the process is. It's very similar to any kind of BPR methodology, mapping out the process - the "as-is" process - and then using that process to identify what the "to-be" process should be, how it should be different. Sometimes, it's even just implementing things using automation with their "as-is," having automation so that they can actually analyze how it performs, and then using that to make decisions on how it should be improved. Then, in an iterative fashion, going ahead and making those improvements.

For our clients, I'd say the more common case of using it in conjunction with other IBM automation products would be the ECM, the content management, because a lot of business processes will be delayed with documents. So sometimes they will use the one that comes with BPM itself, but for customers that really want to focus on the documents, they will have IBM FileNet, the document management system for that, and that's usually fairly tightly compatible with BPM.

The most valuable thing is actually the Analytics, which is actually a little bit not where it should be.

I'm hearing things might be improving, to really deliver on BPM as opposed to simply workflow. That really should be emphasized a lot more than it has been, because a lot of customers will simply implement the process and leave it there, because the product maybe doesn't emphasize BPM as much as it should, as much as maybe they talk about it in the sales process.

The whole idea of BPM, is to iteratively improve the process, and in order to do that you have to have the Analytics tool with it. A lot of times that doesn't go as far as it should simply because there's a lot more work to be done for that to happen, and just some sort of technical limitations that don't make that as easy as it should be.

I think they are working on it. I'm looking forward to seeing how much of an improvement it will be. They did announce that they have some stuff on the way for this, so I'm hoping it will be good. I think that at the moment, BPM as an industry in general, and IBM in particular, is not differentiating itself enough. I think the hype for it is down a bit, and I think that is a key way that they can reinvigorate the whole thing, by going back to emphasizing the entire cycle and fitting in with business improvement, as opposed to just being a technology with a layer type of thing.

So, that is, in a way, the most important aspect of it, for it to be BPM, as opposed to simply another way to implement a software solution that could be the same as anything else.

I would say it's very good but it's not perfect. It is much more scalable than it has been in the past but there are some things, it does require some work to keep it stable. So that is an area that should be improved, actually.

The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly.

It would be great if you didn't have to worry about that, but the reality is, at the moment, that you have to pay attention to that. If you do, then you can do just fine. But if you pay attention only to the business requirements, and just throw in everything that the business imagines that it wants see, you can easily build something that is way too heavy on the front end. But if you handle those things, if you tune the underlying platform, it can achieve the target, sometimes with more hardware than you want.

In terms of ROI and scaling use of the product, I don't have a client where I can say that we specifically measured that as much as you would say we should, but my feeling is yes, they do see return on investment.

Usually it's the client is using their account. The initial technical support is fine. When there are escalations, and their Tiger Team comes in, they are excellent.

My clients that go with IBM usually do so because they have a sense of, if they have problems they have an organization like IBM to complain to.

If we try to use open-source, that's usually a problem if it's a relatively big company, something like banking or insurance, they're not going to want that. But the manufacturing companies, they tend not to care as much, and as long as it works they're fine. For banking, they want something that looks a bit like the big-time.

It has improved a lot. They built some tooling for the BPM platform in particular, in the releases that started about three years ago; they streamlined that quite a bit, it is quite a bit better.

It is still a massive installer compared to some of the heritage software that it was built from. It's quite large and it can take quite a bit of time to install. So that definitely could be better, but it is what it is, it's an IBM product.

Regarding working directly with IBM in the setup, if it's not an IBM project, usually I don't, because I'd have to pay. If it's actually an IBM customer then I would. And I do, sometimes, informally talk to some of the people that I know about what is the current latest and greatest way to handle certain things, but not so much in formal channels if it's not an IBM-direct engagement.

In the BPM space, the undisputed leader is a company called Pega. In terms of the market share, they win a lot more deals, but they have a very different approach, and they have different types of customers.

In the region where I work, Oracle is doing pretty well, although their software is not as good by any stretch. Their services organization is a bit more respected for some reason in the region. So they have won some things, although they struggle to actually deliver.

Globally, I think the other one that I find interesting is called Appian, and Appian does quite well. I think that they have more of a lightweight cloud solution that's a bit easier to go to. They have a strange sort of closed mindset, you can't read their documentation unless you have an account with them, this kind of thing.

And then there are the open-source vendors, which used to not really be considered much, but they actually have started to do very well, for certain types of scenarios. Among them are Camunda and Activiti, and another one called Bonita, although I'm not really sure - its heritage is definitely open-source. But all of those open-source solutions have an enterprise version. Their approach to marketing is open-source, but they'll still sell you an enterprise license.

I rate IBM BPM a seven out of 10. It's good but it needs some help.

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.

Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers.

Unfortunately, I am an infrastructure SME and architect. This question would be more related to development team and business process team.

There is a lot of room for improvement of the dashboards.

Started with v7.5.0 in 2011, but a few months later we updated it to 7.5.1. I have been working with IBM BPM since 2011.

Yes, v7.5.1 was the worst. v8.0.3 started to be more stable, but still complex to update. v8.5.6 is more reliable but we faced lot of problems with some development issues.

We use IBM BPM for banking purposes and other banking service-related queries.

IBM BPM is easy when it comes to creating processes. 

It has an elaborated way to explore the IBM BPM processes.

Anyone can easily learn how to use IBM BPM, within a period of a month or two.

The integration could be improved.

I have been using IBM BPM for six months.

We are using the latest version, which is V8. 

It is based on the local server.

IBM BPM is a stable product.

IBM BPM is a scalable solution.

We have 100 users in our organization.

We have not contacted technical support.

We have recently changed to Camunda BPM.

It is easy to install. It only took 10 to 15 minutes to complete the installation.

The guides are available on social websites.

IBM BPM is one of the several BPM tools that we are working with. Currently, our technical team is working on 50 to 70.

We were able to complete the installation ourselves.

This is a tool that I would strongly recommend to others.

I would rate IBM BPM a nine out of ten.

We have encountered different use cases with our clients. For example, in the financial, oil field, and automotive areas, we have used the solution for onboarding applications.

IBM BPM is equipped with all the functionalities which are needed for building BPM enterprise-level applications. The integration is very good by using the restore service. The UI has improved and it is now a lot better.

There needs to be better documentation for IBM BPM in a central place. There is not any standard documentation for each component available and has been a barrier for developers.

I have been using this solution for approximately nine years.

The IBM engine is very powerful, it is highly stable.

IBM BPM has been scalable our my experience.

The support needs to improve.

The initial setup was complex and can be made simpler by starting with better documentation.

I have evaluated Pega and Appian which have come to be major competitors for IBM in the market. IBM BPM site is lacking documentation and that is why customers are going to other solutions.

I would advise those wanting to use IBM BPM to have very experienced consultants at the time of implementation because it is essential to have the infrastructure properly configured. The solution is available on-premise and on the cloud, it is important to follow best practices with the developers, if they are ignored, then the infrastructure and applications will be in trouble. It is important to have good supervision from an architect, without one, IBM BPM will not be as useful as it could be.

I rate IBM BPM a six out of ten. 

• 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.