IBM BPM Reviews

Mostly for business orchestrations, and developing the process applications within Wells Fargo Advisors, and we have other lines of business like retirement, wealth, etc. So we basically build the process models for all the internal back-office operations.

We started four years ago with one or two process apps, but now we've got close to 40. So that's a lot of incremental development in the last three years.

We have a legacy product, called MQ Workflow, and we developed so many process apps using that tool, but we migrated everything to BPM three years ago. The best part is the orchestration simplicity. However, we do have some issues, but, as we work on those challenges, I think overall, product-wise, it is pretty good.

I checked out a session, here at the Think 2018 conference. They basically merged the old BPM with the Case Manager, PFS, etc. That's pretty good, but we need to figure out how we can better use the Case Manager and PFS with that existing business flow.

It is pretty much stable. We had some hiccups in the beginning, because of the product learning curve. But once we got the environment stabilized, we have hardly seen problems, from a BPM standpoint. We do have other components like, the LDAP and databases, and the ASM F5 Web tier, but from a BPM product standpoint, I think it's pretty good.

It's scalable. We started with three nodes on day one. We expanded to five nodes, then we basically had two other engines, so we have about 15 now.

But there is a limit. There is a point where you stop, you can't scale anymore to improve the performance. But for now, I think we are okay.

We have engagement, whenever there is an issue we open a ticket with IBM, depending on the severity, whether it's two, three, sometimes one, if production is down. The people who we work with are pretty responsible, most of the time. Again, not every time, but when it comes to the production and management, I think we get good response.

We do have a liaison between Wells Fargo and IBM who takes care of high-priority tasks with Wells Fargo. They escalate, sometimes it goes to labs, level 2. We don't see any problems where nobody is looking at it and we're struggling, nothing like that. People are helping.

I think we had some assistance from IBM, for a few months. After that, in-house, we pretty much took care of handling it.

I would rate BPM an eight out of 10. Again, this is all from my infrastructure platform support standpoint. We do have a lot of application development, testing teams, QA teams, they also interact with the BPM product. But my job is more platform topology, architecture.

We use it for process or case management in the healthcare industry. We use it to make sure that, when a case moves between operators, that the right level of people approve the workflow. It causes the processes to pull the information back in, so we can redact the case appropriately.

When we started out it was a little painful, but as we adopted it to the healthcare industry practices that we have to follow, it has helped in faster development.

We don't use it with any other IBM products. We actually built our own processes for how applications behave, so we use the process engine piece of it to redirect the workflow appropriately. When a case or support ticket comes in to the customer service reps, we look at the information and, using the process engine, we figure out which process in the workflow we need to call to get the information back in. Then the customer service rep can use it to appropriately manage the case that they're looking at or investigating.

I'm not sure that it has improved our organization, per se, but the speed to market, delivery of our processes and rules that change constantly, it helps a lot with that.

Also, not having to build our own and customize it is another advantage.

In terms of impacting our ability to change or update our processes, we haven't gotten there yet. We are legally bound by what the rules are, and other issues, so there is only so much we can do, our hands are tied. But we are definitely looking at robotic process-automation, to see if that can help and solve some of our issues. We are going to be working with the IBM RPA team to see if any of those can be derived from the existing processes to benefit it. That is something we are looking at here.

From an architecture perspective, the thing that we like about it is the ease by which our development teams could pick the tool up. That was cool.

The Process Designer is good. We like how we can drag and drop and link the processes up, that works out great for us.

We also like the monitoring, support, and stability of the platform.

When we compare it, with respect to migration upgrades, we find it to be much faster and much cheaper than the other vendor. We have both products in-house, so we are actually evaluating from a price-comparison perspective, as well as from a development and skill-set-availability perspective, across the products, as well.

One of the things that we are looking at is cognitive learning. IBM has another product called IBM RPA, I think, which is doing some of that stuff. We would like to see more of that with respect to cognitive learning and AI put back into the process engine to help.

Process engines have been here for a long time now. When you look at IBM BPM it provides the same stability that most engines do today. I think it is more in terms of development time and the ease of learning it that helped us more.

It is not as heavy as a Pega workflow system which is customized and has a lot more things you can do with it, but we don't need that level of complexity.

We haven't had any issues yet in terms of scaling it out to our customer service reps. You never know, it depends on the complexity, what it's going to look like in the future.

It's cheaper than Pega, definitely.

I haven't personally talked with anybody yet in technical support. I don't think we've had a need to. From a design and consulting perspective we did reach out to IBM to get some help to improve our processes in terms of development; not the actual process engine though.

There is more stability in that team to deliver things faster, so that helps.

We used Pega. Pega can be used both as a workflow engine and a process engine. We have our own internally built process engine too, written in Java, but it's more customized to a certain issue and we are not able to scale it out. That's why we looked at Pega and IBM BPM.

When looking at vendors - we sell a health platform to our clients, the Blue Cross and Blue Shields of the world - and one of the things we look at is, when we sell a platform, how can we reduce the cost of the platform, to reduce healthcare costs at the end of the day. We keep on evaluating products based on the licensing cost and the cost to run it, the consulting rates for each product.

We look at the scalability and stability of the platform too. We also look at what other capabilities there are, the capabilities of the future, and that's one of the reasons we are going towards robotic process-automation, trying to automate some of these mundane tasks that people have to perform manually. Although it is process-oriented, it is still difficult to figure things out across multiple applications.

The initial set up was easy. The challenge was in adopting it into the release and deployment processes that we have in-house, what we have to follow for the healthcare industry. There was a little bit of a challenge trying to figure out how to take the process and put the appropriate release management processes in place to follow our auditing compliance.

We have ironed that out now and we are able to develop and showcase the product much faster when we compare it with something like Pega. Pega has a process engine that we use. Our development times are much faster in IBM BPM, as well as the pricing is even better than Pega.

We looked at Pega, it's very expensive in terms of licensing. We are now looking at Red Hat's implementation of the BPM tool to see, from a price point ratio, how it behaves as well. Red Hat has a business process engine, their JBoss BRMS does that, so we are evaluating it.

We do evaluate, over time, how we can reduce our internal cost to provide a better solution.

In terms of advice to a colleague who is looking this or a similar solution, I think it is based on the needs of the company, overall, in terms of the business capabilities, the business development, is it a stable platform. And at the end of the day it's the total cost of ownership which is the key. You always have to look at that from your company's perspective. IBM BPM might be the best tool out there, but if you don't have the appropriate training and funding it's going to be a challenge. That's true of any other tool too.

That's why we're evaluating Pega and IBM BPM. Our teams are liking BPM better because it's faster to set up and they have showcased two or three projects where they were able to do them in a three-month cycle, where it really should take them seven or eight months, and it would take more in Pega. So we see the benefits, but we need to constantly look at technologies because, in the market, things are evolving over time, and that's one of the reasons we are looking at automating some of the processes too.

We evaluate every three to six months, to make sure we are ahead of the curve and looking at what the market is bringing to the table to reduce the total cost of ownership. So something like robotic process-automation where, with cognitive learning, it can figure out some of the processes and improve them automatically, is something that we are looking into big-time.

The most valuable feature of IBM BPM is the low code design, and ease of maintenance. Additionally, the integration is good and easy to do.

IBM BPM can improve the dashboards and reports. It only has two dashboards, and reporting is very difficult to build.

I have been using IBM BPM for approximately five years.

IBM BPM is a stable solution.

The scalability of IBM BPM is good. It's easy to add features and applications to the platform.

I have approximately 10 customers, with each having an average of approximately 300 users.

The support for IBM BPM is good.

I have not used other solutions in this category.

The initial setup of IBM BPM is easy to do. The implementation time depends on the business that the solution is being put into. It typically takes six months to one year to complete the process. For a deployment that is easy, the process could take only a few hours.

We have two to three administrators that support IBM BPM.

My advice to others is this is a good solution and they can find a lot of advantages. I recommend this solution to many users.

I rate IBM BPM an eight out of ten.

Process automation.

• Traceability
• Fewer humans errors.

The integration layer is powerful in the advanced version.

It should have a more powerful and faster form builder, also the license is complex using PVUs.

Excellent but some network latency should be prevented for development since Web Process Designer is collaborative and distributed

Very good! horizontally and vertically

no

It allows for model-driven development, easy to use drag and drop type configuration, integrations, reporting, etc.

The main business benefits, at the highest level, are to improve the customer experience and operational efficiency. Sometimes, you can't do one without the other. I am trying to improve how customers interact with organizations. These days, everybody has many channels through which they arrive. For example, even in this day and age, a lot of very large companies have siloed operations across channels, which leads to a disjointed customer experience.

We use it as a client workflow platform, because it is designed for improving client-facing and internal processes. There are other uses for the platform: rapid application development, low code development, and high performance application.

As soon as you go live, you have a bunch of changes right on the back of it. Those changes will go live in two to four weeks. It will continue to keep up with the changing needs of the business. That is the strong value proposition of BPM. It's not a one-time automation.

The user experience, while it has improved, should continue to improve. It should stay on that trajectory. These days, we are all spoiled by applications, like Amazon and Facebook, and stuff we are using in our day-to-day lives. We expect the same experience from enterprise applications as we do from consumer applications. Some of the companies which are leading the charge have minimized the gap of customer experience from consumer to enterprise. IBM and its BPM platform is moving in this direction. It still need to improve, but it's getting there.

It is very stable right now. We have seen nothing but amazing results over the last six years.

I have yet to come across a use case where scalability was an issue. 

We don't use their support. We have our own IBM experts who are certified and have years of experience.

The initial setup is very quick. 

Most of our projects take about three people and are done in three months.

BPM is good when used for the right use cases. I will not use BPM for a trading desk that's making split-second decisions because that is not the right use case for it. When you use it for the right use cases (e.g., a loan origination process for a bank, claims processing for an insurance company, or a healthcare provider accepting a claim and settling it), processes which typically range from hours to weeks, then when you apply BPM, you bring the processes down by an order of magnitude to minutes to hours, respectively. Those are the right use cases for BPM. There's no performance issue if you use it the right way. 

Our customer continue to use the product over time, which is the best indicator that they are seeing ROI from the product. 

It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project. 

One of its competitors is Appium.

If you're not leveraging these types of technologies, you're missing out.

We are changing the major database in our financial sector. We moving to a paperless process and added a risk engine to make the decision for each loan. 

We use it to evaluate each loan. We have people doing the evaluation of each loan and use BPM to accelerate the process by having metrics between tracking points. We are use validation on the screens to avoid errors. 

We are also using ODM and Avast Enterprise Business services. 

• It controls the risk. 
• We reduced the PCL (credit losses).
• Its efficiency in reducing costs. 
• We are going from a paper to a paperless process.

In the future, we would like to reduce the resources used to manage the process. 

Controlling the operation. We have metrics about fraud, risks, etc. 

We like that it does not require a lot of hours to train our people. 

More customization. We like to customize the screens to show more things related to our company. Customization is very important for us; the complexity to build a solution. We need to make changes quickly, and sometimes the IBM team is very slow with the product evolution or changes to the tool. 

It is performing very well. We are building the solution right now and launching in August.

We are moving to this tool because we have more than 40,000 transactions a month, and we would like to triple this amount. 

Our next step is to scale and change the repayment process.

The technical support is very good. We are with an IBM partner.

We contact technical support because sometimes we have problems with our IBM servers failing. The support is always responsive in fixing the issue.

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup was complex. It is not always easy to launch a new platform and it needed better coordination with IBM.

We worked with a business partner to implement the solution. We worked with a business partner because they know how to implement solutions in each market. I am from Latin America, and this partner knows our market. Four years ago, I worked with IBM New York and it was difficult to apply these market solutions in Latin American. However, with this partner, they are aware of our market in Peru. 

Start with a PoC. Do small changes, then take a step back and grow with the platform.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Experience, teamwork, and resolution, because any project has its complications. We want a partner who will resolve these problems quickly. 

We use it for human resources and insurance companies, who use it for their recruitment processes. It has been performing well.

Our clients use it for recruitment. There is a big recruitment process for each department. When they recruit somebody, the IBM BPM solution has a work process:

• If he is commercial, rent him a car or a phone.

• If he is only technical, there is a process to have a desk or a laptop.

We use BPM in conjunction with IIB, IBM Integration Process.

• It provides value. 
• Reduces time.
• Simplifies processes.
• Names are correct during the recruitment process.

We need process monitoring. It is somewhat complex to monitor all the processes which work.

Stability is perfect.

Scalability is perfect.

We have not used IBM technical support.

Our clients were previously using Excel sheets for processes. It has changed their whole life as now the processes are all automated.

It is easier than WPS, which used to be the BPM product. IBM BPM is easier to implement, easier to deploy, and easier for the business people in the company to use the processes. 

We implement the solution on behalf of our clients.

Previously, there were human errors when they entered names. Sometimes, when they ordered a laptop for somebody, they ordered it two times because the first time the system did not acknowledge the order under the incorrect name. Then, they did not know it when through and received two laptops. They ended up having to return one of them, and this had a cost. 

This is why the product's ROI is so quick. 

We help our clients select three products, then afterwards we work with them to select a solution. Other than IBM, our clients often choose Bonitasoft, which is an open source product, and TIBCO BPM.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• A proof of concept
• Our certification of IBM products
• Our added value on these solutions
• Other customers' recommendations.

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.