IBM Business Automation Workflow Reviews

The use case is a wide range of things. We have implemented it from standard claims automation to getting your video from the studio to air, removing it from Netflix and things of that nature. Anytime there are business processes, business rules, and you need distinguishing workflows between users, that's where the DBA platform accelerates.

As a partner, we do a lot of finance and healthcare industry. We support the entire back office operations for a $111 billion brokerage. Anything from IRA contributions to distributions to money transfers to wires. Anything like that is all done by DBA.

IBM has spent a lot of time on the connections between the rules engine and its other product, the core BPM platform. They've really centralized the suite as one offering now. That's something that should have been done a while ago but is something that's a real big game-changer for them.

It is the only product that includes capture content management and a process suite, as well as rules in RPA.

The main areas which need improvement are specifically around reporting and analytics. The analytics suite is limited in this regard. I know they're working on something, but it's still a ways away. I'm waiting to see what they come out with on that.

The product is extremely stable. Obviously, there is always performance tuning and things that happen over time. Usually, if there is any major issue, it's usually the database's fault, but the impact of it is that your product goes down. You have to monitor the database and that is the area which people often forget to do.

It's scalable. Right now we're running 10 million transactions a day.

I work closely with the support team. There are varying levels of quality of support between Level 1 and Level 2. 

Once you've worked with support and know how to build a package of what they're looking for, it's very quick and easy. It's more about making sure that you have the package ready: All the logs and the other things which are important. If you don't have the package, you're going to spin your wheels for a bit.

Over the years, the setup has become straightforward. Back in the day, it was complex. With the move to containerization, it will become a lot more straightforward. You're just going to be spinning up containers.

I rate it at nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement. I've used the product for many years now so I appreciate the power of the tool.

We are working in the banking industry. The bank has a data lake and they make use of the dashboards and reporting to access and work with their data.

The ability to connect between BAW processes and robotic processes is very useful.

The UA features in the framework are very good. It promotes reusability, which is an advantage for us.

The dashboards are helpful because you can display reports directly on your screen.

We are having a problem because we want to migrate to the cloud, but it necessitates using the Red Hat OpenShift platform.

Sometimes, we feel like we are not getting the full features of the content management capabilities. We find that some of the small players like NewGen and Documentum are doing a better job at this.

It is difficult to integrate with FileNet. It is already bundled and they are now using automatic integration, but it is lacking in usability.

We want something that is more platform-independent. For example, using the scanner application, we have to use a thick client. Even though we have a content analyzer, in some cases, we first scan with a thick client and then replace it with a thin client.

I have been working with IBM BPM systems for the past 20 years.

This is a scalable product.

The technical support is very good. We're getting on-time responses to all of our queries. We are working with the Middle East support team.

I have worked with different BPM products over the past 20 years and I find that IBM BAW has become a very mature one. It works very well compared to competing solutions.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it to manage our client's business processes. This process is related to insurance claims, particularly for situations like house damage, accidents, or loss. When a policyholder files a claim, a person uses a mobile device to collect all the necessary information. Once all the data is gathered, it triggers a series of backend processes. Recently, one of our clients provided us with a workflow that needs to be implemented in both Business Automation Workflow and Business Automation Manager to estimate the project's scope and requirements.

Its interface is well-designed and user-friendly. Often, when you initiate an action, you get a pop-up notification that appears on the screen. The issue with this is that it's disruptive and can interrupt your workflow. You have to either close it or wait for it to disappear before you can proceed to the next step. This can be quite frustrating, especially if these notifications keep coming up frequently. As an IT user, it's important for me that the interface doesn't constantly disrupt my work with a barrage of pop-ups.

One significant challenge is the lack of accessible forums or resources to seek help or information when problems arise. This can indeed slow down the learning process and add to the time required for mastering the tool.

I have been working with it for the last three months.

I would rate the stability capabilities nine out of ten.

I would rate its scalability abilities eight out of ten.

I recall posting something on their support platform, but it was a bit frustrating because I had to wait for the next day to receive a response due to the time zone difference. This delay felt like it was wasting my time. I would rate it seven out of ten.

Neutral

Setting up is relatively straightforward, with a clear and simple installation process.

While it can be quite costly, it offers significant benefits for users. It excels in terms of features, functionality, and handling of various tasks, making it a valuable asset for improving efficiency and productivity. I would rate it seven out of ten.

Implementing IBM Automation Workflow has the potential to significantly enhance business operations by reducing game time and increasing post-automation efficiency. This includes the ability to generate reports for analyzing and optimizing processes. In the long term, it's a seamless investment that can lead to substantial savings in terms of both time and money and this improvement will result in increased customer satisfaction, making it a valuable choice for businesses. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We are IBM partners and I'm an enterprise architect.

This product is tightly integrated with the RPA automation process which has a lot of good features. They have recently made some enhancements and added new features. 

There are several areas where improvements could be made including with engagement of OCR capabilities. We currently need to write a lot of customization code and I think if that could be reduced it would improve performance. A similar solution like Pega doesn't require that level of code writing.  

I've been using this solution for 11 years. 

The solution is stable. IBM leads when it comes to automation.

The customer service is very good, we're happy with it. 

Compare to other solutions, the licensing costs are reasonable. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use the solution to manage process workflow. We use it for document exchange, transfer, review, and authorization. We use it mostly for document management. Most of our business and document management processes are automated.

The product is suitable for knowledge management processes. I am satisfied with the product.

The monitoring features must be improved. The knowledge management features can also be improved.

I have been using the solution for over five years.

The product is scalable.

I will recommend the tool to others depending on their needs.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is to underwrite workflow.

We are using the IBM Automation Platform for Digital Business to do paperless movement of underwriting files. So far, it has been good. We haven't done as many things as they are talking about with AI at the IBM conference, and I'm excited to try some of those things out.

We are using ODM, BPM, ECM, and BAW from the IBM portfolio.

We use automation to process documents, bringing the email directly into the process workflow for underwriting. We plan to expand our use of automation in our organization. We want to be able to read the forms for ACORD documents, or different other type of underwriting intake, automatically and not need to have any human processing interaction.

It helps in a lot of ways. We have moved it from just underwriting workflows to expanding it to document process automation. We have also used it as a service. The process engine itself is a service instead of just a UI, so there are a couple of other groups in our company who have been using it to facilitate their workflow process instead of just writing their own process solution or buying another one.

The solution has helped with decision-making in our organization. E.g., the processing department and some of our underwriting divisions are able to quickly create views, then their processors can very quickly decide what type of work we will do today. This can be controlled by management instead of by email.

It gives us the ability to create toolkits and use them across many different applications. It allows us to write things one time, instead of having to write a diary for every single different application. We can write at once and reuse it.

The workflow of BAW's automation is handled inside of BPM, so we can see what state it is at and how things are processing through.

I am not that excited about the move to using BPM on the web. I like the thick client, because it seems a bit faster. However, I haven't put a timer to it.

Previously, we wrote our own case management solutions, because they weren't there yet. Therefore, I am excited to see what we can do with the new case management tools inside of BAW. However, we haven't used them yet.

We would like to use machine learning to drive rules in ODM. The complexity of the rules that we can write for it is not quite what we want yet.

Technically, it does everything I want it to do. However, the development UI is sometimes a little slow.

The speed of response could use improvement.

The stability is fine. I have not seen any examples of an unstable BAW.

The scalability is wonderful. We have had no trouble with that at all.

We don't have any big issues with technical support. It is never fast enough nor quick enough. You never get to the smart guys fast enough, but that is just normal. I guess I'm satisfied with it.

Our previous solution, AquaLogic BPM, got to end of life and was bought by Oracle. Then, they changed a bunch of things in it, and we didn't like it

The straightforwardness of the initial setup was the one of the reasons that we ended up purchasing IBM BPM.

On our first proof of concept, we did use a consultant.

It has increased productivity on the development side. We have been able to move applications from thought to production quicker.

The solution saves time in development, as well as with time to deploy.

It has been able to reduce operating costs.

We looked at Oracle, Appian, and Pega.

The reason that we went with IBM was because they offered more of a developer-centric model instead of a configuration-centric model.

Don't choose a product until you've actually tried to build a simple workflow by yourself.

Our business users have fairly good usability. The Salient team wrote the SparkUI components, that we use, which allow us to really create a better user experience.

We found that a lot of our processes were very similar, then we were able to generalize them in a way that we didn't expect.

The integration process is fair and normal.

I did the tech track for the first session, then the business level track for the second. The thing that I learned in the tech track was they talked about these things called emitters: this idea of data admission. So, I'm excited to try to use the dashboards that they were talking about. 

We are in the initial stages and using general approvals in the office within the departments that move through this system.

It's a flexible solution.

I feel that the features are not user-friendly. For small things, we contact the consultants.

There should be some reporting feature for data access, as well as easy dashboards. 

There are third-party reporting features available, and IBM's own reporting features, but they are much more expensive.

In the next release, they should have a good dashboard.

We have been working with IBM Business Automation Workflow for two years.

We are using the latest version.

It is a stable product. We have not had any issues.

We are still in the initial phases and not that many people are using it. We have not faced any issues with scalability.

We have between 30 to 50 users in our organization. We plan to continue using this solution.

We are trying to roll-out company-wide with the next couple of years and move towards IBM Business Automation.

Currently, we have a contract with the consultant and we do not need support from the vendor.

Previously, we did not use another solution. Most of what was used were manual.

We have a small team of three to four in-house and the consultant has a team of four to five.

The installation was done through a consultant.

There are licensing fees.

When you compare with Laserfiche and M-Files, IBM is expensive.

We being a government organization, our options are to select the product to open bidding. 

At this time this product is being rolled out in the initial phase of implementation with the intention of going company-wide. So at this point, it's too early to switch to some other product.

This is a product that I would recommend to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate IBM Business Automation Workflow a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for business process management.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the fact it is highly configurable. We can do configurations very easily. 

You can do customizations very easily and because of this, it is highly flexible. 

The setup is very easy.

The UI of the solution is not good. They should work to update the solution and make it better and fresher.

They should consider adding robotics.

There should be a move to integrate the solution with RPA.

I've been using the solution for five years.

The level of stability varied at first. Initially, we had issues in terms of setup and things like that. Now, as time has passed, I believe it has improved. 

We might have had issues because of a lack of knowledge on our part.

From the second year on, we haven't faced any issues with stability. We now consider it to be quite stable. 

The level of scalability a company can achieve depends on what version they have.

Depending on the version, users can do horizontal or vertical scaling.

We haven't had any problems with scaling so far in our organization.

We have about 3,000+ users on the solution currently.

When we have any issues, we raise a ticket with support. However, I don't recollect raising a new ticket with IBM in the past 24 months now at least. We don't have too much contact with them.

We found the initial setup to be very straightforward.

The first deployment took about three to four weeks.

We handled the implementation ourselves, in house.

It's very difficult to quantify a return on investment in the entire class form. What we do is we take a process and then we look at implementing the process for the entire platform.

There's just a standard licensing fee. There aren't additional hidden costs to worry about. For example, a company wouldn't need to pay extra for access to technical support.

The solution is like a chart on the overall operations of our organization. We use it every day. It's a part of our processes. It's used every minute.

A company that is considering implementing it must make sure they have people on staff that have the right skill sets from day one to manage the solution. I would suggest if there isn't someone well versed in IBM, that someone gets training before the implementation process.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.