SAP Signavio Process Manager Reviews

I'm a management consultant, and I'm working with an IT-managed service business that is trying to trend well. They're trying to change the way they operate so that they can scale their PE-backed business. They want to grow a lot faster than they're growing.

Typically, that sort of business, they started saying, "We need new systems." As soon as you get involved with helping and say, "What's processes are you trying to execute on these systems?" You immediately get into the use case of, "You don't have an operating model." If you don't have an operating model, you're never going to scale.

I'm helping that business on the journey to establishing an operating model and a set of processes This means that the systems that they want to implement will actually support the processes and allow them to deliver value to their clients. In the end, my use case is a pretty basic process mapping.

The most valuable feature for me is usability. I have experience in managing and growing businesses, operating models that were built for me, and have also built them myself on Microsoft Visio and other tools. They have been horrible, static, unused, impossible to maintain, and inaccessible tools. Now, as an independent consultant, usability is important to me.

It is very easy to implement BPMN using this tool.

The Collaboration Hub is a big thing. 

If you're going to use the tool the way I'm using it, which is to work with businesses and capture what they're thinking, it would be helpful to be able to insert other objects onto a diagram. At the moment, there are the different symbols you can use with different features of BPMN, but if I wanted to cut and paste a slide or some images to help us show them, "This is what you gave me. This is how I've changed it into this," you can't do that. You can't superimpose images or other things into their graphic. I understand that it works well as a best practice for capturing a process, but as a communication tool, that would help.

I have been using Signavio for about four months.

My client currently uses Visio, but it's not available to everybody.

My client purchased one editor license and the Collaboration Hub, which covers up to a hundred people.

I just did a classic Google search. "What's out there in the market?" I looked at three or four, maybe five tools in the classic, "Have a quick look, see what it says." If there's a free version, let's download it, play with it. If within half an hour I'm not going anywhere, bin it. Next.

I think that I did that with Nintext Workflow and just compared it to Signavio. Within half an hour I could use it. It's a powerful editor that very simply allows you to capture stuff if you know BPMN, the business process model notation. I knew a bit about it. It's very easy to follow and it's easy to implement in the tool.

When I ran a business with three hundred and fifty people in it, we had a horrible, static, slightly-linked HTML site that was our process model. Nobody used it. With the Collaboration Hub, the ability for people to give feedback and comment is a powerful tool. A process is only as good as how much it's used, and Signavio gives you the ability to do that.

This is a very accessible and very quick-to-learn tool. In this day and age, anything that's quick to learn is far more likely to be of use than things that are difficult to learn.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

In our company right now, we focus on process documentation in order to build a base for future process improvement and potential automation. We use the Signavio Process Manager to design the processes and publish them on the Collaboration Hub.

This adds to the transparency of the business since all employees have access to the Collaboration Hub and see the documented processes as visualized models. This transparency is fostering the collaboration between business units by reducing silo thinking and thus enabling continuous process improvement.

Signavio enabled us to identify a lot of new processes that could be improved. We removed a bottleneck by mapping the process and using the intelligence module, in order to identify where it was redundant. We then removed parts of the process to make it leaner.

Another example is on the compliance side, where Signavio helped us identify that we did not check all checkpoints in the process so we could be leaner and even more compliant. 

Also, we have improved the HR processes a lot.

There are many valuable features, of course.

I would say the main value of Signavio is to have your current process map in a way that is easy to read and derive optimization actions to make it leaner, faster, more user-friendly, etc.

In my opinion, the most valuable feature is the editor and its ease of use, and when people are looking at it, they can make comments about changes that need to be made. This is really valuable because when a process is not documented, people can be talking about two different things and arguing about them without knowing what the other one means.

More Machine Learning and data algorithms for predictions could be involved in order to get a better understanding of the whole structure and tool.

It could be more flexible from a customization point of view, where the user is able to display only whatever he needs. More flexibility in the visualization, especially on the main page of the Collaboration Hub, would make it easier.

I would like it to show cycles and other things, rather than just boxes and arrows, in a more creative way.

We primarily use Signavio for global process documentation, process discussions, and process management (process owners).

We are running Signavio on IaaS (our own cloud) and Signavio Names is on-premises.

We also use the Signavio Dictionary function as a glossary of our business terms, and to manage the process roles. As we have more than 25 offices around the world and selling in more than 55 countries, we can not map functional roles on the Swim lanes chart. This would not work.

The process roles feature is crucial for us, as this is the way the people know what they do.

If you talk about what BPM has done to your organisation, then I would more see this as the refined question to ask.

The most important thing is to understand is that it is not about Signavio. Rather, it is about managing your processes and having process managers (process owners), with the goal of improving your processes.

It is crucial to use a BPMN capable software like Signavio, but you need a process automation engine to improve your processes, and this is what Signavio is missing! The effective workflow can not even reuse the BPMN diagram.

But to answer the question, Signavio has helped our organisation in the following ways:

We started with having 250 processes documented when we used Signavio, whereas now we have about 1,600 processes (global standards in production) and more than 8,000 processes in the system (this is like a knowledge base).

The easy-to-use Signavio has significantly helped us to climb to maturity, but we are using other tools to automate our processes. We are importing the Signavio processes and automate them using the automation tools.

This is what we use and find most valuable:

• Quick modeler; as the process interview can be done by everyone. The Gateway is missing, which is a shame because others have this feature.
• Signavio modeler; this is our bread and butter functionality, although it is missing process variants, localisations, and no "To Be" process management.
• Dictionary; this is an extremely powerful function that helps us to understand who does what, system and data usage, capability, and Business Term Management.
• Collaboration Hub; we name it the Zespri process Portal. It is the one place to go, and a single source of information of truth.
• Process management/Process governance is what we think Signavio is very good at.

It is missing workflow functions. The actor's email is stored in maps, which makes it unusable.

The reporting is too slow and there is a limit of 250 processes. There are not many reports available.

The governance report is only available on the dashboard.

There is no metadata and everything is on a map level. Process owners have to be entered into a single map!

There is no functionality for variants of processes.

There is no "To Be" process functionality. We have established a time-consuming workaround.

The copy function is only a one to one process if you like to keep your revisions/versions. Folders cannot be copied.

The number of bugs has increased a lot and it is still rising.

I have been using Signavio for more than five years.

Daily stability is ok. Mass uploads of processes and dictionary items will break the system, and process uploads are not managed properly. Some imports will complete only halfway or not at all.

We have 280 modelers and more than 8,000 Process Maps (As Is and To Be).

I guess we are a very heavy user because, for the past six months, we have reached our limit.

Customer service/support was great in the beginning but is now extremely poor.

You can feel that Signavio does not like on-premises any longer, as they try to push everyone onto the cloud-based SaaS.

If you are experienced then it is really straightforward.

Everything in-house for the application level and we used our service provider for implementing the IaaS component.

SaaS has no setup cost, just licensing fees.

We have looked at more than 100 other solutions, and Signavio was selected because of its ease of use and the portal. We had an enterprise workflow solution, but the workflow was not that important.

For data mining and process intelligence, there is a lot of software out there that is better and cheaper.

We prefer to have an on-premises solution, as we can choose what version we are using. With more and more bugs showing up, that is a big benefit.

Overall, this is a good solution, but process automation is missing. This is what drives real improvement. Be careful about their sales promises and create a SLA if there are lots of people using it. We have some bugs that have been hanging for more than nine months.

Also, we believe that there are lots of process mining companies out there.

My advice is to check out what the product offers, see what fits your needs, and see what the prices are.

I compare Signavio with an amazing car that has very comfy seats but no motor under the hood. That seems harsh, but think about it: the power is the automation, as this delivers value by minimizing risk, saving costs, executing faster, and improving precision.

In summary, Signavio has helped us a lot in terms of becoming process-centric, but it is not enough and you need other tools. Most importantly, have a BPM methodology in place. We use BPTrends with help from Roger Tregear.

We are using Signavio Process Manager to model our end-to-end processes from the customer needs to customer success. Our strategic aim is to digitalize all of our processes.

This solution is easy to use and that has helped with its adoption in the company. The Collaboration Hub makes it easy to read the processes. It's comfortable to include a lot of information about processes and tasks.

Signavio has a lot of functionality to help us manage and develop our organization. Transparency has been added so the employees are better able to understand how the company runs, and how our processes work. We are also taking our manual tasks and automating them. We now how a process landscape that is simple to see and gives us the ability to digitalize our work.

Signavio gives everybody in our company what they need. It's simple and a great advantage.

Using this solution has helped to create a process-centric mindset in parts of our company. It is not used everywhere.

This solution is innovative and simple to use.

I would like to see more integration with the process manager in terms of the workflow accelerator.

This is a very stable solution. Sometimes it is a little bit slow, but most of the time, it's good.

Scalability is good. It's not a problem because it's in the public cloud.

The Signavio technical support is excellent.

Prior to implementing Signavio, we had different solutions being used throughout the company. There was nothing that was centralized. We chose to go with this solution because it's innovative, intuitive, and it's so simple to use.

The initial setup was very easy. 

We had help with the initial setup directly from Signavio.

It is difficult to say what we have realized in terms of cost improvements, but I can say that using this solution has saved us time.

We looked at other solutions including ARIS, ADONIS, and another German solution.

One of the big advantages of Signavio is that they strive for customer excellence.

We are not yet using the process mining functionality because we are still in the process modeling stage of development. 

We do not yet use the process intelligence function, but we would like to. It is part of our vision for the future.

My advice for anybody who is researching this type of solution is to look for user experience. It is important to have collaboration functions that are simple so that all of the employees can understand what you are doing.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have just begun to fill in the Signavio platform with single processes and are trying to combine them. We do not have a specific business scenario. Rather, we are trying to bring in all of the processes from our other platform.

At the moment, we are working from our headquarters on ARIS, but this no longer works for our business.

Signavio is so easy to learn that you can start with easy steps, easy processes, and easy designing. During the exchange concerning the processes and how they should be combined, you learn about the modeling. You do not need much support from Signavio.

What I like most about Signavio is the ease of use. A couple of team members received training from Signavio for two days, and now with this training, these people are training other colleagues within our company. 

The GUI is very easy to use, where you can sit together with your colleagues, discuss the process, and during these discussions you can build up the model.

The linking machine is very good. You can link everything that you would like to have. As soon as you have a URL, you can link it to Signavio. 

I would like to have the option to select the color of items and subgroups in the glossary because right now it is fixed. This is something that is really annoying for me. For example, roads are red, and red is a color for danger. I would prefer to choose my own color.

We would like to see support for using languages other than English because we use this platform in Poland, China, and Germany. Having to work in English is ok, but not everybody speaks it.

We have been using Signavio Process Manager for less than one year.

This is a reliable solution for the most part, although sometimes we see some delays when you pick a process. We don't know if the delay is being caused by the connection or the server at Signavio. Either way, the problem is not bad enough to affect our company. Even our implementation in China is working well, with our Chinese colleagues working on the same platform that we do.

We have been in contact with technical support, four or five times. We have had quick responses and the answer was always good. We have been able to use the answer and continue our work.

Sometimes we have a request to make improvements in the software itself but the service team can only handle features that are in the software already. For the items that they can handle, the response has always been quick.

One thing that is really good is that we do not need much technical support. 

We are in a transitionary stage, coming from ARIS, which no longer works for us.

We have more than a hundred processes in the write-up stage and thirteen in production. One of our issues is that our colleagues need more confidence in using this solution and publishing software. It is a cultural issue in our company as opposed to something with Signavio's software.

Overall, we are really happy with this product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have created a process house in our company and are defining thirteen end-to-end processes. We created process teams to create the end-to-end processes and we define process owners for each of these. After this, we meet for support workshops to build level three processes in Signavio and link them to each other. We also create end-to-end-to-end processes, because sometimes business processes jump from one end-to-end process to the next, to the next, and then back to the first.

This solution is also used to define the communication between the different departments and erase silo thinking. We publish processes in our intranet and we use the Collaboration Hub that every employee has access to. Each person can use it as a Help Tool to find out the right way that things should be done, who they need to speak with, and who they can get information from.

Signavio has helped us bring transparency to the processes within our company. We can get feedback on processes, and importantly, we get people to talk about them. Before this, they just thought in silos. Now, people think about what happens before and after their process and consider who else cares when something is changed.

With respect to improving our employees' functions, we do have processes where we have to collaborate with externals. This solution allows us to define processes and let the externals know what they should do with them. It makes it simpler to tell them what we expect, in terms of service. The only problem right now is that we have to print out the process and send it to them. We could give them our comment links, but we don't really want to do this. If Signavio would create something like an external collaboration tool then it would definitely help us to communicate with externals about our processes in terms of what we need and what we expect from them.

We don't use the process mining functionality yet. I intend to use it in a few years, maybe in a few months, depending on how quick we are. Currently, we are at a very early stage of process management in our company. We first have to define our processes and understand how we currently work before we can think about process mining. It makes sense to know what to do before automation, and definitely, process mining and RPA are really interesting topics and relevant for the future.

This solution does not yet help us with improving the process lifecycle. We are searching for a workflow tool at the moment and I know there's a workflow solution from Signavio but this doesn't fit currently to us. We need integration with a document management system and this not part of the Signavio solution. An option for document management would really help us because a lot of processes within our company are based on documents and document flows. As it is now, it's more valuable for us to find a document management solution with workflow integration, compare to using the workflow tool in Signavio with just the Windows Explorer.

In terms of creating a process-centric mindset within the organization, it has helped for some parts. We are still working on this and it is one of our biggest tasks within the next year to get everything online for the digital transformation. We still have some old school people in our company who would rather see this take place in twenty years, but our priority is to adapt in order to stay competitive.

The most valuable feature is the editor and its ease of use. I do a lot of live editing in meetings and I do workshops with the people. As they tell me things about a process and I am doing live modeling, they sometimes say it is like magic. When people are looking at it, they can make comments about changes that need to be made. This is really valuable because when a process is not documented, people can be talking about two different things and arguing about them without knowing what the other one means.

The ability to leave comments in the Collaboration Hub is a good and easy way for the employees to give feedback on the processes. This means that they can improve their own processes because it gives them the opportunity to look at them, and think about other ways that they can be done. They do not have to pick up the telephone and call the modelers.

Signavio Process Manager needs to have an integrated document management system to better work with processes that rely heavily on documents and document flows.

If Signavio would create something like an external collaboration tool then it would definitely help us to communicate with externals about our processes in terms of what we need and what we expect from them.

I would like to see the capability for replies to comments within the collaboration hub, as opposed to only a series of comments that may or may not be related. That would be great.

We have been using this solution for less than one year.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. However, once last year, I had to present this solution to our CEO and it wasn't working. That was not good, but it was the only time when it wasn't working.

I think that this is a scalable solution.

We have about one hundred employees in our company and we have two modeling licenses. The rest of the people don't model, but they use the Collaboration Hub to give feedback.

I worked in another company before this one that was also using Signavio, and they are much larger. It worked perfectly there and they have between twenty and thirty thousand people.

The Signavio technical support is always great. I have had contact with them two or three times and the problems have always been resolved within a few hours.

When I started with this company they were using ADONIS, although it was not the current version. It was quite old and nobody supported it. I was already familiar with Signavio and I suggested that we need it, rather than continue with what they already had.

I deployed this solution because I was familiar with it from my previous company.

Unfortunately, we have no measurable ROI yet. I think that there is some, but I couldn't present it to management at this point.

I had a look at ADONIS and from the first impression with a live demo, it was no as simple to model processes as Signavio, which is the main thing that I need in my workshops.

This solution makes it easy to model and has good collaboration capabilities. For us, it is perfect. My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to try the free, thirty-day trial and see if they like it. If so, then go with them.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

SAP Signavio Process Manager is very responsive. 

The tool's navigation could be improved. 

I have been working with the solution for a couple of months. 

SAP Signavio Process Manager is stable. 

The tool is scalable and my company has 15 users for SAP Signavio Process Manager. 

We have one to two people involved in the product's maintenance. 

I would rate SAP Signavio Process Manager an eight out of ten. 

We use Signavio for process modeling, design, and analysis.

The most valuable feature is usability.

The biggest benefit of using this business transformation suite is the combination of all of the modules. There are many components like process intelligence, modeling, designing, and presentation.

The licensing model could be better.

I have been using the Signavio Process Manager for many years. In this company, I have used it for two years and in other companies, I have used it for between three and five.

This is a very scalable solution. Since it is cloud-based, you just have to deploy the link that gives access to it. We use it in 18 different locations in Switzerland and it is no problem to deploy it anywhere, at any location.

We have about 13,000 users.

We are very happy with the technical support. They are fast and the team is competent.

This is a SaaS solution and it was easy to set up.

Signavio has a customer board that has input with respect to future feature developments. This is something that helps move the product forward.

This is one of the best solutions and it is easy to implement. When you are deploying to more than 10,000 users, the usability has to be very high. We are happy with the product and I would definitely recommend it.

That said, I think that the licensing could be improved.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.