ARIS BPA Reviews

We are trying to define our business processes with ARIS BPA. We're just beginning the project, so we can't assess all the current features. We are using ARIS on-prem, not ARIS Cloud.

We chose ARIS because of its good reputation and familiarity with Software AG Tools.

Improvement should be made as per customer requirements.

I have been using ARIS BPA for the past six months.

We haven't had any stability issues with ARIS BPA.

The support from ARIS has been complete and helpful. The vendor's contact center is quick and efficient; we can work well together.

We can easily deploy the application and process. It's user-friendly. It took about one month to deploy the application and design the process.

The vendor provided a consultant, which was helpful.

Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.

We researched and compared other tools, including IBM, but ARIS fit our requirements better.

I don't use AI-driven processes with ARIS BPA yet because our metrics level is too low.

 It is an easily implementable solution, the design process is nice and easy, and it's quick to learn. I would recommend this tool to others.

Overall, I would rate this tool a nine out of ten. It's not a ten because no tool is perfect.

My experience with the product was great. The tool has good navigation.

The tool must provide more documents. If someone gets stuck while using the product, the documents will help them to deal with issues.

I am learning the solution currently.

The tool is stable.

The support team resolved my issues. I rate the support a seven and a half or eight out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. The solution is deployed on the cloud. It took us a few days to deploy it.

The product is a bit pricey.

ARIS BPA is my first BPA solution. I heard about it and thought to start working with it. I saw some YouTube videos and gathered some knowledge about it. It was a great experience. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Over the years I have used ARIS in many ways depending on the project, and I have experience with many different versions of it. I've used versions seven, eight, and now ten. About ten years ago, I worked on developing ARIS and its standardization for six months.
When I first started using it, I used to build a center of excellence for a global project. We used it to document the expansion process of our company to the global market. There were a lot of Visio files and it was quite disorganized since anyone could edit the files however they would like. We tried to turn the Visio files into something more formal. For a year, we used a low-end tool to document the process. With ARIS, we documented around 2,000 processes. We used it to organize and create a publishment where people could find what they're looking for.

I like everything about ARIS BPA. I've used it for a long time and I think it's a fantastic tool. There is a list of things ARIS has that other solutions do not have.

The solution does not have an efficient way to track employees' work. It shows who worked on something last, but that overwrites the history of changes in a way. It is supposed to provide information on team activity, but it does not do that. The creators of the solution elaborated in great detail on quality control and thought about every possibility, but they didn't make that useful and simple to use. The overhead maintenance is good.

I have been using ARIS BPA since 2010. 

The solution is very scalable. A ten out of ten. There is nothing even remotely close to it on the market. 

ARIS BPA is an extremely stable solution.

ARIS' technical support team is great.

Positive

Many years ago, we used BusinessOptix at our company. 

The initial setup of ARIS BPA is simple. When we first started using it, it was deployed on-premises. The latest version was deployed on cloud and it only takes a few days. It promises to teach you how to do that, but that is not very helpful since your company's team and organization need to be suitable for this kind of complexity. It's web-based, but there are technical limits to what you can do with it. In a way, it encourages you to purchase more and more if you want to maximize its usability. It does not teach you how to use it and it's very formal. Although ARIS is a fantastic tool, it would be better if it was focused on the customer's success. It requires a lot of maintenance.

ARIS BPA is extremely expensive and the training time for it is extensive.

I had a hard time with ARIS' access and licensing policy. It requires you to pay for each step you want to take forward with the solution. To get the documentation, you need to be an administrator. If you want the license to read the documentation of the process, you need to be some kind of administrator/support account, but you will need to pay for the support. Even if I'm qualified they will not provide me with the documentation. Instead, they will ask you to print it out and send the request to them. I had to wait two months to get the account and six months to get the contract. All of that is extremely time-consuming.

I have seen how MEGA works and it is definitely more user-friendly than ARIS.

The requirements are extremely high and it takes a skilled professional to use it properly. Whether it's a big or a small company, it has to be used by someone who is familiar with its complexity. You should be aware before purchasing the solution that it is not simple to use and it takes time to learn. ARIS' free tool is much easier to use. I work in Germany, but I think they made ARIS less complex in other countries.

When it comes to ARIS BPA as a tool, I would rate it a solid ten out of ten. It's a fantastic tool, but it is not easy to achieve results with it. The chances of producing what is promised by the vendor are zero.

We are modeling different processes and documenting all of them using the solution.

It's a really nice and user-friendly tool, and we can extract different reports from it. We have had different processes modeling and everything done with the solution. With the solution, we were using it for documenting, and then now we are updating all of these. So it's been great software for everyone.

We would have appreciated it if the company who has sold the software could show us how we can create our own reports, apart from showing us how to extract different SOPs and run our own scripts. So that would have been helpful for us.

An area where it lacks and can be considered for improvement in the future is if we can somehow automate or learn how we can automate different processes. So, it's like The processes in which we initiate a request, and we can follow where the request is and how the workflow management is being done in different software. So if you can somehow learn how we can do it, it will be great.

I have been using ARIS BPA for two years. I am a user of the solution. I don't remember the version.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten.

My designers are very few in number, but there are a lot of users. Also, we have a lot of viewers. We have around 10 designers and more than 2,000 viewers. We frequently use the solution in our company.

The support for the solution is good. I rate the support a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, I used Microsoft Visio for process mapping.

The solution is easy to install. It wasn't hours but maybe days to do the deployment, but it was done swiftly. It wasn't an issue.

I don't remember how many days it took to deploy. But currently, we have multiple designer licenses. So now the deployment doesn't take long. We can use it. Also, I wasn't involved in the installation process.

If we get stuck with the installation part, we request the provider company to let us know how to proceed.

I can't speak about pricing because I was not involved during the installation days.

It's a great system for viewing, modeling, and everything, extracting different kinds of reports. So the only thing is that the users must understand how different reports can be extracted. What are the different attributes or the fields, what is their purpose, and learn how analysis can be done. So we need to do the aforementioned things, and overall it is great software.

On a scale from one to ten, one is worse, and ten is the best, I rate the overall solution a ten.

We have three main use cases. The first is that ARIS is our central repository to document our standards, meaning our business processes, our organization, our data, and our IT capability landscape. 

The second use case is to manage our application landscape. We have all the applications that we use inventoried in ARIS, about 3,000 of them. It's used to manage all the information related to those applications, such as where an application is used, how many users there are, what the current version is, as well as the contracts connected with this application and who the product or solution owners are.

The third use case is process mining. We are using ARIS to reconstruct a process as it has been effectively executed and to automatically calculate some key performance indicators.

In my previous company, we used ARIS to document local processes in different countries. It helped us to identify what were the main differences in terms of processes, identify best practices, and give visibility to everyone in the company into what those best practices are.

ARIS gives us a place where we can have a single source of truth. Instead of having business processes documented in different software, in Word or in PowerPoint, and described in different ways, ARIS provides a framework and a central repository where we can find that single source of truth. It gives us a consistent content structure for all processes. This is something that is very valuable. In that way, indirectly, it saves us time when looking for that single source of truth.

It's an enterprise application that is used by many people across our organization: the business process owners, the data owners, and the IT owners. And they are enriching the content. It is also used by anyone in the company who wants to look at our standards.

The solution has also provided us with capabilities we didn't know we needed until we had them. One of the functionalities that I really like is the ability to use ARIS for application portfolio management. In addition to our applications, we have also stored, in ARIS, the footprint of where those applications have been implemented. That means we know in which country a given application has been implemented. With embedded geolocation, we have a very visual world map, where we can see the footprint of each application.

Aris BPA is a very comprehensive and intuitive solution. I like the user experience very much, including the user interface. The ARIS platform is really an enterprise solution that eases the collection of all aspects of a company. ARIS has made a huge improvement, in terms of the user experience and intuitiveness. If I compare the very first version that I used in my previous company and the one that we are using now at my current company, there really is a big difference, big changes, and big improvements.

One thing that could be improved is regarding the handling of the content itself. Maybe ARIS could provide a set of best practices, or best processes, so that people do not have to start from scratch.

Another area for improvement is the homepage. Today there is one homepage for everyone. In the future, it would be good to have the ability to design homepages for different populations of users.

I have been using ARIS BPA at my current company for the past 18 months. I used it in my previous company from 2003 through 2016.

It's very stable. We have had no issues with its stability and no complaints.

The solution is unlimited. You can scale it as much as you want. In terms of scope, you can focus only on processes, but after that, you can add data, you can add your organization, and you can add your systems. You can build different views. The scope is unlimited.

It enables you to start small and grow in your use of the solution over time. That is what we are doing and there is no other way. You don't go for a big bang. You start by focusing first on processes, and maybe not on all processes but the most common processes. After that, you grow and add the systems related to these processes. You can then add your data and your organization and, progressively, you enrich the content in the database. Because companies are changing all the time, there are always updates that need to be made in the solution.

We have 25 named users who have the capacity to make changes in the tool, but the application is open to all of our 460,000 employees. Those 25 people are responsible for the maintenance of the solution but that's not a full-time job. Every person who has a designer role in the organization has the ability to make changes in ARIS when needed. It took a bit of time to configure and set up the framework initially. But now that we have done so, it's a matter of enriching the content on a day-to-day basis, when required.

We plan to increase the usage of the tool internally, for sure. We want to have everyone using ARIS, moving forward.

The technical support has been very good. We haven't had any issues with it. We have had great support from the Software AG teams.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex, but it has to be logical. If you want to have all the benefits of the ARIS platform, which is an integrated platform, it's essential to set up all objects properly from the very beginning. If you don't have a clear idea of your target architecture, you may face difficulties in really leveraging ARIS.

While there is a beginning to the deployment, there is no end. We can always enrich ARIS with more and more information, and we can always involve more and more and more people in the tool. The usage of ARIS is unlimited.

The implementation strategy starts with the transformation journey, and we are implementing ARIS to support that journey.

We are leveraging Software AG's resources. The application is intuitive enough to use without external support. Having said that, it's very true that there are very limited resources for ARIS on the market. It's an issue. We are working with integrators on other systems to implement, for example, our ERP, SAP, et cetera. We are asking our integrators to document the processes and the system interfaces in ARIS and they are not trained for that.

There is no return on investment with this kind of solution. There is definitively a huge benefit, but no return on investment, per se. In a large organization, you need to have a reference, and ARIS helps to give us this reference.

The solution has a fair price for the value it delivers.

There are no additional, or even IT costs, beyond the standard fee. After that, there are the labor costs to input and maintain the content in the application, but that's not really a cost related to the application itself. It's the same for any type of software.

I have used many different solutions. In this field, ARIS is probably the best compromise, in terms of coverage and functionality. There are solutions on the market that are probably better than ARIS in certain areas of their scopes. But if we look at the full scope, with all the modules, ARIS is probably the best application that there is on the market.

Before selecting ARIS, we looked at four other solutions, all within the top-five on the market. We concluded that ARIS was the best one.

The biggest lesson I have learned using this solution is that if you want to properly and fully use the capabilities of ARIS, you need to have a very good understanding of the infrastructure that you are targeting.

ARIS is really a toolbox. After that, it really depends on what you want to do with it.

We have used the platform to describe purchases and the organizational structure in the company.

I personally use it at home as well as in the company. I received a key for the application, which I won based on a competition when version 7 of ARIS was being tested. I sent in some test cases where I had several failures during that test.

My organization's market is only in the Czech Republic. We don't have any experience using the solution globally.

I like working with ARIS because I have some experience with it. I understand what is on the forums. I know how the user interface works, how to create a repository, and stand up this tool.

I am an advanced user. ARIS BPM is intuitive for me because I know the UML, BPMN, and EPC methodologies implemented in this tool. It is very easy to create processes for restructuring a company with some descriptions. 

From the start, there were some difficulties on how to create outputs since there wasn't a repository tool in version 6. However, in version 7, there has been a tool for creating standards for a company, and that tool has been very intuitive.

While I have been using this tool for several years, other people just starting to use it find the learning curve steep. This tool is very robust and accommodates many roles, where people can participate from compliance, IT designers, etc. This can create problems for users who have no experience with similar tools. It took me a year before I felt comfortable with this tool, because when I came from university it was the first or second tool that I worked on. It took me a year to run every feature or use it for every possibility since this tool is very robust.

We sometimes have to create the link to the server and the repository twice because it is deleted once for some unknown reason. Though, this is not a big problem.

There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports.

We were using this solution until last year.

Our company had 400 people when we started with ARIS. Now, we have 800 and everything is twice as complicated. It is very hard to see relationships between objects.

I use ARIS Community. When I have some problems, I first go to www.ariscommunity.com. I have an account and can usually find an answer to my problems. I haven't used it for two years, because usually the problems that need to be solved in version 7 of ARIS were during the installation for some servers and linking to other applications. We haven't only used ARIS Architect and Designer as a tool for some information inputs to the repository, but we also have used ARIS Business Publisher to publish the information. When links between the ARIS applications are created, there usually isn't a problem to use ARIS. However, when you install it once every five years, that could be a problem since nobody can figure out how to do it.

This is the best tool. I am from the Czech Republic. When our company bought this tool, there were only two of these tools on the market that had Czech language methodology. Other tools are enterprise architects with only English language. These two tools translated the Czech language not only on user interface, but on the repository. Although other tools now support several languages, ARIS was first almost 14 years ago.

The installation and deployment of this solution were handled by our IT department.

As an insurance company, there are some laws and requirements that we have to follow. We use a third-party integrator to give us some advice on the models to use.

We did see ROI with ARIS version 6. I don't know about version 7.

When a process is created, it can be reused to save time.

10 years ago, we bought two or three licenses for the tools that we wanted with a year of support. After that, version 7 has been working without cost. I don't know the current price of the solution.

Usually, our company buys technical support from the Software AG site. We bought the technical support for the first year of usage for ARIS version 6 and 7. So, when we migrated to ARIS version 7, we bought support only for the first year. Then, we didn't use it the next year. Our experience was that we use it only one to three times during the first year. Therefore, there wasn't much value for us to buy this service because we have no problem with using ARIS after the first year. Usually, we need to buy or use this service only when we install it on our servers. First, we go to ARIS Community, then we go to the support of Software AG. After a year, we find that there is no added value. If we really need it, then it is better to buy it piece by piece, not over a time period.

Because of some organizational changes, our company is discussing changing our platform. There are several new people who have experience with other platforms. 

We use ARIS BPM as a modeling tool and also ARIS Business Publisher. This tool publishes models inside the organization. New employees within the organization have recommended a new platform that doesn't have a tool for publishing process models. We are now discussing the added value of changing the platform. Or, if it would be better for new employees to learn how to work with ARIS. 

Microsoft Visio is a tool without a repository. If you create objects from a different point of view, then you have to create it five times with different names or descriptions. Therefore, people imagine there are five different objects, when in reality, there is one. I can't even imagine the time that we saved using this tool over the past 10 years. 

ARIS is the best tool for business from my perspective. If you buy ARIS, you can do every model for arrays, organizational structure, processes, knowledge, etc. With different tools, the best edition is mainly for IT guys. If you want to use those other tools for business, then you need to buy a special edition for business. ARIS goes from business to technical stuff and other tools go from technical stuff to business. This is the main difference from other solutions that I know are on the market.

I am on the business side, so ARIS is better for me than other tools because we buy IT services for our business models. Our company has no IT department, so we have a partner company that offers us IT services instead. 

We create our process models in both the Czech and English languages. We have a repository in Czech and another in English for some objects. Using both, one model is created. We haven't used translation automation because in the insurance market we use special technical terms and don't believe that automatic translation can translate the way that we can.

A potential user will need to explain to management the added value of this tool. Our management didn't understand the value of this tool. We had problems with the implementation because not all departments wanted to participate in the creation of the solution's models. With only half the company buying into the solution, you will not see the other half of the company. So, the decision needs to be made at the management and company levels to use these tools because there is no added value if only one department wants to use it.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10. 

The core use case is rooted in a non-financial risk program. For people reading who aren't involved in financial services, there are both financial risks within financial institutions making credit and lending decisions and non-financial risks, which are similar to those faced by many enterprises. These are the elements within life which can negatively impact a business that are not related to finance. A really good example is COVID in the last couple of years, which caused fundamental shifts in operating models. Therefore, our program is seeking to address the non-financial risks within our environments, which is being done through initially capturing the processes that power the bank.

At the end of November, we recently completed a migration into the cloud solution provided by Software AG. As a consequence of that, we jumped a number of versions to 10.15.

It is a private cloud SaaS solution provided by Software AG.

We are still in the early stages. We are in year three of the rollout for ARIS with this use case. Although it is still very early on, we are starting to see, as a result of the deployment of ARIS, the building out of end-to-end processes used within the group have much stronger cross-team, cross-divisional collaboration, e.g., it has a very clear, specific focus and outcome. So, there is a purpose to it beyond the theoretical need for people to work together. 

We are starting to see the beginnings of a more robust operational resilience capability within the bank. That will be delivered in stages and phases over the next two years.

We are also beginning to see, across a number of business divisions, a more effective early-stage analysis of business processes. Then, that leads to the optimization of those processes and the removal of customer pain points. Without a shadow of a doubt, right across the business, that is happening.

ARIS by Software AG for the most part is incredibly intuitive at the mapper and business division level. We have had many cases where we work with our colleagues across the bank who have been experiencing using solutions like Visio. Once they have a core understanding of its processes from a visual sense, they can very quickly and intuitively start to use ARIS. As you get more into the complexity of the analysis, reporting, and administration, then that intuitiveness is less obvious. However, that is a case where you receive more training and are undertaking much more complex tasks. As a tool that is used by non-technical colleagues within the business division, the first line within the bank can strongly recommend it.

This solution gives us an easy way to enable visibility for our colleagues across 11 business divisions, and a couple of countries that we work in, on how the bank operates. We are in phase two of a multi-year program to build out those processes. What we are starting to do now is build out end-to-end views. As processes, data, and customer contacts span multiple parts of the bank, we are building out full end-to-end views so colleagues will have visibility across the group.

One of the many advantages of ARIS is that it is supported by a very strong BPM community, which is critical for us. Although Business Process Management has been in business for many years, it is still at an early stage of evolution. There are so many instances where your specific use case or requirement for using ARIS hasn't necessarily been matured across the sector. So, you need access to a very active community to help you explore possible solutions and ways in which ARIS can be used to achieve those use cases.

The areas of ARIS where we see room for improvement are actually related to the background services that support it. Over the last number of years, Software AG has moved from an on-premises solution into deploying a SaaS solution to their enterprise base. That has been really successful from my point of view, as I have been a customer of ARIS, managing the relationship, for a couple years. Certain support functions around the knowledge base, customer service, and the information available on modules within the core ARIS component are lagging behind the SaaS movement. 

Traditionally, enterprise software is sold by sales people pitching to customers individually. Once you move into the SAAS environment, everything becomes more digital, and they haven't yet fully moved into that space.

I have been using this solution for four years within the bank.

We have had no issues with the stability of ARIS in the cloud. We had issues with the stability of ARIS as a hosted solution internally, but that reflects on our capability rather than being a reflection of their software.

We have a COE (Center of Excellence) that both supports the deployment and maintenance of ARIS, and more specifically is part of the non-financial risk and operational resilience team. So, we have a CORE team of about 18, but very few of those are specifically focused on the maintenance and support of the deployment of ARIS. There are only two or three people within that COE team who are required for that task. The wider task is the support of business colleagues through a hub and spoke model. Within the small COE team, we support the acquisition and enhancement of those skill sets within our business division colleagues.

ARIS has very much enabled us to start small and grow with the use of the solution over time. We have adopted the approach, as we roll out ARIS, of taking small pilot proof of concepts and extending them wider across the business. Software AG ARIS has really facilitated that rollout, both in terms of the technical support provided and also the licensing that has been available to us.

This is critical for any enterprise taking on an enterprise-wide BPM program, moving into a business-as-usual (BAU) function, to be able to take it in small steps. I know colleagues across the globe in different enterprises who have done this. They have picked initial areas of small-scale deployment, then extended them over time.

We have something in the region of 100 to 200 users. We are still midway through a wider deployment.

Recently, there was a switch to a new platform that had one or two technical challenges, which seemed to have interrupted it. Any transition to a new support platform is always a bit problematic. Because they haven't yet fully picked back up, I would rate them as seven out of 10.

Broadly speaking, over the last couple of years, the customer support has been really good.

Neutral

ARIS is the first time that the bank has deployed an enterprise-wide BPM solution.

The reason that we have ARIS in the bank is because one of our vendors recommended it.

For our setup of the recent migration, which we completed over an eight-week period, we found the migration of our ARIS instance into the cloud to be really smooth and well-supported by the Software AG Professional Services team.

The initial setup of ARIS within the bank was held and managed by a different team.

If you were to look at the return on investment that the bank will make in terms of its use of ARIS, it can't be measured in financial terms. The use and deployment of ARIS across business divisions gives us the capability to understand and monitor processes enterprise-wide. This is improving dramatically our operational resilience, which is both a regulatory and operational requirement for us. We haven't attempted to put a financial measure on that outcome.

Software AG facilitate a gradual and phased approach to enterprise deployment so take full advantage of that. In addition (and obviously in 2022) opt for their Cloud solution. 

ARIS is best of breed. We are obviously aware of other solutions globally and there are a handful in the space that have specific capabilities that would have loosely matched what ARIS can do for us. Time and time again, we come away with the impression that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to move from ARIS. More specifically, we have visibility, as do any of their customers, into their roadmap over the next couple of years. We are very comfortable with it continuing to be exactly what we need.

We haven't used the governance, risk and compliance component (the GRC component) within ARIS. The introduction of ARIS into the risk part of the business through the non-financial risk program happened after the bank had already committed and put in place a risk register, which is powered by IBM OpenPages. So, we work alongside that.

We have an RPA capability within the bank that preceded the introduction of ARIS. That is embedded within our operational model and continues to be the case. As with every bank that has a long legacy of serving its customers, over the last couple of years, we have accelerated our RPA capability to the point where, in Europe, our bank has one of the most mature RPA capabilities.

Because of our use case and the level of detail, where we are currently operating and mapping processes, we have no requirements for the solution's mining capabilities.

One of my colleagues worked with Software AG for years. So, within the CORE team, we had an embedded set of knowledge on ARIS, which is unusual within one of their enterprise customers. Within the wider business use, ARIS absolutely provides us capabilities that we didn't know that we needed until we saw them. However, the Group is in its infancy in terms of understanding ARIS's power of process analysis and improvement.

Overall, I would rate the solution as eight out of 10.

I work at a beverage manufacturer. We use ARIS BPA to design and publish our core processes.

ARIS BPM has helped us speed up our business process transformation by centralizing everything instead of everyone working within a silo. I can't say precisely, but if I had to take a wild guess, I would say that it has sped up our transformation by about 10 to 15 percent. At the moment, it hasn't saved us much time. It has the potential to save us time in the future by giving us a firmer basis to work from. However, we're not saving time on analysis at this stage. ARIS provided a solid basis for our company to manage its assets and by that, I mean its processes. It also helps our customers to have a Single Source of Truth for processes and related information.

The two most valuable aspects of ARIS BPA are the shared common repository and the whole governance cycle. The shared repository allows for cross-functional cooperation instead of doing things in a silo. You can operate cross-functionally and really work end-to-end, instead of dividing everything up on a functional basis. The governance element is important because functions can be managed in a controlled manner. There is a stacked database, and we can move things in a controlled manner from the development environment to the publication environment.

The standard out-of-the-box solutions for modeling are not so good. You have to do some configuration to make it easier and more user-friendly. There are a lot of options, so that can get confusing, but if you filter some things out, then it's easier to use. After you customize it, the end-user has an easy toolset to work from. Another feature I would like to see is the complete visualization of the connect portal.

I've been using it since around 2018, but I think my company has been using it longer.

ARIS is scalable but costly. You can start small and grow the solution over time, but you have to demonstrate the benefits to the leadership before scaling up. Otherwise, it's a one-off, and we aren't looking for a one-off. We're looking for sustainable solutions. Therefore, it's important for us to start small, show the benefits, and then expand.

I would rate Software AG's support six out of 10. It depends on who is providing the support. If you are dealing with support engineers in the Netherlands, it's okay. However, if they refer you to a shared service center, they usually don't know enough to give you proper support. 

Neutral

We purchased the license for ARIS a long time ago, but the central team was dismantled. We revived it back in 2018. Deployment wasn't too easy. We didn't have a maturity roadmap in place, so we were building it step by step. I wasn't able to see the end state or the steps we needed to go through to grow more mature. I'm not blaming Software AG for that. That's just how it went. The deployment process wasn't intuitive or transparent in terms of the next steps we should take. It was also complicated by the fact that our needs as a customer changed from month to month and year to year.

ARIS is quite expensive.

I've previously used QPR. I would say the advantage of ARIS is that it offers more possibilities, but it's also a more complex and costly solution. 

I rate ARIS BPM six out of 10. 

ARIS BPA was underutilized because they used the ARIS modeling paradigm, including value-added chains, EPCs, and functional allocation diagrams.

ARIS BPA is coming up with a centralized repository of local business processes that could be referenced for design work and operations.

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are the centralized repository and the automatic rendering of diagrams.

ARIS BPA’s usability could be improved.

I have been using ARIS BPA for almost three years.

I rate ARIS BPA a nine out of ten for stability.

ARIS BPA’s initial setup was straightforward.

ARIS BPA is too costly from a licensing perspective. It is also too costly to maintain, configure, and integrate.

I am using the latest version of ARIS BPA. Do your due diligence to ensure that this is the product you need from a feature and cost perspective.

Overall, I rate ARIS BPA a seven out of ten.

We use the solution to collect information, design, publish, and validate the process. We can implement the process according to the improvements that can be retrieved. We monitor the process before the four phases of discovery, design, publishing, and implementation.

BPA is used to represent reality. We need to find and implement potential improvements from a workshop presentation and then monitor the results. We are not implementing these tools to plan and organize artifacts. This tool covers everything except implementation because that is not the purpose of a BPA tool. However, this tool can interface with implementation tools, and after implementation, you can use APIs and other interfaces to get information back from reality. In terms of improvement, the app could use some small details and functionalities. However, I need more time to sync to get more specific suggestions. We already have interfaces for these four tools, and it is possible to develop interfaces for the other four tools. 

Inside the product, we can have a developer environment where we can create new scripts using APIs or STPI. This is the environment that we use to help interface the tools. In the past, we had many packages of interfaces. The suppliers of the provider preferred to have these package interfaces. We like to open the code, at least part of the code, with APIs and other things like this so that the consultants can create the interfaces with the specific tools. We use APIs and other search tools for this.

I have been using ARIS BPA for more than 30 years.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The product is expensive. People who don't understand BPA or only understand a little bit about it often compare tools with videos and things like this, which are not comparable. They may have a lot of models and artifacts, but nothing is aligned or consistent. Customers prefer to start with fizzes and things like this, and later on, they come back and prefer to use a more professional tool.

The solution is not easy to use. People at the operational level don't have the abstraction level needed for this proposal. When they get information from business people, they immediately decide on the other model. They come with additional information from other business departments and do the same. To do things properly, you need to think about a proper structure based on components. Then, when you get new information from previous areas, for example, IT, you should frame this further information or these recent changes in the structure you previously found. Otherwise, you're constantly reacting, doing a lot of ad hoc models. You'll have a lot of content without alignment, sense, or semantics. 

The first step is to contact the customer. The next step is to present the customer with some proposals because when you present the proposal to them, they may accept or reject it. If they leave it, what will you do? This flexibility allows you to generate different views of the process for different stakeholders. For example, someone in top management might want to see a view from the customer contact until the proposal. Another person might want to see everything. You can take all of the components that you have designed before and create a specific view for them. It’s only about how to design business processes. It depends on the other two. One of the primary and critical requirements is to create business processes based on specific components that are well-linked and aligned together, in order to avoid ad hoc models. Ad hoc models are not very good. They do not work in the future. Usually, people start doing this because it is easier. This is closer to how ordinary people think. 

Still, in the middle and long term, you will realize that it is not manageable because you have to prepare models, a visualization of things, and different models of the same reality. You will not know what the source of truth is at a certain point in time because you have many different presentations of the same fact. For me, this structure is crucial. This is where it should start: defining the system, how you will model it, and the methodology. What are the pros and cons of the method? How will you capture, model, validate, implement, and monitor the information? You must define this beforehand, at the beginning of any project. Otherwise, forget about it, regardless of your tool, because it is more about the concepts. If you don't have the right concepts, then forget about it. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.