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.

Positive

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.

We use BPA for modeling and documenting in a central repository. We are customers of ARIS and I'm a process professional. 

I value the reporting as well as the information query features, they are both very useful. It gives us a common language and a common repository, and we're able to control the workflow and relevant key processes. We're also able to utilize all the additional data that we capture and provide a holistic view of how our processes impact other areas of the organization.

Although the reporting and the information query features are good, they could do with some improvement. I'd also like to see better control over the library assets. It takes a lot of effort to maintain all the different types of central libraries. I'd like to see a simplification of the automation in the next update, it's currently quite a complex process. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The stability of the system is good. We've had some minor issues when they're running maintenance activities but other than that, the solution is stable. 

The technical support is reasonable.

I've also used Bizagi quite a lot but I like ARIS because we're able to extract a lot more information. Bizagi has the ability to start executing processes via the platform, which is a definite advantage over ARIS. Once we model a process in Bizagi, we can configure it and create an executable web service out of it. 

The solution is deployed across the entire company, almost everyone uses it.
We currently have around 600 users, but we're planning to scale up to approximately 2,500 soon. We have around 30 people maintaining the data.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

I have been working with ARIS across different projects in several companies, including a project where we implemented ARIS.

In my current company, we use ARIS for business process mapping, capability management, and process analysis. In some of my previous jobs, we used it as a tool for quality and compliance management, because processes are obviously the basis for audits. In this respect, ARIS always came in very handy.

It is pretty easy for users to get access to published processes. With regards to published content, I can think of one or two enhancements but overall, it's pretty easy. When you know how you need to do it, then it's a good tool.

ARIS has the largest BPM community in the world, although I don't particularly care about the size. The important part is how active it is. For example, if you have 1,000 people that form a community but nobody is saying a word, then the community is useless.

Software AG is promoting the ARIS community quite heavily, and they may have started to rebuild it with this platform. People tend to use it more frequently and I personally try to contribute to the content. Essentially, for me, the engagement of the community is more important than its size.

As a process management tool, it provides a lot of transparency when it comes to processes. This means that people have a solid basis for discussion and this is important because only when you have a process mapped, people will understand how it works. Sometimes, they will then even say that they have understood the process to be something totally different.

In general, process mapping using ARIS is a really good basis to get discussions going and also for audits to ensure or to prove to the auditor that you have good processes in place.

My gut feeling is that ARIS helps to save us time on business process analysis. However, it is difficult to confirm because we wouldn't be able to measure that. It certainly helps to create transparency when it comes to processes, and thus automatically increases their effectiveness. This suggests that it saves time.

ARIS is very user-friendly compared to other BPM tools that I have used. The user has a really modern view when they're using the ARIS Connect platform, which is the web-based part of the application.

In general, the users really like it and they can get started using it very easily.

For some people, ARIS is quite intuitive when it comes to business process management and modeling. In the time that I have spent training people, I have found that there are two mindsets. If somebody is a very organized and structured person then it will be relatively easy to get started with ARIS. However, if somebody is more creative then it tends to be quite difficult for them. That said, these people would have the same difficulty when using other process management tools. The reason is that process management is about structure. For those with that type of mindset, it's really easy to get started.

As an administrator with several years of experience with ARIS, I find that getting end-users set up is a really easy thing to do.

I really like the large variety of functionality that ARIS provides. If you look at it from a methodology perspective, you have more than 100 different diagrams or model types that you can choose from. It's really flexible in all of your modeling needs.

You can easily model process diagrams, but you can also model bowtie diagrams, UML diagrams, and more. ARIS has a really wide range of functionality. 

I really like the EPC modeling because it allows you to model not only the doer's perspective, which is often done with BPMN notation, but it also allows you to model the contributors or the people who are accountable or informed in your processes. When it comes to manual processes or semi automatic processes, this is really useful because this is where you can improve a lot.

The Risk and Compliance Management tool is rather complex. So, we customized it. Customization was done by SAG and was done fast.

The facility for sharing content should be enhanced. For example, it would be nice if you could share content with viewers who do not explicitly have access to the model. As it is now, if you share a process with somebody that does not have access to the model, then the person receives a link that simply tells them they have no access.

Particularly, when you're in the process of modeling something and you want to share it because you want to get feedback from your colleagues, I would appreciate being able to share that content. It could be valid for a period, such as 24 hours or one week. This is something that would help.

I have been using ARIS since 2009. This has been in various positions in different companies.

Stability has increased a lot since I began working with it. I remember in one of the earlier versions, perhaps version 7 or version 9, there was a lot of trouble. We would run into unexpected errors, some of which were quite severe. Since then, however, there have been some errors, but it's pretty much stable.

There are different roles depending on the employee. We have regular employees who can read or view content. They can also comment on it. We also have employees, such as team leads, with modeling privileges. There is a big variety in terms of the different roles that people have.

We have approximately 130 modelers that use ARIS. When I run training sessions, I shift licenses from one person to another.

I don't have much experience with scaling but for our current use cases, it is sufficient.

ARIS definitely enables you to start small and increase usage over time. This is very important to us because it requires you to have a process-driven mindset in the company. This mindset becomes part of the organizational culture, and culture is something that evolves over time. Importantly, developing the proper mindset is a journey so you need to start small and then grow, otherwise, it will not really work. That's the nature of cultural development.

Generally, as process management is something that evolves over time, we expect our usage of ARIS to grow. Some people are early adopters but for others, it happens a bit later. Right now, the speed is increasing when it comes to the adoption of process management, which means that more people are using ARIS and have been requesting modeler licenses. This is something that is quite good.

I really like the support and I would rate them an A+.

Their response times are really good. Whenever I have a question, I get an answer, or at least I know that somebody is taking care of my ticket really quickly.

They do not close tickets without asking, which I appreciate a lot. So, from time to time, I've received an email notification asking, "Hey, can we close this ticket? Did we answer your question sufficiently?" This is also something that I value a lot.

Support also asks for feedback. The head of the global support team has also checked with me whether I had any ideas for improvements. The fact that they are always seeking to become better is another thing that I really like.

Neutral

I have some experience with other BPM tools but nothing as extensively as ARIS.

One of these is Signavio, and the ARIS interface is more user-friendly. Also, when I tested Signavio a few years back, they did not have as wide a range of functionality available.

From an implementation perspective, it was rather straightforward.

My colleagues at my previous company found the technical installation documentation really difficult.

As an end-user and ARIS administrator, I knew what the different steps were in order for people to start using it. From this perspective, I found it really easy.

Leaving the technical aspect aside, because it took our IT department quite a long time to deploy it, I was able to complete my part of the implementation in less than a week.

Their license model is really difficult to understand, and licenses are quite expensive. However, with the new subscription model, it's fair that you can rent licenses for a specific time and then give them back. From that perspective, it's okay.

In general, the licensing model is not clear and the complexity is growing. In the past, I was not able to get information whether new functionalities are available for us. This situation has been communicated and should improve: For me as an administrator it is annoying when people ask me about new features and functionalities, and I tell them what is coming, only to later find out that the feature is not available for us. After some discussions you find out that you need a license. This has happened to me two or three times and it is really embarrassing.

In our test environment, we use version 16 of ARIS. However, in our production environment, we use version 15.

We are currently doing a proof of concept project for the ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager. I believe the ARIS GRC has some potential, although it's a rather complex tool, which you definitely need to customize if you want to use it. It offers so many functions and functionalities that if you haven't had a real profound training of it, you will not really understand. So, at least in the beginning, you need to reduce the complexity of the tool. This is the approach that we took with the proof of concept project.

To this point, we have not used the ARIS process mining capabilities ourselves- but did a proof of concept with SAG. The support we received was really great. We haven't used the RPA functionality (yet). We are in the pre-project implementation phase of the AI-enabled translation services.

My advice for anybody who is implementing ARIS is that from a tool perspective, limit the functionality for the end-users. I strongly recommend using filters and to start small. Only allow limited functionality and a few attributes because the more complex a system you start with, the more difficult it is for a user to really understand how it is supposed to work.

That said, if anybody does have problems then I recommend contacting support. I've never experienced a situation where support was not willing or was not able to help. To assist them, it may seem like a standard practice but I suggest adding screenshots because it facilitates communication with them.

New users should also contribute to the ARIS community because the bigger the community is, the more powerful it is. When you have, for instance, new enhancement requests or feature requests, then this community can help to push these new features into a new release.

There is room for improvement but overall, I really like working with ARIS.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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.

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.

ARIS has many modules starting right from strategy to dashboarding. However, the primary focus of using ARIS is for Business Process Modeling/Analysis - although it is not just limited to process but can cover the entire enterprise architecture for an organization.

We have used ARIS for multiple projects with different objectives, including E2E process modeling, managing IT application landscape, support for eTOM frameworks, managing risk/compliance, rules modeling, et cetera. 

We have leveraged it for multiple client engagements with different objectives of the program, including digital transformation journeys, IT landscape rationalization, process transformation, process improvement, process automation, S4/HANA Migration, process rationalization, legacy modernization, and much more.

ARIS provides the basic foundation for any digital transformation an organization decides to take. 

Firstly, it helps to create the business blueprint for any organization. With clear and complete documentation of the processes, different departments and people involved can build a common understanding of processes. It helps in reducing duplication since there is only one single source of truth across the organization. 

It greatly reduces the modeling effort of the processes since it is based on a relational DB which supports the concept of library objects. For example, you can create a central repository of applications, risks, data, products, capabilities, services, interfaces, technical infrastructure et cetera. You can create them once and reuse them multiple times as required along with your processes. This helps the multiple dimensional analysis of your processes. 

ARIS provides many functionalities and capabilities, including:

1. E2E visibility of the processes which are typically cross-functional

2. Multiple hierarchies of the process provides a different level of abstraction

3. Multi-dimensional view of the process can be created to further support analysis from the system, data, capability, product, interface, infrastructure et cetera.

4. Provides a single source of truth for a process consumed by different departments/functions

6. Strong governance and release cycle management with a built-in workflow

7. Process simulation capabilities to perform what-if analysis

8. Seamless collaboration using built-in mini workflows 

9. Out-of-the-box connectivity with SAP

Although ARIS is already a leading tool in the BPA space for years, in my opinion, there are a few areas that can be made even better, For example:

1. The reporting capabilities and the ability to create custom reports need to be simplified and made easy so that people even with a good functional understanding of the tool can leverage it to create their own custom report. Since, at the end of such BPA/BPM implementations, higher management typically wants to see the value coming out of ARIS and all the modeling effort and this would make it more adaptable for our customers as they would see the value coming out of the tool.

2. As the world is going the way of low code/no code, they should also think of modernizing the report creation in a similar fashion.

3. The integration capabilities with other COTS products should be better. Since every organization uses many applications/systems for day-to-day operations, the easy integration with such systems like SNOW, SFDC, et cetera, will make the adoption easy for the client rather than seeing ARIS as a standalone system with separate license and maintenance costs.

I've used the solution for 12+ years.

The ARIS SaaS offerings are very stable and secure since they are hosted on Azure and AWS platforms which provide state-of-the-art hosting. 

With the SaaS offering, organizations can start exploring the basic functionalities with a subscription-based license. The license can be upgraded and the adoption of the tool can be increased within the organization as needed.

They offer excellent support and customer service. 

Positive

We have used many tools, including Signavio, Bizagi, Visio, Nimbus, Mega, et cetera.

I personally found the modeling very easy to start and adopt even for a beginer as ARIS provides a very clean and simple interface to work with. 

The kind of versatility and flexibility that ARIS provides is unmatched by any other tool in the market.

The initial setup is quite straightforward since the Software AG teams take care of the provisioning and intial setup of the SaaS instance based on the requirements. 

Organizations do not need to get involved and invest time and energy in figuring out the infrastructure, security, and access-related issues.

The SaaS offering was handled by the Software AG team itself.

Although not quoting a number, ARIS brings huge value for Organizations that have implemented it. For example, it's bringing E2E transparency of how the business process works in a department/unit since they are typlical cross functional in nature.

Different stakeholders can talk and understand the same language since ARIS provides a single source of truth for processes across the organization. 

Although the largest customer base for ARIS is in large enterprises, the SaaS offering from Software AG starts right from free trial to basic, advanced, and Enterprise versions. Organizations can start small and rapidly scale as required.

We looked at many tools, including Signavio, Bizagi, Visio, Nimbus, MEGA, et cetera.

Since there is a free 30-day trial, I certainly urge anyone looking to invest in process modeling or analysis tools to try out ARIS.

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.