ARIS BPA Reviews

Visualizes processes which helps the business see pain points.

Overall BPM modeling functionality is very good. Lots of features to speed modeling for experienced users.

• Price is high.
• Newer versions (9.x) are technically more difficult to maintain.

Yes, there have been stability issues with v9.x.

No issues with scalability.

Poor to acceptable depending on issue, but mostly poor.

Technically easy, but BPM and EA are complex and require considerable pre-planning.

Negotiate. Price is high so make sure you’re getting the best deal.

Consider less expensive options.

• Fully-reportable database over Visio
• Heavy dashboarding with ARIS Aware
• Automation capabilities
• Direct SAP connection

Procedurally and architecturally improved analysis across the board.

• Price
• User interface (UI)

We have used this product for six years. ARIS products and releases from 7.2 through ARIS 10. We were even invited by SAG as a partner for version 10's sneak peek.

Rarely.

Best product for full-size enterprises and their efforts.

SAG could improve, but there is a vast network of community users.

Tried many BPA tools, but ARIS seems to be the best fit for the largest efforts we have focused efforts on.

You could walk someone through it, but I would not recommend trying it on their own.

It is well worth the investment in the enterprise.

Visio, Blueworks, Signavio, and ARIS. Absolutely choose ARIS or Signavio.

Features like SAP SolMan sync, Alfabet EA integration (another Software AG product). Also, a good defined framework for BPM or any consulting practice across any verticals or domains, whether it's TOGAF methodology, running BPM Lifecycle or Six Sigma process analysis.

It has helped to a great extent in defining and maintaining repositories for various industries, further facilitating projects like portfolio management, etc.

Vendor continuously brings updated versions to market with bug fixes from earlier versions and fulfilling user/customer expectations, so they are inline with continuous improvement.

Regarding stability, when there are any customized settings being done at customer end - post upgrade to newer versions - it makes the customer environment unstable for a short duration. But this is made stable and back to service with their 24-hour support help.

Have been using this product for three years.

Not many issues with stability, other than as noted above.

No issues. They offer ARIS installation for Cloud as well as server-client scenario, so no major issues seen so far.

Technical support is good and response time is good as well. They have priority request types set already, so in case of crisis with ARIS, or any major issue, we can reach 24-hour support by phone or drop them an email; they are always available to respond.

I am a BPM and Enterprise Architecture consultant and hence have been using different BPM and EA tools for my consulting practice. Until now have used Opentext Provision, EA, Sparx EA, MS Visio and IBM Blueworks. All of the tools used are good and have there own unique features and capabilities. ARIS BPA is widely used by my current organization for different projects, hence the switch.

The initial setup is straightforward for a user with ARIS BPA installation experience. There is not much that is complex, even for someone who is not experienced with ARIS and tries installation. But that person should be technically sound with installation practices.

The pricing and licensing costs are available on their website. They will assign a relationship manager to assist if you show further interest in their products.

I was not given the option to choose this product, as it was already in use. But evaluation can be made on how globally and widely this product have been used by different industries over others like IBM BPM, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Appian BPM, Pega BPM, and the tools mentioned above.

This product is excellent for any consulting assignment as it offers products and views for different stakeholders to represent the information and data. Advice to others/new users is to get trained on basic usage of this product initially to get an idea of it's benefits and usability. Study and document the exact requirements/purpose and expectations you seek from this product. Software AG should have different options/offers available for its first time users.

Process Modeling or Process Mapping/Documentation. This is the most comprehensive tool for capturing the process details. Any organization who wants to embark on a BPM journey, process mapping/documentation, lays the foundation for the BPM led implementation.

Since ARIS provides such a rich modeling environment, it can be leveraged not just for automation of the processes, but more importantly for maintaining the blue prints of the processes for any organization be it business, internal or support processes.

This, then, provides a real picture of the status quo of any organization at any given time.

Using ARIS, an organization can document their business processes.

Also, the tool provides the facility to capture process details not just at one level but at multiple levels, depending on the audience who would consume it.

It helps not only to capture the process steps but with different aspects of the processes like org, KPI, systems, roles, infrastructure, documents, etc.

Once captured, the tool helps to analyze the processes and impact of changes in the organization from the system, process, KPI, perspective.

Since this is a design tool, seamless interface to make the process flows executable.

Between 9-10 years .

None.

None, since the launch of ARIS 9.x, the product architecture has changed and this has made it bit more complex from Administration perspective.

Three out of five.

None.

Medium complexity.

Pricing is a bit on the higher side.

Not really.

Best tool for documentation of business processes.

The capability to integrate all information of the business and to generate simulations of processes. It can analyze the model of operations quickly.

It has improved our organization because the system helped us design all our processes and our structure of business.

I would like the possibility to use real data. In other words, it can use this system to integrate with others that are operating directing with users like clients, employs, and others. This means that people who work with processes and activities of routine.

I have used this solution for three months. 

ARIS software has few connectivity problems.

Software AG's support with partners is relatively fast.

We are in a phase of planning and its capabilities for design and simulation. Considering the size of our company, this solution was a good fit.

We were involved in the initial setup. My experience is positive, but regarding usability and learning of the system, those elements can be more difficult and complicated.

We evaluated Mega, Oracle , Bizagi, AuraPortal, AgilePoint, Appian, IBM, and others.

My advice is to consider as many solutions as possible. Take your time to analyze them, if you can.

• Adhoc analysis of enterprise blueprints
• Collaboration and governance over enterprise artifacts
• ARIS HOUSE concept

I am a consultant. I have used this tool in BPM, BPR, EA implementation, and in more than 40 entities.

• Simplify governance process
• Create simple data uploader

I've used this solution for 10 years.

No.

No.

A six out of 10.

• IBM System Architect
• MEGA

Straightforward, it is a simple wizard to install.

Select carefully which licenses you require, as the bundle has many licenses in it.

The tool is expensive.

No, I am a consultant and we work with this tool.

Try to implement it in the right way, based on ARIS HOUSE concept and not use it as a drawing tool.

• ARIS Reporting – Helps download valuable content from the tool in multiple formats.
• ARIS Query – Helps visualize relationships between various components/elements of an enterprise.
• Occurrence Copy – Helps create a relational database which in turn helps in carrying out process analysis.

ARIS helps in creating a central repository of all processes of an organization in a standardized manner. Thus, it has helped in carrying out our business processes in a standard manner across the globe.

• We should have the ability to download ARIS EPCs to Visio.
• ARIS should also have the ability to import swimlane Visio flowcharts.

I've used this product for over six years.

I haven't encountered any issues with stability.

I haven't encountered issues with scalability.

A seven out of 10.

I did not use a different solution prior to ARIS BPM.

Complex.

Prices are high. However, they are worth it if the organization utilizes the tool to its full potential.

Casewise, IBM BlueWorks Live, Orbus.

The whole ARIS BPM solution is a bit special, because from the very beginning it was targeted more to Business users and the Management. Its core focus was to, at the end provide a neat tool for the Management to use as get a grasp about their Business Processes, more easily determine their strategy and also sometimes do analysis and parametrization of the processes. This is all possible, as ARIS, unlike Visio for example utilizes a database system, where it's possible to model all kinds of relations with different metadata and information. If used with clear strategy, it can provide a really powerful tool to analyze the whole Enterprise, from IT, Processes and Organization.

It has improved the organization where I work currently, in a way that the processes are more transparent, then before when they were present only in documents.
Advanced modeling, structuring and visualization capabilities of ARIS made this possible.

The main "drawback" of ARIS is that it is not targeted towards the real implementation and running of certain business processes.
It does not have a real workflow engine beneath that can make things actually run. This is also due to it's different focus from the beginning. And also, this comment might be a bit subjective, as I'm more interested in this technical aspect of a BPM system.
Some improvements have been done, after Software AG acquired ARIS, but I don't believe it's still integrated with the other tool WebMethods in a perfect way.
Also, ARIS can be very hard and costly to integrate with other tools, as there is no programming API or web services exposed, except from the integrated report API which is targeted to be used for creating reports from the ARIS database. It's not targeted towards integration.

I've used the solution for more than 6-7 years, in different scenarios. Starting as a consultant implementing the solution and modeling the processes, but also as a Business & IT analyst barely using it as a common user to facilitate my work.

No. The standard system is usually very straight forward to deploy.

ARIS Business Server and the modeling tools are pretty stable in general. Some issues and challenges can occur when using it in an extremely large environment when the Business Publisher needs to serve more than 5,000 users. Then the load balancing comes in to play, and it needs some improvement in the Publisher tool.

It's probably one of the most scalable solutions in the market currently.

The effort in changing the whole architecture in versions 9 and 10 to enable this is tremendous.

The technical support is very good, and has extremely improved over the years.

ARIS is a very simple tool to set up if you are using just the basic platform: Business Server and the Designer tools. In case you are going for a more advanced approach, with additional modules, the solution can be quite expensive to set up. As the vendor consultants are not very cheap, :)

Basically, the main point is to be very clear about your expectations and why do you want to use the tool. If your focus is primarily on the business users, and making company wide business process mapping and improvement initiatives, that's pretty much where ARIS is really good. But, if your focus is the implementation of the business processes, integration with other systems, you should probably evaluate other tools, like Webmethods, IBM BPM, Bonita, Bizagi, Pega,etc.