ARIS Cloud Reviews

I worked with ARIS Cloud under SAP. The solution was deployed by an agile team and utilized daily by process engineers and business process owners. It was involved in the financial services industry, with thousands of users within the company.

The platform's capabilities are highly dependent on customization, with different implementations across various user companies. My experience was not positive due to the type of implementation. Its mapping capability, for instance, was behind less recognized competitors, making it difficult to map a process.

The mapping capability of ARIS Cloud lags behind other less recognized players, making it difficult to map processes. The platform was not intuitive, leading to a complex setup and requiring significant coding. The stability was poor, with frequent outages. Documentation and online support were also very limited.

I have used ARIS Cloud for a couple of years.

The stability was poor due to frequent outages.

ARIS Cloud is scalable. However, scaling something that is not very effective is not beneficial.

I previously used Signavio. The main differences include ease of use and functionality. Signavio is more intuitive, allowing users with no prior knowledge to navigate and understand its functionality more readily.

The initial setup was complex and required significant coding.

The solution was deployed by an agile team.

There might have been some ROI achieved. That said, I consider ARIS Cloud a suboptimal solution compared to other options on the market.

From what I understand, ARIS Cloud is a very expensive solution. The company opted for a cost-effective route, leading to limited functionality.

Signavio was evaluated alongside ARIS Cloud.

I would not recommend ARIS Cloud. As part of a functional selection committee, we went through various packages, and ARIS was not favorable. 

Overall, I would rate ARIS Cloud a four out of ten.

I am primarily focusing on managing the technology layer and architecture during the migration of applications from on-premises to the cloud. My role involves defining rules, principles, and ensuring technology agnosticism as applications are migrated to platforms like Amazon and Azure. The objective is to make sure that the processes work seamlessly, considering potential future migrations between cloud platforms.

Security is a consideration when migrating to the cloud. It's crucial to address potential risks and include security measures in the contract with the cloud provider. While there haven't been issues so far, acknowledging the risks is essential, especially when dealing with applications like ARIS. With the increasing capabilities and advancements in technology, many current challenges are likely to be resolved in the future. Despite security concerns, utilizing opportunities in the cloud and the internet offers significant advantages.

Regarding areas for improvement, security remains a key consideration, especially when deploying ARIS in the cloud. However, this is not solely a product-specific concern but also pertains to the cloud environment. Beyond security, the strength of ARIS lies in its ability to serve as a unified repository for enterprise architecture. Having all information in one place facilitates alignment with the company's vision, strategy, and business objectives. Reducing redundancies across departments is crucial for maintaining service quality and minimizing costs. It ensures that everyone is on the same page, fostering collaboration and preventing discrepancies in information and services. While I currently use Guardis for this purpose, the concept of enterprise architecture is applicable, and ARIS stands as a valuable tool to support business processes and technology alignment within the company.

I have been using the product for more than a year.

For ARIS Cloud, if we consider product stability on a scale from one to ten, sI would rate it at eight at this time.

It is excellent.

Positive

I've worked with a competitor, Abakos, which is also a BPM tool, and I've found that the choice between cloud and on-premises deployment doesn't impact user experience significantly. For me, the advantages of ARIS Cloud are similar to any cloud-based solution - accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and receiving the latest versions.

In my role as an architect, I am not involved in operational tasks. From what I have heard, the individuals handling the migrations have generally been successful. There have been occasional challenges, and sometimes they need to provide assistance, repeat processes, or make adjustments, but this is considered a normal scenario.

The cloud deployment is not more expensive. In the cloud, you pay for what you use, and there's no need for maintaining infrastructure or additional personnel, making it cost-effective. On-premises deployment, on the other hand, involves infrastructure costs and maintenance expenses.

On a scale of one to ten, considering the benefits and advantages, I would rate ARIS Cloud around eight or nine. The flexibility and cost-effectiveness, especially for smaller companies, make cloud deployment highly recommended. Having our products, including ARIS, SharePoint, and others, in the cloud provides flexibility in usage and cost savings. This dynamic and flexible approach, akin to outsourcing, is beneficial for both small and large enterprises, making cloud deployment a preferable choice.

I have experience with ARIS to make different models for our projects. In our company, we are attempting to automate our onboarding and offboarding process in our business management system. Basically, I use ARIS Cloud for our different business processes and to make different models of business processes.

The solution's most valuable feature stems from its being very easy to use, making it a very user-friendly tool. I can say the tool is very easy since even a person who does not have any knowledge can easily use it.

Sometimes, some of our employees face issues when I download or install the software because some of the versions of Windows do not support it. On Windows 11, I was able to use ARIS Cloud, but some of the users with Windows 12 couldn't use it since it was not supported on that particular version of Windows. I don't know whether the cause of the aforementioned issue is because of Windows or the software, but my team really tried in the past and failed to resolve the issue since some of the versions of Windows are not supported on ARIS Cloud at all. In short, my company cannot figure out the cause of the glitch in the product.

The support team of ARIS Cloud has certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using ARIS Cloud for a year. My company has a partnership with ARIS Cloud.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten since I am not very experienced with the platform.

Around seven people in my company use ARIS Cloud.

My company did try to contact the technical support team of ARIS Cloud, but we failed to find the exact contact details of the support team. My company also tried to contact the technical support team of ARIS Cloud via email, but no one responded to our email. There was no person from the technical support team of ARIS Cloud to whom we could ask about why we were facing some installation issues with the tool in our company. My company even tried to contact the support team of ARIS Cloud by trying to generate support tickets.

I rate the technical support a two out of ten.

Negative

The initial setup of ARIS Cloud was easy.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud model.

ARIS Cloud is easy to use. ARIS Cloud's support team is not cooperative.

I rate the overall tool an eight and a half out of ten.

We are doing standard business process management as modeling for projects and some strategic initiatives. It depends on what the requester wants. We have a strong community in our global operations where we do product design and manufacturing. We also have some transformation projects that use Aris, so our digital creation transformation is going from a physical product creation lifecycle to a digital one. These colleagues are using Aris to sketch out and define their new processes. At the beginning of this year, we started using ARIS BPM for the SAP S/4 implementation and business process blueprint to synchronize with SAP Solution Manager.

Our company hopes to further refine our business process management with this SAP S/4 project, which will also be platform-based. By the end of this year or the beginning of the next, we aim to complete the business process blueprint for the S/4 environment. Then we'll hand the blueprint over to our implementation partner, who will implement and configure SAP.  That should be a more straightforward and structured approach than having things flying around in Excel and PowerPoint files. It also helps to have ARIS and SAP Solution Manager driving the global rollout. 

We also did a POC called the "GDPR topic," which covered data and privacy. That was looking very good, but unfortunately, it was deprioritized from the company side. Apart from that, we are not using risk and compliance managers currently. We have a few basic licenses on that, and I think it's very powerful. However, you need to have more buy-in from a wider audience within the company to do risk and compliance management. It has to be process-oriented. You need to use your existing processes for risk and compliance. We were not mature enough to roll this out internally yet.

It's vital for the company to have an overall cloud strategy. From a total cost of ownership perspective, running this on the cloud is more efficient than having someone in the company take care of the infrastructure. Apart from that, a dozen aspects of the tool itself are beneficial, and it has some strengths compared to other tools. But that isn't specific to the cloud.

We have different projects going on, and we introduced the ARIS Connect portal three years ago to gather process information faster and more efficiently. For example, my colleague in global operations needed three months to get the latest process information together when they did new projects. With ARIS, they hoped to reduce this to one or two weeks maybe. It involves searching for things in the central repository then briefly revalidating the content to ensure it's still correct or up to date. This is much easier with a central repository, like ARIS.

Generally speaking, ARIS has improved our organization by creating transparency and generating a discussion about what a process owner is and the responsibilities of process owners. Part of it is having valid documentation. ARIS has helped a lot because you can push for these things when you have a central repository. As a result, we have more information about organizations and projects, allowing them to ramp up faster. At the same, ARIS provides a basis for discussion for the end-users. Of course, it can't give you everything, but it lays a foundation for starting a conversation and getting on the same page of some content. That eliminates a lot of misalignment and misinformation by offering transparent information on something.

Over the past few years, ARIS has made its interface more user-friendly and intuitive. There has been a dramatic improvement in the ease of use as well as the accessibility and interconnectivity of information. They've also made it possible to collect data from massive enterprises into one repository. 

When talking about ease of use, you also have to distinguish between the everyday end-users and the people like me responsible for the entire setup and the back-end and the methodology. I'm working for a marketing company with a lot of creative people. They're not that interested in understanding everything the tool offers or what the software is about. They want to go in, consume their content and go out again. 

From this perspective, ARIS has improved dramatically with the new front-end portal called ARIS Connect. This is a great path forward, but it creates some complexities for the administrator because you need to decide which way to go while remaining consistent with what you decided in the first place. But for the end-user, that is a huge win, I would say. We get excellent feedback as well from the end-user about that.

On the one hand, ARIS is very flexible, so you can do everything with it. You can even conduct a survey, which we are doing now, and send it via Aris. On the other hand, ARIS' flexibility and power add a certain complexity. If ARIS could be more streamlined, I think customers would have a better handle on what to do with it in the end. If you're not a tech geek, you might struggle to understand what you should do with it as a customer because it's that powerful. The scope of other tools is narrower, so they seem easier to use. That's where you need to balance. Tools that are easier to use sometimes hit a wall when you want to go deeper. 

I've been using ARIS for nine years with my current company, and the company has a contract with ARIS going back to 2005 or so. However, we only moved to ARIS Cloud in the middle of this year, and we just finished our migration.

From a cloud perspective, we haven't had problems so far. In general, we have good availability, and the connection is highly stable. Sometimes there is a little lag, but we're never quite sure if that's the cloud version or if it's your personal internet connection or whatever. 

We have a rather small environment. To use T-shirts as an analogy, I think our size would be an S or an M. Our user base is small. I know some other customers using ARIS that are enormous, so I don't think we'll have any problems if we increase the content. I feel confident we could go all-in with 50,000 users. Of course, we would need to have different sizing, but I believe that it would be working smoothly.

Sometime in October or so, Software AG generally changed their ticketing system. There were a few hiccups setting up that. There were one or two weeks when we didn't know if our ticket had been viewed, and we had some error messages coming back via email. Apart from that, we have been delighted with the response times and the ticketing system. I'd rate Software AG's support nine out of 10.

Positive

The simple technical setup was excellent. It was speedy, convenient, and everything is working fine so far. There have been a few bugs, but that has nothing to do with the cloud. It's an interplay with the cloud and the service release. It is expected that you will have some minor hiccups when you change the infrastructure environment. We had a few issues on our side. We solved them all, but that is a part of any migration project. 

You need to make sure that you have a project manager within your organization who can anticipate any problems you might have when you change something. Then it's about how fast you can solve these things. We had a bit of a delay in the end, but it wasn't on the Software AG side. We also had some other difficulties within our organization with the active directory connection.

When deploying, future customers need to make sure they have their own dependencies under control within their company and know what is there. We were surprised by one or two issues, but we could solve them. Overall, I would say the migration was seamless.

I think the contractual issues took longer than the actual migration. That always depends on your new contracts and procurement processes. We all know that in larger companies, this can get complicated sometimes. It took quite some time, and unfortunately, it hit us during the summertime from July until September. This is a core time for us, and many people were on vacation. If it weren't for the contract issues and all the people taking off, we could've had this up and running in a few days. 

Software AG also had a few problems reaching the cloud ops team. I think that needs to be better streamlined in communicating with the customer, having better transparency about the roadmap, etc. Thankfully, we had someone working with us on the Software AG side who functioned as a project manager, which helped. Still, I think there is room for improvement in interacting with the cloud ops team.

The licensing model of ARIS Cloud is leaner and more beneficial to the customer. The new license model is great. With the on-premise, you needed to subscribe to many more types of licenses. Now there are licensed bundles available on the cloud. That's one of the cloud version's advantages.  I think the price is comparable to similar solutions. We did a pricing comparison to Signavio, which is in the same price range, and ARIS offers 20 to 50 percent more features, so I think it's an excellent price for the functionality ARIS offers. 

SAP purchased Signavio as a BPM platform because we are doing an SAP project. Of course, we did a POC because it's our due diligence to look into other tools. We found that the Signavio tool is weaker in the SAP S/4 environment. 

We had different requirements from the project we needed to implement, and it was possible to configure ARIS and customize it to our needs. This is not possible in Signavio. For example, ARIS has features like fact sheets that give you spreadsheet-like visibility of your information, and we could break down a few spreadsheets like Excels or Smartsheet lists and integrate this into ARIS. And with this spreadsheet and catalog functionality, that was possible. Again, you can't do this in Signavio.

Compared to Signavio, ARIS gives you much more flexibility to set up your environment, databases, etc. We also have a license for the workflow engine called ARIS Process Governance. This is much more powerful, and more things are possible than with other tools. There is also a test designer connected to ARIS. You can take your process models and design your test cases from the BPM platform and synchronize that with the solution manager. Other platforms don't have this feature. ARIS is capable of bidirectional sync, too.  

On the other hand, Signavio might be more specific and specialized for the SAP solution because it's part of SAP now. However, this is a recent development. Perhaps we might see more integration with the SAP environment in two or three years because software implementation and integration take time. Everything with marketing and passwords needs to be implemented first, but then we need to see how Software AG positions itself with ARIS in this field. For now, I don't see any advantages Signavio has over ARIS.

For process mining, we decided to go with ARIS' competitor Celonis two or three years ago, and it's even hosted and owned by another team. The latest RFP on that also showed Celonis would continue to be the provider for the process mining. Of course, there is now a discussion about integrating these two tools, and let's see how that turns out. But we are not using ARIS process mining, and it was even evaluated, not by me but by the process mining colleagues. 

We also have an automation team, and this automation team takes care of RPA and process mining. The problem is that we have a very unintegrated solution landscape. My idea would be something different. I would recommend having an integrated solution for that, but it's not my decision. We have various tools for the different approaches, and it's not coming together, but let's see what the future brings. I know about the capabilities and the third-party connections ARIS offers, but I'm not the owner of these topics at the company.

I rate ARIS Cloud nine out of 10. 

The primary use cases include basically a tool for modeling processes. It supports BPM and annotations, and it's usually the foundation for fully automated processes.

The most valuable feature is GUI; it is very intuitive and easy to use. You can also access advanced features; for example, if you want to automate the process fully, you can either use other Software AG components or import/export to integrate with other software as well.

There is room for improvement in the solution. It might be a bit more difficult to use compared to simpler and more basic tools. However, if you're an IT professional, it's a user-friendly solution. The current trend is to make it more accessible for end users. It's not ideal for everyone, but it serves its purpose.

Moreover, there is room for improvement in the support.

I have quite a lot of experience with ARIS Cloud. And also similar to the previous versions of ARIS that were available.

It is a fairly stable solution. I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

The previous version was obviously fairly scalable. I assume the cloud version will be even more scalable. It can support large organizations.

I would rate scalability at about seven, but I'm not talking about the cloud version.

The customer service and support team is not bad. Most of my experience involved working with partners directly. So you could actually get more support from partners, but obviously, that's dependent on having one.

Neutral

There's another tool called Visual Paradigm. In a way, it's quite easy to use once you understand the product, but the lots of features and functionality information can be overwhelming. 

On the other hand, ARIS is more of a supported finished product, nicely packaged.

The initial setup on-prem required some level of expertise to set it up. 

When it comes to setting up in the cloud version, I assume it's a lot easier because there's no installation of software or setting it up. It comes in a preconfigured state where you can start using it as an end user.

It is not expensive. However, the previous version was very expensive, and that's why other tools like Virtual Paradigm were more attractive.

There's another one in this space, Visual Paradigm. We use that one too. It's similar to ARIS.

I would advise looking at the long-term cost, especially with a cloud solution. Consider paying the cost over a longer period. Also, consider the protection of human capital and integration with other tools and architecture.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. It is a good offering. It's proven, and my understanding is that it's more geared towards professionals. However, automation is shifting towards empowering end users. 

Overall, depending on the requirements and use cases, there may be other tools that are better suited to certain circumstances.

I have used it in multiple business processes in banking and insurance area.

In the end, what stands out to me is the ease of using the cloud. I don't see any distinct or unique advantages in business process modeling software compared to other application software. The cloud simplifies operations and removes many operational complexities, which is a significant benefit.          

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I have been using ARIS Cloud for the past 15 years. 

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten. 

We use the latest version because it's the cloud version so I imagine that this is the latest version that we use. It is used in a private cloud deployment. We are in the process of describing the complete map of our business processes and so we are mainly using the parts or the software that enable us to make the description of the different processes. So the tool enables us to describe using the BPMN native language, the different processes that we have in the company. We have about fifteen users using Aris Cloud.

We had used other products before Aris Cloud and we have chosen to go for the ARIS system. We are quite happy because it's very easy to collaborate with. It's very user-friendly, intuitive for the end-users to use the tool. So we are happy. It's perfectly answering our needs. If I compare again to what I know and what we used in the past, it's a very good tool.

The price is quite high. This is one weak point of the solution.

We have been working with ARIS Cloud for almost a year.

Stability is very good. I haven't heard anything wrong about the tool regarding stability.

I cannot really judge scalability because today we are a limited number of users using the tools. We have deployed the tool for enabling the business process experts within the company to describe the business processes. One of the next steps is to enlarge the users who will use our system but more as a viewer of the processes. We will do this within a few months, maybe six months from now.

They work with partners and we are supported by the partner service. We work with these partners and the support is very good.

We have used other tools in the past. We have used the major software for example. We were not very happy about that solution because it was quite difficult to use for our users. Then we switched to another solution but I can't remember the name. It's a tool that is network-based. But it was a tool a bit like these, the problem was that for the corporation it was quite difficult because everybody made their own version of the description of the processes and then it was quite difficult to integrate everything.

I think it was a complex one because it's a private cloud but we just needed to do a secure connection between our system and the external cloud. 

We compared ARIS. It's very integrated. You can reuse the different objects and processes that you create. This was one of our main requirements to have a tool that was object-oriented in order to be able to reuse what is described very easily.

I would rate Aris Cloud at a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is connected to finance, back-office processing in certain areas, reconciliation from various departments with different processes and different data departments. 

For improvement, I think BPM-vendors should make their models more flexible. One approach would be:

• (a) to analyze the challenges of complex event processing in business environments subject to recurring change, 


• (b) to cluster observed agile adjustments into types and 


• (c) to extend their models to include the most common adjustment types. I think this is a very difficult issue, mathematically sound deadlock detection and prevention being one of the reasons.

Features that could be included relate to the above issues of flexibility. I'm not sure these issues could be solved in the next release, they might rather be included as goals in the medium and long-term strategy. It's really the vendors who would need to be involved in flexibility improvement and identifying the areas where it's required. I assume they are already doing that because they are quite interested in this area and are probably already on the right path.

Initial setup is rather complex. You have to find a way to isolate the complexity, and find common ground at a level where they don't need the details, and if you choose that level, then you can use this business process modeling and then later on plug in some interfaces to deal with the details and the complexities.

We've always gone for a higher level in price brackets, but actually I think if it really works and you can achieve a more uniform process and become a little bit more flexible, then I think the price is not really an issue. You need to prove that the return on investment is very high, and then the price isn't the deciding factor. It depends on who you talk to, accountants, for example, need to calculate the return. The pricing issue always comes up. If you can prove a good return on investment, then sometimes it's really so high that the price doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, if it's a good tool, people will stick with it. There are several tools that you can use very easily at the beginning, and later on, you find out they're lacking here or there, and in the end, it doesn't work well because of the environment or requirements that may be too complex for the tool. You might then choose a different solution, but I think in ARIS's case, that is not the issue.

It works pretty well but there are also some pieces that need adjustment, maybe it's a little too structured. So you have to learn lots of things, We'd wanted to test S2 models in the business process notation. But you need lots of experience to get into it, and ARIS has proven that it works also in complex circumstances. I might be in favor of some tools which are not really as good as I think, and there might be other tools which are very bad, and I really like them. For now, I simply haven't had experience in the other, smaller tools. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I began using ARIS five years ago. I started with version 7, then upgraded to version 9, and for the past six months, I have been using the cloud version.

This solution helps me to address various needs in my daily work. The majority of the time it helps me answer questions about business architecture by designing business process activities. Also, it answers questions related to the functional level of our software architecture.

I have been using a private-cloud deployment.

It's not a question if my organization should be digital or not. It really must be for several businesses to survive. 

With ARIS Cloud, we identified our goals, business processes and we turned them into a digital strategy. 

The most valuable feature is the platform because it allows me to access different devices using different operating systems, such as Microsoft or Mac.

In terms of UX design, somebody who has not had experience with ARIS will be able to use it very easily. They will, however, need to have knowledge about architecture and the facilities that ARIS can provide in a business situation.

I find that the on-premises version is more stable than the cloud version because I can use it in offline mode. It does not rely on the network or the internet.

The length of time for data retention needs to be improved. I was surprised when my license was deactivated and I could not access my data. The retention period in ARIS Cloud is only one month.

It would be very helpful if this solution were more open and could integrate with other solutions like ServiceNow. 

The initial setup of this solution is really easy.

This product offers a smart, digitally-oriented solution that is needed by many large companies in the world. It allows access off-premises, helping companies to migrate to the cloud. It seems that ARIS is committed to addressing the future needs of its customers.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.