ARIS BPA vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

Software AG and Quest Software are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Software AG is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0, while Quest Software is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4. Software AG holds a 6.7% mindshare in BPD, compared to Quest Software’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Software AG users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

ARIS BPA

Read 69 ARIS BPA reviews

5,300 Views
3,498 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

Read 46 erwin Data Modeler reviews

5,210 Views
1,563 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ARIS BPA

erwin Data Modeler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

ARIS BPA and erwin Data Modeler are prominent competitors in enterprise modeling, focusing on business process and data management, respectively. ARIS BPA appears to have an advantage with its flexible and comprehensive process modeling environment that offers deep insights into enterprise operations.

Features: ARIS BPA offers a broad range of modeling capabilities, integrating various methodologies and systems, which help gain insights into enterprise operations. It is notable for its support of different methodologies such as EPC and BPM, allowing for robust process simulations. erwin Data Modeler stands out with advanced data modeling tools such as the Bulk Editor and Reverse Engineering. It enhances data visualization and standardization, crucial for data structure management.

Room for Improvement: ARIS BPA lacks a built-in workflow engine, which limits real-time process usage and automation. The integration and scripting costs are high. erwin Data Modeler struggles with user interface simplicity and cloud compatibility. Its stability during extensive use also needs enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ARIS BPA supports flexible deployment options including hybrid and private cloud setups but receives mixed reviews on technical support, specifically because of communication delays. erwin Data Modeler is often deployed on-premises, indicating less cloud adaptability. However, it is praised for responsive and effective technical support.

Pricing and ROI: ARIS BPA is viewed as an expensive investment, suitable for larger enterprises with complex licensing models. Its full utilization in process documentation and analysis can provide significant ROI. erwin Data Modeler maintains a premium pricing level, positioned for enterprise data management with perceived reasonable ROI, especially with its concurrent licensing model.

To learn more, read our detailed ARIS BPA vs. erwin Data Modeler Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Data Modeler

December 2025

Download the complete report

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.2

ARIS BPA varies in ROI timelines, enhancing process understanding and control but with hard-to-quantify financial impacts.

Sentiment score

4.8

erwin Data Modeler improves productivity and efficiency with enhanced data management, governance, and automation, offering significant time savings.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

If three engineers save ten hours each per month using erwin Data Modeler versus manual modeling, that equals three hundred sixty hours saved per year.

Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

It replaces manual charting in Visio with a structured tool, providing significant return on investment.

Anthony Woods

Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

If the modeling is compromised, then the entire structure will be compromised.

reviewer2795649

Senior Data Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.7

ARIS BPA's support is praised for technical assistance and flexibility but could improve in responsiveness and communication.

Sentiment score

6.0

Erwin Data Modeler support is helpful and proactive, with minor delays; ratings are generally between seven to nine.

I would give ten points to the technical support from Software AG for ARIS BPA product, from zero to ten, with ten being the best.

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

The consultants are fine, however, reliance on single experts for modules can be risky.

reviewer2625741

Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

The quality and speed of their support are excellent; everyone is very helpful, and they can solve problems quickly.

Yang Jiao

Senior Data Scientist at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

This rating reflects my ability to effectively utilize the tool and get support for licensing issues, installation errors, or corrupted repositories end-to-end.

Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

Quest is committed to keeping the product robust.

Anthony Woods

Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.6

ARIS BPA is scalable for small to large enterprises, offering flexibility, modular features, and easy licensing for process management expansion.

Sentiment score

6.5

Erwin Data Modeler is scalable, supporting multiple platforms, handling complex architectures, and suitable for cloud and on-premise use.

For user scalability, it is a matter of licenses, while functional scalability is supported and easy to implement.

reviewer2625741

Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

ARIS BPA has high scalability and wide scalability for any enterprise or organization.

Sherif Allam

Enterprise Architect at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Egypt

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

I would rate it probably a nine, making it a leader in data modeling.

Anthony Woods

Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

erwin Data Modeler had a very good standardization infrastructure and supported a controlled multi-user environment with check-ins and check-outs.

Monisha Sharma

Data Metrics Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Performance can degrade during larger collaborations and requires tuning for optimal performance.

Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.2

ARIS BPA is generally stable, with minor issues primarily in large environments, but responsive support enhances stability perception.

Sentiment score

6.0

erwin Data Modeler is stable and reliable, but performance and memory issues can occur with large models and older versions.

The stability of ARIS BPM is quite strong, rated eight out of ten.

reviewer2625741

Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

We do experience a lot of glitches with ARIS BPA.

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

This lack of an auto-save methodology can be improved so that if a system crash occurs, work can be saved and rework can be avoided.

Khadarvalli Phatan

Data Modeler at Capgemini

New versions often introduce enhanced features but may cause model crashes due to memory exhaustion.

Anthony Woods

Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Sometimes when I want to open the attribute editor, it stops working and the whole application freezes.

Yang Jiao

Senior Data Scientist at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Room For Improvement

ARIS BPA needs better integration, user interface, scripting, documentation, training, pricing, and simplicity for wider accessibility.

Erwin Data Modeler users seek improvements in user interface, big data support, API documentation, and broader database compatibility.

Software AG should focus on developing AI models for ARIS BPA on-premises, particularly in user interfaces, as well as creating predefined business processes for common areas such as HR and finance.

Tamer Eldamanhouri

Software Engineering & Manager at Arab Infromation Management Services

Software AG could improve this by making the database more open.

reviewer2625741

Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents.

Sherif Allam

Enterprise Architect at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Egypt

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

The previous version of erwin Data Modeler used to crash unaccountably, but this one hasn't ever crashed on me, so it's been a lot more stable than the previous version that we had.

Alton Thibodeaux

Data Warehouse Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and how to use it, to be very useful because data modeling is not very popular in the data area and there aren't many educational videos regarding erwin Data Modeler.

Yang Jiao

Senior Data Scientist at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Erwin Data Modeler could improve in areas such as the interface, as there are features like copy and paste, creating duplicates, and the visualization elements and toolbars which feel quite old.

Khadarvalli Phatan

Data Modeler at Capgemini

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Setup Cost

ARIS BPA pricing is high but valued by large enterprises; smaller firms may find costs prohibitive due to complex licensing.

Erwin Data Modeler provides flexible licensing but can be costly compared to open-source alternatives, with moderate maintenance fees.

ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform different kinds of analysis, extract reports, and see processes.

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

For a cloud or SaaS standard edition, it typically runs around two hundred to two hundred ninety-nine US dollars per month.

Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations looking to store business information and relationship values may consider the pricing.

Khadarvalli Phatan

Data Modeler at Capgemini

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Valuable Features

ARIS BPA offers powerful modeling, customization, and collaboration tools, integrating SAP and databases, ensuring strategic alignment and governance.

Erwin Data Modeler enhances database management with visualization, version control, automation, and adaptability, fostering efficient collaboration and governance.

ARIS BPA is a tool to build models and frameworks for organizations or reengineer business processes from both functional and business perspectives.

Tamer Eldamanhouri

Software Engineering & Manager at Arab Infromation Management Services

Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual.

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

The maintenance capabilities of ARIS BPM and the strong underlying database are particularly valuable.

reviewer2625741

Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ARIS BPA report

One of the key aspects of data governance is defining the data dictionary and clearly identifying which data is accessible by whom and what is not accessible, particularly regarding PII-related data.

Asish Sahu

SPM at Infosys

The way the data is organized and you have a visual of that organization helps a great deal in terms of trying to remember what you did and trying to retrieve the information.

Monisha Sharma

Data Metrics Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability.

Anthony Woods

Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the erwin Data Modeler report

Categories and Ranking

ARIS BPA

Ranking in Business Process Design

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (10th)

erwin Data Modeler

Ranking in Business Process Design

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (2nd), Data Governance (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS BPA is 6.7%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 2.5%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ARIS BPA	6.7%
erwin Data Modeler	2.5%
Other	90.8%

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

Has improved process modeling and analysis while supporting integration with organizational data

The process design in ARIS BPA does help with our operational efficiency. What we are doing is object library management for various kinds of objects that we are using in ARIS BPA during our process modeling. We are using that to do a lot of analysis on how many times a system is being used in how many processes, who are the major stakeholders, and if we enhance one system, how is it going to impact other processes and integrated processes. This is helping us a lot. Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual. We are doing a lot of things with regards to the processes as it is at our heart. Processes are one thing and then we have different kinds of things which are related to it, such as SLAs, guidelines, and policy. We are identifying areas of improvement in other documents as well.

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Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

Data modeling has transformed regulatory reporting and collaboration across cloud environments

In erwin Data Modeler, areas that have room for improvement include performance improvements. I see that large models sometimes cause it to be slow when opening. Impact analysis can lag as well. Version control is another aspect. If we have developed a current version, it is not integrated with Git where we can easily compare different versions. UI modernization is also something we cannot utilize as it is primarily for development. Additionally, cloud-specific optimizations are needed when it comes to Snowflake or Databricks. When it comes to AI aspects, auto-suggestions for normalization or identifying primary, foreign, or surrogate keys are areas that can be improved.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS BPA?

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?

It is a bit expensive regarding ARIS BPA. However, ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?

We are not using any what-if scenario features in ARIS BPA. Currently, we are not using the performance monitoring and compliance checks features in ARIS BPA. We have plans to use them, but current...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Regarding pricing, I am unsure what the exact price is for erwin Data Modeler, but I believe it is not useful for an individual. It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations l...

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I write code and I write code accessing erwin Data Modeler's API, the Application Programming Interface, so that I can use Excel to update erwin Data Modeler and then get those updates and put them...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I work for CVS with a pretty big database as a data modeler on the PBMs, the Caremark PBM side, which is the Pharmacy Benefits Manager. There's a retail side too for all the stores, but our data wa...

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Comparisons

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs ARIS BPA

Compared 19% of the time

Camunda vs ARIS BPA

Compared 8% of the time

ADONIS vs ARIS BPA

Compared 7% of the time

Bizagi vs ARIS BPA

Compared 6% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs ARIS BPA

Compared 5% of the time

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SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 41% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 11% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 7% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 5% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA

January 2026

Download ARIS BPA product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

January 2026

Download erwin Data Modeler product report

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM

erwin DM

Overview

ARIS is the market-leading solution for professional business process management and modeling. Whether you want to document the "as-is" state of your operations for quality or certification reasons or design the "to-be" in terms of continuous improvement in your transformation program, ARIS is the best choice for establishing a single source of truth regarding all process excellence topics in your organization. It is for any organization looking to digitally transform their business, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution. ARIS helps you to make the most out of your processes with Process Mining, Risk & Compliance Management, RPA and much more.

What makes the difference?

The most comprehensive platform for process excellence in the market
Easy to use
Covers business & IT architecture from all angles
Full flexibility and >100 diagram types
Customer-driven development based on best practices
Strong partner ecosystem

ARIS is the market-leading solution for any organization and ideally suited to digitally transform the organization, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution.

Software AG

Erwin Data Modeler provides an effective approach to visualizing and managing data models. It assists in creating, reversing, and synchronizing data models with ease, supporting logical and physical transitions while enhancing understanding across teams.

Erwin Data Modeler is a comprehensive tool designed for professional database management. It offers capabilities to organize and enforce standards, automating script generation with robust reverse engineering and DDL output. Users can manage complex data environments, capitalize on integration with data intelligence, and maintain large-scale databases smoothly. Despite its strengths, improvements in multi-language support, database integration, and reporting features are needed. Users benefit from extensive support for conceptual, logical, and physical database modeling, enhancing architectural design and data governance for platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata.

What are the key features of Erwin Data Modeler?

Visual Representation: Facilitates clear visualization of data models, aiding comprehension.
Versioning and Editing: Enhance usability with versioning and bulk editing capabilities.
Reverse Engineering: Offers powerful tools for reverse engineering and DDL generation.
Integration: Aligns with data intelligence to streamline database management.
Naming Standards: Enforces consistency with automated script creation.

What benefits should users consider in Erwin Data Modeler reviews?

Collaboration: Promotes team understanding and collaboration through visual tools.
Automation: Reduces manual effort through automated processes and integration.
Scalability: Handles large database management efficiently, crucial for enterprise settings.
Data Governance: Facilitates effective data governance with structured modeling.

Erwin Data Modeler finds application in industries focused on robust data management, implementing it for enterprise data warehouses, business domain models, and operational systems. It supports architectural design and governance, aligning with business applications demanding precise data representation and visualization.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Data Modeler

December 2025

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