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IBM BPM vs ServiceNow Orchestration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th), Application Infrastructure (8th)
ServiceNow Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.9%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Orchestration is 4.3%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
ShaheenKapery - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate, stable solution and incredibly good customer service
It is a long setup. It was customized to our company's requirements. Bearing in mind that there is not just an IT team. You've got an IT team consisting of end-users, consulting, and user support sides. Install support, ServiceNow support, application support, and so on. What ServiceNow does is it's really good at getting the tickets to the right person. That's the power of it. There's no issue with it. But you need to set that up in advance. You need to know the structure and who is responsible for each task. The initial setup does take a long time, and the organization might face some issues. But once you've got that resolved, it's amazing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This tool is very useful when it comes to enterprise-grade automation and governmental processes for the security aspects, performance, and reliability."
"Some of the features that I like the most are team management and process performance. They are both very useful and very powerful with regard to the workflow."
"Integration is a big plus for me."
"The customer service is outstanding."
"I like the APIs and the BPM coach is a good tool. But if I had to pick one, it would be the API."
"For me, the most important feature is the easy-to-use business process dashboard. It's simple to orchestrate business processes, and the interface is clean and intuitive. Once your workflow is designed on paper, it's easy for the business process manager to implement and follow it. Another IBM product that was good in the past is the IBM Case Manager. I haven't used it for three or four years, so I'm unsure if it's still available, but it was quite effective."
"By automating several tasks, we have already reduced a lot of work for the business."
"We use it for automating certain processes which previously took a lot of time for agents to set up different products for customers. They would have to enter a lot of different systems. This has now mostly been automated."
"This is a user-friendly solution where scripts can be made with ease. There are also many integration options, including Microsoft products, which gives the product a competitive edge."
"The iTerm suite is also crucial for visibility and optimization."
"It has competitive AI capabilities."
"It's scalable."
"The data visualization is good."
"Great with IT processes and business processes."
"Employee onboarding, de-boarding, and other service-provision features make the process easier and it saves us a lot of time."
"Provisioning of new systems is among the most impactful features for automating complex workflows with ServiceNow Orchestration."
 

Cons

"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"I would say the scalability is very good but it's not perfect. It is much more scalable than it has been in the past but... it does require some work to keep it stable. So that is an area that should be improved."
"We had hoped that the product would provide us with plug-ins like Salesforce. Its development environment needs to improve. We expect to see elastic features like containerization. We don't just need an on-prem virtual machine."
"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"UI is an area with a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"The initial setup can be tricky because IBM BPM is not based on a popular stack, and it's difficult to hire a developer for this product."
"You must have good experience to work with it. It is not that easy. Its installation is complex, especially in the new version for business automation, and it could be improved. It has a safety application embedded inside it, and you need to do a lot of configuration to install it. I have been working for two days to resolve an issue."
"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."
"There should be connectors to cover at least the top industry applications, and they should be easier to configure in a plug-and-play fashion."
"I would like a user experience module to be added."
"Efficiency of some features could be improved."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"Frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades."
"We cannot perform GUI automation using the tool."
"The flow rate for releases and updates is very, very slow and does not meet customers' objectives for scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."
"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."
"It is not very expensive."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?
The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Orchestration?
The cost of ServiceNow Orchestration is considered medium; it is expensive but powerful. I would rate the pricing experience as a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?
The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow ( /products/servicenow-reviews ) partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. ServiceNow Orchestration and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.