IBM Blueworks Live Reviews

We use Blueworks Live to put all our critical processes in one depository, within the bank.

We've been using Blueworks since IBM acquired it from Lombardi, so quite a while, and we're still using it, but there are quirks with it. That's why I'm here, at the Think 2018 conference, to actually talk with people, try to get some things fixed.

We use it as a process mapping tool.

We upload all our policies into Blueworks Live. It's used throughout the business for audit purposes, for backup purposes for employees.

In terms of it helping with process version control issues, I administrate our licenses. I don't actually build the processes themselves. So I don't know all the different processes within all the different departments, how they work and how they run everything.

For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great. My sales guy, Steve, he always picks up the phone when I call him. It's good to have somebody like him onboard.

I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. 

It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks.

The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people.

We'd like to be able to bring it on to our server. Because it's in the cloud I don't think that's going to happen.

We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that.

Right now, our challenge is - I work for Citibank. Citibank wants all its information on our side of the wall. This solution is on the cloud. So I'm hoping... I just heard something about the private cloud, but the issue is that we want to bring this on to our server. That's what we're working towards right now because I guess Citibank feels a little iffy that all our information is mixed with everybody else's, and it's vulnerable.

So far, though, the solution has been stable.

It's pretty big. We want to make this our go-to process diagram application. There are other vendors that we looked at. So far, IBM is the one that we're mostly interested in, but like I said before, there are flaws. There are groups, especially in compliance - even in our engineering - they want to see where we can improve in a process, where we can cut things down. They want to see where we're doubling employees doing the same work. So we're trying to save dollars by using this.

We were looking at cost effectiveness, if it's intuitive or not to the employee. We went with IBM because it's intuitive and because of the cost.

Originally we were with Lombardi, and IBM honored the contract that we had with Lombardi. That was great for us.

Straightforward, but I had to get our IT people involved. Before, what happened was, you would log in to blueworkslive.com. That meant that any employee from our bank could go home, log in, and all our process flows were there. So what we did was we worked with IBM and we worked with our IT people, and now we've integrated so that we have to be actually logged in to our Citi mainframe in order to get into Blueworks Live. So that's one good thing about it.

TIBCO, they were at the bottom of the list. Sparx, they were at the bottom of the list too. The top two were IBM Blueworks and an application called AG ARIS.

Use it. Test it, use it. It's great.

It also has a lot to do with my guy at IBM. If we had this, and I had to call in to a number all the time, and it was just support out in India... It's great, but it's a pain sometimes. The guy that I deal with, I call him - he's a sales guy, and I call him with my problems - and he puts me in touch with exactly who I'm supposed to speak with.

It's a good tool. I like it.

It was for business process, modeling and analytics, and it performed really well.

It has improved the way the organization functions. We were using it for design and modeling purposes. We didn't actually follow through with the tool into an operational process. So it was very much a discrete workshop-based activity.

We didn't use the document repository, at least, not extensively. We used it as a mapping tool.

• Real-time modeling and design work
• The ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool
• Getting instant output

In terms of the collaboration features, from the point of discovery, it was useful to go to load up the policies and the rule sets that the client had. And in terms of exploring options and being able to model a variety of different processes, that was incredibly useful as well.

Building out my first process model took quite a while, because I hadn't done it before. But the teething problems were very limited and very short-lived. Within 24 - 48 hours, we were pretty much in full flight.

As for process version control issues, that wasn't something we were particularly suffering from.

We didn't really explore the opportunities for process execution. So moving from the modeling to the process orchestration, it wasn't very clear how we would do that from a BPM perspective, and then into the larger tool set perspective. But I can't talk with authority on it. We just never actually got there.

Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful.

Really stable. We didn't have any stability issues at all.

I don't know about this actually. We didn't experience any problems with it, but we didn't use it at scale. It was fairly localized. I wouldn't have any concerns with using it at scale though.

We didn't use technical support.

We were using a previous solution, it was called "paper and ink." So we needed to something slightly more, well, less 19th-century and slightly more 21st-century.

When selecting a vendor, what's important is a vendor that understands and is able to provide a clear solution for the problem that's in front of us. In this particular instance, it was an answer to a question we didn't even know we were asking. We had what we thought was our set of requirements, and then we found we actually had a different set. Meaning, we had that first set of requirements and then some others. We were able to not just take one step but take several steps at once. So, having a vendor that understands the problem and is able to deliver the answer is important.

Straightforward. It was just really intuitive. It's not a particularly complicated tool to set up. There are fairly limited configuration requirements. It was reasonably straightforward.

We really only evaluated IBM in this particular scenario.

For what it did, for what we used it for, it was relatively complete.