IBM BPM Reviews

We primarily use the solution to develop some internal applications and as a business process modeler. It is a way to prototype and start developing applications.

The solution provides an easy way to develop. It's simple to use. 

The solution is stable. 

I would like them to make the tool more user-friendly in order to make the development process even simpler. They use an outdated programming language. 

I'd like the tool to be more flexible. It should be modernized a bit. It looks outdated. 

The initial setup can be challenging. 

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of reliability. 

The solution isn't exactly scalable. I'd rate it two out of ten overall. 

Technical support is okay. 

I am also starting to use Cloud Pak.

The initial setup is challenging. However, once it is done, it's done. It's not hard in the sense that you don't have a lot of other things to do. 

Right now, we are integrating from Cloud Pak. The cloud makes it easy to handle, and we have the help of IBM engineers. Once again, you do it once, and it is done. After that, you are just using it.

I'd rate the initial setup a two out of ten in terms of ease of use. That's in terms of IBM in general, as we have a lot of IBM products. This product has a generally much easier process, however, IBM is hard. 

We did not use a third-party consultant. We worked with IBM engineers. We talked directly to them and were able to set everything up. 

The solution is expensive. The company may not be of the opinion it is expensive, however, it is expensive when I look at the total cost. I'd rate it eight out of ten in terms of how expensive it is.

We are IBM partners. 

I'd rate the product as a whole six out of ten. It is okay in general. 

We use it to architect our core services and business processes. For example, my company is responsible for issuing licenses to oil and gas vendors who operate petrol and gas stations. This is a very complex process starting from submission of the license request to the approval by the minister's office, and then checking the localization policy to see where they can give approval. We use IBM BPM in a plethora of complex processes in different areas of our business.

Initially, the process architecture studio was very helpful and it was compliant with BPMN standards. In the beginning it definitely gave us mileage in terms of business process designing, but nowadays, there are very good and smart tools that have OCR and AI facilities. Currently, the tool looks quite ineffective in a digital transformation environment. We're a mix of proprietary and open source tools, and we don't find IBM very inclusive.

IBM, as a suite, is becoming more and more obsolete because it obliges the customer to buy multiple tools for the same purpose. For example, BPM is only for architecting the business process workflow, and then you need to integrate it with the DataPower solution to bring in the data. There are also other tools for the process mining part that are not a part of BPM. From a business perspective, to achieve one goal we have to license multiple IBM tools on-premise, whereas there are other competitive tools that are assembled and engineered on one platform, and can be utilized in a much simpler and more seamless way. That is why we're finding it very difficult to continue working with the IBM stack. They need to unify the process landscape into one engine.

AI-enabled BPM tools are more relevant these days, where you use artificial intelligence to understand process pitfalls and you apply that in your process design and logic. I would like IBM to consider including AI-enabled process mining, robotic process automation, and very good OCR capabilities from the computer vision side.

I have been working with this solution for five years. 

The stability is good. I would give it a seven out of ten.

The scalability of the solution is high. It's a seven out of ten. 

We have a team of about six people, our business analysis team, who run the solution. There are about 2,000 end users. 

From a user-friendliness perspective, I would rate it as a six out of ten. There was definitely a learning curve to adopt the tool and understand all of its features, but once learned, it was a very good tool for that period of time - about four or five years ago.

Our deployment was done by SBM, Saudi Business Machine, which is the Saudi partner of IBM Global. Our solution designer worked with a business process architect, middleware solution designer, and tool specialists from IBM. There were around eight consultants on the IBM team from different technical backgrounds. Our deployment involved the entire middleware with BPM and DataPower. It took around one and a half years.

Now, our IBM BPM maintenance is outsourced. There is a contract team of three engineers who are maintaining the software because a lot of processes are housed on IBM BPM and the processes need tweaks from time to time.

I would say the ROI is moderate because the license prices are high and the operation and maintenance cost is high. Just like Oracle ERP, you rarely see an ROI, but it becomes intrinsic to your organization. It's the same with any BPM tool. Even if you don't have a very high ROI, somehow you get captivated, locked into the tool.

I would say the ROI is a six out of ten.

The pricing is very high. On a scale of one to ten, if ten is high, I would say it's an eight. The total cost of ownership over a period of time is very high.

It is usually a one-year license. Last time, for a better price, we paid for three years upfront.  

I would rate this solution as a six out of ten.

I suggest that those looking into this tool do proper benchmarking and visit the Gartner and Forrester reports and PeerSpot reports before choosing IBM. Also, if they are going for this tool, it is better to have a strong in-house team for not only deployment, but also utilizing the tool later on.

We use this solution for business workflow automation.

It is a a very powerful solution.

It is not user-friendly and requires a knowledgeable and skilled user to work with it. If an end-user has no idea about the technology, they will have difficulties. The product requires the end user to be skilled with prerequisites and have the ability to configure and tailor the product to express the workflow. Most IBM products in layer seven, middleware or the application layer, are not user-friendly.

The workflow is also difficult. In any organization, many departments are involved in the workflow from the start to the end of the procedure. That's why we must be aware of an organization's manual process to reflect it in the product. The product could ask the user questions, and based on the answers, it can develop the workflow, which makes it much easier.

We have been using this solution for more than 12 years. It is deployed on private cloud.

It is a stable and powerful solution.

It is a scalable solution, and one small company that is a customer uses this solution. They do tender development proposal evaluations for clients.

The initial setup was easy but using it after became a bit challenging. Deployment took about one day, and we are a big organization.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I would advise others to compare IBM BPM with other equivalent products in the market before deciding.

I primarily use IBM BPM for the life cycle of the automation process.

IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration.

I've been using IBM BPM for ten years.

IBM BPM's scalability is very high.

IBM BPM's price could be improved.

I would give IBM BPM a rating of eight out of ten.

It's a solid product. It covers most of the pain points for clients.

It might not be suitable for entry level clients because it comes with a huge number of modules for processing that at times might not be necessary for upcoming clients. It's too complex, but it's suitable for the enterprise level.

I've been using this solution for 10 years.

It's stable. We haven't had any issues.

With the business process tool, it needs to be customized according to what the clients want. So, complexities will be there.

The pricing is high.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

We have encountered different use cases with our clients. For example, in the financial, oil field, and automotive areas, we have used the solution for onboarding applications.

IBM BPM is equipped with all the functionalities which are needed for building BPM enterprise-level applications. The integration is very good by using the restore service. The UI has improved and it is now a lot better.

There needs to be better documentation for IBM BPM in a central place. There is not any standard documentation for each component available and has been a barrier for developers.

I have been using this solution for approximately nine years.

The IBM engine is very powerful, it is highly stable.

IBM BPM has been scalable our my experience.

The support needs to improve.

The initial setup was complex and can be made simpler by starting with better documentation.

I have evaluated Pega and Appian which have come to be major competitors for IBM in the market. IBM BPM site is lacking documentation and that is why customers are going to other solutions.

I would advise those wanting to use IBM BPM to have very experienced consultants at the time of implementation because it is essential to have the infrastructure properly configured. The solution is available on-premise and on the cloud, it is important to follow best practices with the developers, if they are ignored, then the infrastructure and applications will be in trouble. It is important to have good supervision from an architect, without one, IBM BPM will not be as useful as it could be.

I rate IBM BPM a six out of ten. 

I'm a consultant. We are working for a consulting company, and we initiate solutions in IBM BPM at the moment, mostly for banks.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the product. It has a lot of capabilities and potential. 

This is technology, and there's always room for improvement. It would be better to have a single solution. Trying to have an overview in terms of this solution brings together the concepts of BPM processes, customer journeys, and an automation part for KPIs. All of this working together and coming up with a single solution with privacy is more commercial than anything else.

Because when you try and initiate things, we see that it's two different applications. But there's an effort to combine all of these applications and have an overview of internal processes. I believe they are making investments in this part, but they are probably delayed a bit.

Adding a control app or something easier in terms of maintaining the versioning will help. Make it easier to manage the patches so you can just do it and move on to the next one. Every time we tried to meet to do some upgrade of a version of the solution, it was a lot of work. Even minor upgrades always required a significant amount of work in intensities and trials.

From our side and our core customers, we didn't get any complaints.

Depending on the geographical area you're in, depending on the relevance of your customer, and if it's a big customer, the support goes very well. We don't have many complaints. If it's a smaller client in a smaller country, sometimes the support is delayed a bit, and we get some pushing from their side to make sure that we have a proper response.

We also have projects in our systems and projects with Comunda, and we are doing some parallelly. We also have some experience in using the BPMO methods and Software AG. It's not great, but for small things, it does the trick in terms of the licenses model. Sometimes depending on the situation, it becomes much more interesting for some of our clients.

The initial setup is kind of a pain when compared with other solutions like Comunda, which is more or less like plug-and-play and quite easy. The solution is quite quick in terms of IBM, and it's a bit more complex. Especially if you're talking about having a more enterprise environment, it becomes a bit complex. You have to configure a lot of additional components from that infrastructure to make sure it's running okay, and sometimes it becomes a bit complex.

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.

If you're talking about smaller companies or smaller clients, probably they're going for something more simple like Comunda or something else because it's much cheaper. Even the support becomes much cheaper than getting a full IBM BPM solution. 

If you're a very big company or a bank or don't want any headaches, you would probably prefer IBM. You know the old saying that no one has ever been fired for buying IBM. It's one of those things, and that rule still applies. 

I would advise potential users to get proper training and figure out the most suitable version that they need. Because in terms of internal versions and support, they need to be careful. Like all software, the latest versions always include some bugs. Older versions lack some support. You need to be careful about that. 

Have a proper solution architect that knows enough about the BPM system's ins and outs to make sure that you have proper internal support in terms of projects. Apart from that, try to build a close relationship with the vendor.

People who come from different technology backgrounds have some difficulty getting used to working with IBM products. If you compare it with other products, it's probably not as easygoing or as simple to implement as the rest. But after you get used to it, it works.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM BPM an eight.

We use the solution as a business process management platform.

The integration and design are valuable features.

The interface is limited and should improve in the future. We are having to develop an extended application to avoid the limitation in the interface design.

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have contacted customer service when we had some issues and it took quite some time. They could be more responsive.

We have an in-house team that does the implementation of the solution.

When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors.

I recommend this solution to those who have enterprise companies. If the business is small then the price of the solution would not make sense financially because it is expensive.

I rate IBM BPM an eight out of ten.

We have four clients that use this solution. We use IBM BPM for business processes. 

The price and the overall installation process could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for a couple of years. 

IBM BPM is both scalable and stable.

The technical support is fine. 

The initial setup takes three days. It can be a bit complex. 

We have two admins that handle all maintenance-related issues.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

We do use not the BPM alone; we use the BPM with the ODM and the BPM with the RPI from IBM too, which is Automation Anywhere. So we have a lot of pieces connect to accelerate the process. We have a business process to open accounts and a workflow from open accounts to transfers. The transfers include internal transfers and international transfers.  We have a business process to open accounts and a workflow from open accounts to transfers. The transfers include internal transfers and international transfers. We have about 60 processes, including nine complex processes implemented. We also have 20 ad-hoc processes. We created these processes in about a month.

The process is important. The processing functionality makes it easy to change processes and workflows easily. This is useful as our business is in constant transformation and is constantly changing. We have an internal team that knows the product well regarding BMP, and we do not often need the intervention or further support of IBM.

This is one of the best tools to support the business and the way we work, and the numerous processes we need to implement.

IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive. It would also be useful to be able to implement the product more quickly. The front end is not customised for a good user experience. It does not have an amicable interface.

We started using IBM BPM seven years ago.

IBM BPM can be scaled up and down to various layers. At the highest level, the solution is implemented quickly and suits our purpose. Lower levels provide more functions but take longer to implement.

When there are issues with the product, we need to raise a case with IBM, but the turnaround time for support requests is very long. However, generally, we don't have that many issues with the product.

We improved the setup process, but it can still take between 2 to 6 months to complete an implementation. If there are any issues, it can take up to a year to complete. It is a complex process.

It would be best if you chose the correct partner for implementation. If you don't use a partner with the correct knowledge and the implementation goes wrong, you need to re-implement, and it is a very time-consuming process. The implementation should ideally not be used as a learning process. We found this out by experience as we once had a partner with little experience, and as a result, a lot of errors occurred within the implementation. This cost a lot of time to resolve. We use an experienced integrator now to assist with the process.

It is a very expensive product.

It's a robust technology, able to support a lot of processes so that users can use it in a large group processing environment. I don't customers use the latest version. The latest version, 6.0, has been out for 2 to 3 months, but there have been many problems with it. It is best to use a mature version in the market, which is well established.