We performed a comparison between IBM Blueworks Live and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Process Design solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic."
"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."
"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."
"The licenses are transferrable between different users."
"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."
"The ease of documenting and digitizing the processes was valuable to us."
"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."
"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect supports multiple modeling languages like ArchiMate for database design, software lifecycle visualization, and team management."
"Automated document generation is a real time saver, no more cut and paste, no more keeping track of which diagrams are in which reports, no more last minute update panics. Just click a mouse and you've got an up to date report."
"The advantages of Enterprise are that it's cheaper and much more practical than MagicDraw."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We could capture the process models around 24 countries with all their local variations."
"There are a couple of things. Price is one thing, but we also like the scriptability of it. We got into scripting it and automating tasks with it, and it is super duper easy to do and helpful. The API has improved over the years. We automate everything, and I love the automation aspects of it."
"Ability to maintain cross-references for all models in all levels - great tractability."
"It's a stable and scalable solution. I like that it's similar to Rational Rose."
"We would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."
"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."
"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."
"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."
"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
"The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex however you do need to know what you are doing."
"Its usability needs to be improved. For non-technical users, it is a little difficult to understand how Enterprise Architect works. Users who are not engineers find it difficult to understand how this tool works. This is something they need to work on. They can develop a BPM model to simulate processes."
"If you just want to create some diagrams with shapes and arrows, then use Visio."
"I would like it to be less of a general tool. Currently, it is not a Swiss army knife that can do everything. It is not specialized for our purposes. We are a civil engineering company. We build things. We work mostly in what is known as Infra world in the Netherlands, which comprises objects such as bridges, locks, and water management. We would like to see more focus on such types of projects. It would be nice if it has more specializations. At the moment, it is very generic, and you have to create everything yourself. Our focus is more on user requirement management, which is currently very basic. I would like to see a lot more functionality in this area. Its basic functions for adding user requirements are perfect, but we need more features. Currently, it has limited possibilities for our requirements. I would also like to see better contract management and have it managed in a certain way."
"Insufficient control of metadata and standards."
"The Portfolio Management features can be added in the next release. As it helps you to manage more portfolio of projects and architectures of cost projects on a portfolio level. This would be an important feature in the next release."
"When the model is large, it is a bit slow to render."
"Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application."
"One room for improvement in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is that it's not very friendly. Another room for improvement in the tool is that it doesn't enable you to import the metadata from a database very easily, so reverse engineering of a database was very difficult. Its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement."
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IBM Blueworks Live is ranked 12th in Business Process Design with 20 reviews while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is ranked 4th in Business Process Design with 97 reviews. IBM Blueworks Live is rated 8.2, while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Blueworks Live writes "An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect writes "Easy to set up and had no issues with stability, but it's not a very friendly tool, and its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement". IBM Blueworks Live is most compared with Visio, SAP Signavio Process Manager, Lucidchart, ARIS Cloud and ARIS BPA, whereas Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is most compared with Visual Paradigm, Visio, No Magic MagicDraw, LeanIX and Lucidchart. See our IBM Blueworks Live vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect report.
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