We performed a comparison between SAP PowerDesigner and Visio based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about LeanIX, Sparx Systems, erwin by Quest and others in Enterprise Architecture Management."It offers a lot of features in one solution. You would have to get multiple other products to bundle together all of the capabilities that you get in just this product."
"I do a data-centric design, so for me, the data analysis and design tools are the most valuable features."
"It can automate many routine tasks and save human resources to focus on real problems."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a very fast reverse engineering process. It does a very expansive comparison."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models."
"I mostly work on the conceptual and logical side of things, and I enjoy how easy it is to use."
"SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool that does what I need it to do. What I like most about it is that it's stable, fast, and easy to understand."
"SAP PowerDesigner is fairly stable."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Visio makes it easy to communicate your ideas from several areas of your imagination across several domains."
"Putting details into the process flow and being able to link other objects into the diagrams are very helpful features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"A major benefit of Visio is its user-friendliness. Upon opening the program, you have access to a variety of pre-made templates, saving you time and effort. All you need to do is input your data into the template and you're ready to proceed with your project."
"It works really well for flowcharting, it can label."
"The interface of the solution is very good. It's easy to navigate."
"The valuable feature about Visio is it has all the basic tools for creating processes."
"Checking-in models to the repository, especially when working remotely, is a slow process than can sometimes have problems with models being corrupted."
"This product lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements."
"It would be helpful if there were glossary, catalog and governance tools. It would help make it a true end-to-end product."
"UI could be improved by enabling simpler navigation."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"The focus is more on mainstream development environments, and I see a lack of focus on the open source world. I think SAP PowerDesigner probably interfaces better with SQL Server and Db2 but not with open source databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL."
"There are many areas of this solution that needs to be changed."
"The solution itself does not need to be improved. However, they could add support for different languages."
"There are a lot of patches that sometimes change how one version will interact compared to another."
"The platform has limitations in managing aspects like repositories."
"I would like to see traceability. It doesn't have it. You cannot find one object amongst several sheets of Visio diagrams."
"I can't speak to any missing features. It's been fine so far."
"Visio is not as scalable as other tools due to the proprietary restriction. You cannot customize it or scale it up like the way you do with Trello or Jira. Microsoft places restrictions on things that you can do with Visio."
"Extremely large complex drawings need to be saved on the cloud for access."
"The product's installation phase can be a difficult process if you don't have the deployment script with you since it is very important to know what you are doing when you are dealing with the setup process."
"It is a visualization tool, so database visualization is pretty static in it. They haven't moved the ERDs very well. They haven't adopted any real visualization like what you have in Hackolade for JSON or other data patterns. It has none of that. If you go onto broader patterns, you can actually label and integrate with a data set, if you want, for Visio, but it's very clunky and very difficult for me to assign that to another user. I can't assign it to a junior or a documenter. They really haven't cleaned up and made their tools simpler to use when linking to data, which is primarily what you're trying to do."
SAP PowerDesigner is ranked 5th in Enterprise Architecture Management with 34 reviews while Visio is ranked 1st in Business Process Design with 100 reviews. SAP PowerDesigner is rated 7.8, while Visio is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of SAP PowerDesigner writes "Effective in terms of validating everything, but sometimes they don't allow us some flexibility and GUI could improve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Visio writes "A software for drawing a variety of diagrams which include flowcharts, org charts, building plans, floor plans, data flow diagrams". SAP PowerDesigner is most compared with erwin Data Modeler by Quest, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, IDERA ER/Studio, LeanIX and BiZZdesign HoriZZon, whereas Visio is most compared with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Bizagi, Visual Paradigm, IBM Blueworks Live and iServer.
We monitor all Enterprise Architecture Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
