We performed a comparison between Appian and IBM BPM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Process Management (BPM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Appian is a very low code platform. It's very easy to learn and use."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Since implementing we have had a faster time to solution, with fewer resources needed."
"It has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly."
"Even with an on-premise implementation, the scalability is still high, so it is easy to scale up."
"SAIL (Self-Assembling Interface Layer), a scripting language provided by Appian. It is the equivalent of JS and CSS. It allows creation of complex UIs which are also responsive. With SAIL, we have a single language for both the UI logic and its appearance. UI components can be built as reusable components and used in multiple UI interfaces."
"The technical support is excellent."
"The solution is stable."
"They have some quick-win programs that are designed to come in, they'll bring a developer in and they'll work with your developer to get you started. That's what we did and that worked really great. We got an understanding of the product, we got an understanding of how to deploy the product. And when we were done with that engagement, we were off and running."
"It is efficient in reducing costs."
"Technical support is good. They are very responsive. It is usually me who takes more time to get back to them than they take to get back to me, which is good."
"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products."
"Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"There is information during the process that the analyst will look at, their procedures. We created a part of the application such that the business can change those procedures as needed, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. As the reps go through the process, they don't necessarily know it's changing, they just know they have to refer to some documentation, and the business can keep that up to date."
"Appian could be improved by making it a strict, no-code platform with free-built process packs."
"Appian has a few areas for improvement, which my organization raised with the Appian team. One is the Excel output which is limited to fifty columns when it should be up to two hundred or three hundred columns."
"A point of improvement would be the SAIL forms. The built-in tool used to generate forms does not have debugging support (to view local variables as they change on live preview, and step-by-step valuation) which is a big drawback for form development. Moreover, the script language used to build SAIL forms does not support inheritance or lambda expressions (functions as arguments of other functions), which makes the code base more verbose."
"The solution could improve by being more responsive when dealing with large quantities of data. Additionally, they can make the decision or rules engine better. It cannot handle too many rules or too many decisions at once."
"Form creation and SAIL proprietary language still basically require programming. The claim a BA type can do everything is hogwash."
"Native mobile capabilities or hybrid mobile app capabilities are very limited. Things like offline sync, offline storage, access to smartphone device features, etc. are not supported by the Appian platform yet."
"Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example."
"The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively."
"The constant switch between Eclipse and its web versions can be annoying and confusing."
"IBM BPM needs to have a better and modified interface."
"IBM BPM uses JavaScript as a programming language for the server-side. I don’t know why it’s not Java, as it’s more powerful and the JavaScript part is translated into Java anyway."
"IBM BPM's price could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the stability."
"I'm hearing things might be improving, to really deliver on BPM as opposed to simply workflow. That really should be emphasized a lot more than it has been, because a lot of customers will simply implement the process and leave it there, because the product maybe doesn't emphasize BPM as much as it should, as much as maybe they talk about it in the sales process. The whole idea of BPM, is to iteratively improve the process, and in order to do that you have to have the analytics tool with it. A lot of times that doesn't go as far as it should simply because there's a lot more work to be done for that to happen, and just some sort of technical limitations that don't make that as easy as it should be."
"The people working on the front desk are having some problem with managing the documentation. For instance, they get a picture, and if the picture comes rotated 90 degrees, together with a picture that is not rotated, they have some problems dealing with that, technically. There are some minor aspects that on the usability side that are still lacking. That has to do with FileNet, too, I'm talking about the suite together."
"I would like to see the front-end support improved because it should be fully integrated and supported."
Appian is ranked 4th in Business Process Management (BPM) with 57 reviews while IBM BPM is ranked 5th in Business Process Management (BPM) with 105 reviews. Appian is rated 8.4, while IBM BPM is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Appian writes "Low resource consumption, easy setup, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM BPM writes "Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve". Appian is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, OutSystems, Camunda, ServiceNow and Bizagi, whereas IBM BPM is most compared with Camunda, Pega BPM, IBM Business Automation Workflow, Apache Airflow and AWS Step Functions. See our Appian vs. IBM BPM report.
See our list of best Business Process Management (BPM) vendors and best Process Automation vendors.
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