ARIS Cloud Reviews

All the features are good. They all compare feature for feature very, very well to other solutions. It can do anything. 

In terms of using the cloud version, if you're somebody who, like myself, has got a lot of experience and understands measures and notations and things, basically it's unrestricted. You can do so many things. There's lots of stuff you can do in there and if you're a good field person and you find yourself re-using things, then it's very nice, it's very easy to use. But unfortunately, when you work in a corporate where you have tons of people and you have people coming in and out, contractors and consultants coming on board, and then it can become messy.

There's a lot that I like about it. The modeling is fairly easy. Although, now that I'm used to the Symbio stuff, I love the fact that the model gets generated because now all your process models, all, regardless of who's working on the system, they look the same. There's no artist type qualification to work in the thing. Whereas in Aris or any of those products, you have to be a bit of an artist to make sure the stuff looks good.

What I don't like is that it's got release cycle management at the model level. It makes the assumption that all the objects that you've been using on the model are actually also good quality. It doesn't really ensure that it is good quality with the latest version. You can create tons of duplicates in Aris, that's the problem. If you're not careful and you don't have very good governance in place, the system is not going to stop you from creating multiple instances of the same thing but different spelling, different underscores etc. For example, Microsoft CRM. Another person will call it MS CRM, somebody else will spell it out, MI-CRO-SOFT CRM. So you have all these things in the system which ultimately you're using to ensure the data quality. If you can't trust the data, if you can't do what-if analysis, then it becomes a problem.

You have to actually get somebody who has to run scripts, or a whole team in a big organization, to look at these things the whole time and make sure it's sound. I don't like that because it's not self-managing. In comparison, on the Symbio side, it's just the opposite. All objects in the thing are under the ownership of somebody in the business. If you use that object once on a process, for instance, you don't have to go and ask again. The system will check. That's in the latest release, you can actually then release your process, with other words and it gets published. But let's say for instance you now create something new, and it hasn't got an owner, you won't be able to publish your process because the system will tell you, no, you're using stuff on this process which hasn't been verified yet. That's what I like. I like the fact that it's more self-driving management system than something which you have to have a little cottage industry around it.

It's no different to, let's say, a CRM system. You don't want to have your contact details duplicated in the CRM system 20 times and then you don't know which one is which one. You don't want that, you want one. And that's the problem. That's a complete architecture from a design perspective. That's something you'll have to re-architect the platform completely to do.

On an enterprise level, the ability to onboard somebody quickly is cumbersome because it just has too many things in it. It's got something like a hundred or more techniques and things in it. If you don't have that bedded down exactly and can't do a how-to for somebody, is a nightmare.

The solution is very stable.

You have to pay for it obviously, but it can go from small to a medium enterprise to a large scale enterprise fairly easily. You have to pay for the bandwidth, and the capacity to use it on the cloud side but it's scalable.

The local support is not good. All the support goes back to Germany. The local support in South Africa for instance, I think this is basically a problem everywhere, it's not good. And the reason for that is when Aris was still part of IDS Scheer, IDS Scheer built small little businesses in each country so that there's an ownership model. Now, when they took over, they all have a big brother approach. They've got a ticketing system and basically run it like that. It doesn't have that personal touch. In the old days when IDS Scheer still owned it, you could phone a local representative and they knew the system, they knew the capabilities. It was like a first line. So the second line, the third line or tier, went then to Germany. But now everything goes to Germany. I don't like that. 

I can't speak to the difficulty or ease of the initial setup. Mine was set up for me. So I don't know really how difficult that is.

The majority of the time I've been using a hosted version and not the Cloud version, the Connect one. I've used the Connect one as well. Architecturally they're the same. They still have groups or folders. You still have a screen which is white when you start open and you have to put things on the screen. It's pretty much the same logic except that it's now cloud-based. It's slightly easier, and you can collaborate.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.

Our primary use case is connected to finance, back-office processing in certain areas, reconciliation from various departments with different processes and different data departments. 

For improvement, I think BPM-vendors should make their models more flexible. One approach would be:

• (a) to analyze the challenges of complex event processing in business environments subject to recurring change, 
• (b) to cluster observed agile adjustments into types and 
• (c) to extend their models to include the most common adjustment types. I think this is a very difficult issue, mathematically sound deadlock detection and prevention being one of the reasons.

Features that could be included relate to the above issues of flexibility. I'm not sure these issues could be solved in the next release, they might rather be included as goals in the medium and long-term strategy. It's really the vendors who would need to be involved in flexibility improvement and identifying the areas where it's required. I assume they are already doing that because they are quite interested in this area and are probably already on the right path.

Initial setup is rather complex. You have to find a way to isolate the complexity, and find common ground at a level where they don't need the details, and if you choose that level, then you can use this business process modeling and then later on plug in some interfaces to deal with the details and the complexities.

We've always gone for a higher level in price brackets, but actually I think if it really works and you can achieve a more uniform process and become a little bit more flexible, then I think the price is not really an issue. You need to prove that the return on investment is very high, and then the price isn't the deciding factor. It depends on who you talk to, accountants, for example, need to calculate the return. The pricing issue always comes up. If you can prove a good return on investment, then sometimes it's really so high that the price doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, if it's a good tool, people will stick with it. There are several tools that you can use very easily at the beginning, and later on, you find out they're lacking here or there, and in the end, it doesn't work well because of the environment or requirements that may be too complex for the tool. You might then choose a different solution, but I think in ARIS's case, that is not the issue.

It works pretty well but there are also some pieces that need adjustment, maybe it's a little too structured. So you have to learn lots of things, We'd wanted to test S2 models in the business process notation. But you need lots of experience to get into it, and ARIS has proven that it works also in complex circumstances. I might be in favor of some tools which are not really as good as I think, and there might be other tools which are very bad, and I really like them. For now, I simply haven't had experience in the other, smaller tools. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is business mapping.

This solution has improved the way our organization does training.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its usability.

I would like to see more support for architectural diagrams.

Our experience with technical support was good.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward. It was a "grin filled" implementation.

This product works for us right now. If at some point it doesn't work then we'll end up changing it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Aris Connect opens collaboration opportunities between team members within the organization where they can actually submit change requests, navigate processes, and offer comments. It opens up the potential for BPM within the organization. I didn't see such an angle of a BPM portal with any other products. So I would say that's the best selling feature.

They need to revamp a whole module. This module has been in place for 16 years. It hasn't been updated since then. It's actually a separate license on its own. It's a disaster. It needs to be more functional. It doesn't work easily. It takes too much time to just create a simple flow, in terms of the process and governance structure. 

If you have multiple tiers of approvals into an update of a policy, or the process design itself, it takes ages to prepare those internal flows within the system.

The design suite of ARIS is stable. In terms of other modules such as Risk and Compliance or APG, especially APG, I wouldn't describe it as 'not stable', I would describe it as labor-intensive; you need to do a bunch of steps to make sure that the cloud engine is running smoothly for those two modules.

It is fairly easy to scale but it is quite expensive to scale.

I also sell the platform as a reseller for this solution. We have hundreds of thousands of users. I don't use it largely myself within my organization. I work in PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers. We don't tend to sell it but when we see clients interested, we give our recommendation and comparison between BPM engines, and they end up going to directly contract the vendor themselves.

We don't even recommend ARIS over another platform. We would recommend ARIS over another platform if the client doesn't have a budget. It's the most expensive option.

The users will vary. Some of the clients that adopted ARIS have 1,000 plus employees. Others have 200 employees. I even have a client that has 50,000 employees.

Their technical support is weak. It's a regional problem because the Middle East region, in general, is still an underdeveloped market when it comes to certain technologies; particularly BPM.

They're still not into the structure scheme that you have in Europe or the U.S. At the end of the day, if a bank adopts a BPM engine, the scale of the licensing, the structure and even the usability of the platform is way higher. The number of transactions that a local bank does is less than a number of transactions that an international bank does. 

The other point is largely speaking, BPM here is very fragmented. It's either some people do the design only and the other side only does the implementation or execution without paying attention to the business design of flows. It doesn't go coherently as it does in Europe or the U.S. It doesn't go in a full-fledged cycle where you actually start with the design and move forward and make your organization agile.

Aside from that, I think that the vendors are not interested in largely investing in the technical support in the region because they are not as busy as in other regions. The thing that maybe ARIS has the edge on in the region is that they have a couple of strong partners here in the region. The vendor themselves are not fully available but the partners are really strong. The firm I used to work with, prior to joining PwC, used to handle level one and level two technical issues of various regions. When it comes to ARIS, that's the only edge I would say that has over the other competitors. 

The initial setup is straightforward. I would say it's one of the easiest tools to navigate. It gives a big margin of freedom. You can lose track if you don't know what you're doing. I would say the ARIS team should have an easier standard filter where people can start at a novice level of the application rather than open the whole potential at once because people can get lost. That's an aspect that needs improvement. 

It has a structured way to do the architecture and it forces you to start with the metamodel and move from there within a certain architectural design cycle. While ARIS is very simple and easy, the potential is huge and people tend to lose focus.

Don't be fooled by the potential, take it slow and step by step. It's a long journey, to be honest, to adopt a BPM engine. Involve your IT team, don't look at it from only a business design because the tool itself is meaningless unless you combine it with web method.

Skew the design and make sure that the business elements that you're designing have actual merit in your back-end legacy; or that you can actually create a certain form to fill whatever gap you need to be filled. Otherwise, it's just a fancy way to design what you can change that into.

If you are buying ARIS only to map your processes, you're better off with Visio. I know it's more labor-intensive, but don't make that investment. Every vendor comes with a unique feature. For example, Pega is very powerful when it comes to execution. It helps you come up with the structure of your architecture easier than ARIS does. They have a unique approach to their platform. One platform covers the design and execution. 

Discard the brand name because the only feature that ARIS has that other tools don't is the process architecture itself, the design elements. However, in terms of the execution, you cannot do anything with ARIS. It doesn't add value. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.