IBM Datacap vs Microsoft Power Automate comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Datacap and Microsoft Power Automate based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The second thing that I like about Datacap is the fingerprint capture which is easy to configure on Datacap. From the form of the document, if a document is redundant in the same department, we can configure the capture based on the form of the documents""Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate.""It's resiliency. There are multiple ways of identifying what you are looking for. There are multiple export formats.""It is the best solution for scanning purposes.""One of the valuable features of Datacap is the user experience. One thing that IBM did a few years ago was they standardized all of their ECM products on Content Navigator, including Datacap. If you're an IBM ECM customer you have FileNet, you have Datacap, you have StoredIQ and you have a consistent user experience, user interface.""The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats.""It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools.""While we are doing indexing, we tag the document type. It's programmed inside of Datacap to automatically detect the document based on a given template. It auto-indexes that document, which means that it automatically tags the correct document type to the scanned document."

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"The approval feature is the most important feature. We also use the flow history feature. It is a very useful product as compared to other products. We can automate easily when a list is updated. We can also handle approval-related issues and integrate it with emails.""The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power Automate is the many functionalities, and ease of use. We had summer interns from college in their second year of engineering and they were able to start the building process quickly within a day.""It is a stable solution.""The solution integrates more easily and with more tools than Automation Anywhere.""It works best to build cloud flows.""The product is very reliable and very easy to use.""It helps with the feedback mechanism, where we need to determine the relevant team and obtain their email addresses.""The tool is very good at implementing automation within processes. It's saved us from doing a lot of manual processes."

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Cons
"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support.""There should be an increase in the capacity of the workflows. Datacap is a little limited in this aspect. So, you cannot really implement all the possibilities.""The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas.""The reading efficiency of the solution needs to be improved.""Our main language in Egypt is Arabic, and IBM DataCap does not support it perfectly. All our documentation is in Arabic. It's not English or any other language. However, we have overcome this problem by using QR codes in the document to extract the data from it. They should have better support for Arabic.""Datacap's technology seems a little behind the industry. It's still using the old .NET framework. They should move to .NET Core and start integrating some machine learning. You can do some integration yourself, but you expect a solution to include the latest machine-learning approaches if you're paying reasonable money for it.""We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare.""It can take some time to implement."

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"How long it takes to deploy will depend on how confident you are with your development. The development itself is not easy.""There is an RPA feature gap between this solution and other more mature products.""It would be good to have some kind of on-premises solution for BPMN users, but I don't think Microsoft will ever go back to the on-premises solution. They all train their clients to use their online services. It is easy, but it doesn't follow the industry-wide standards. I can only use the processes that Microsoft gives us. I can't map a business process by using other standards or notations, such as Business Process Management (BPM). I have to use whatever Microsoft gives us. I would like to have support for some standards because if we decide to use another BPM tomorrow, we will have to remap everything in notation to transfer from this solution. This is the only block or obstacle that I see in using this solution. It is closed in its infrastructure.""The tool should improve its price.""The solution could offer more specific training. There should be more examples of what the functions can do and more instructions and explanations to the process.""The connectors and the integration capability can be improved. Microsoft RPA is a growing platform, and it is not yet particularly mature.""They can provide a deeper level of feedback about running processes. When I compare it to Blue Prism, the control room has slightly less information about the running processes and possible errors. I'm not a pro, so I am not entirely sure if this is a core feature of the product or if it is because of the way our partners have developed it or set it up.""It's not as user-friendly as a solution such as UiPath, which is really easy to use."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Pricing needs to stay competitive."
  • "You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."
  • "Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."
  • "We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
  • "If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."
  • "It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."
  • "In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."
  • "IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."
  • More IBM Datacap Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution is bundled with our Office 365, so there is no additional licensing fee."
  • "You pay for use and if you want a premium connector or adapter, but a lot of things are available for free."
  • "Power Automate is a much less expensive product than the competition."
  • "This solution is reasonably priced and offers a free trial period."
  • "There are many different ways to license it."
  • "There is flexibility in pricing."
  • "This solution can save money when used for simple tasks specifically using only Microsoft products."
  • "There is zero licensing cost. It comes with our Microsoft Office subscription."
  • More Microsoft Power Automate Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The installation of the solution is very simple.
    Top Answer:IBM Datacap cannot fetch unstructured data properly; it always gives you wrong information, so no one uses this solution for unstructured data. Even for structured data, sometimes the administrators… more »
    Top Answer:Yes, Attended Bots  which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Power Automation they do support this.
    Top Answer:Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌is‌ ‌no‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience‌ ‌necessary,‌ ‌and‌ ‌appreciate‌ ‌the‌ ‌automated‌… more »
    Top Answer:‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great‌ ‌drag-and‌ ‌drop‌ ‌functionality.‌ ‌The‌ ‌training‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌for‌ ‌AA‌… more »
    Ranking
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    1,455
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    595
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    14
    Average Words per Review
    715
    Rating
    7.1
    Views
    44,449
    Comparisons
    23,987
    Reviews
    34
    Average Words per Review
    480
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Datacap
    Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Datacap helps you streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, like those in IBM Watson, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper costs, deliver meaningful information and support faster decision making.

    Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful tool that streamlines and automates tasks within an organization. 

    It is used for workflow automation, data integration, and creating automated notifications and approvals. 

    Power Automate connects different applications and services, such as SharePoint, Excel, and Outlook, to automate data transfer and synchronization. 

    Sample Customers
    Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
    1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company38%
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Mining And Metals Company8%
    Transportation Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government11%
    Insurance Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Datacap is ranked 6th in Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) with 26 reviews while Microsoft Power Automate is ranked 2nd in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with 120 reviews. IBM Datacap is rated 7.6, while Microsoft Power Automate is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of IBM Datacap writes "The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Power Automate writes "Provides valuable integration with other Microsoft tools". IBM Datacap is most compared with ABBYY Vantage, Tungsten TotalAgility, HyperScience, OpenText Intelligent Capture and UiPath, whereas Microsoft Power Automate is most compared with UiPath, Automation Anywhere (AA), Blue Prism, IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Tungsten RPA. See our IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate report.

    See our list of best Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendors.

    We monitor all Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 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.