With different features, pricing, details, and more to evaluate, finding the right Business Process Management for your company is challenging. However, making use of a trusted partner providing consultancy services would be able to give you enough information to help you make your decision. Some will even compare them at feature by feature level and see which software is a more effective fit for your business. It may be worth getting a demo of the two products before getting a plan to see how the program can benefit you in real setting. From my experience of the two products, I am going to write my two pence from my own experience, research and working with the two products.
Let’s start by looking at what these two products are as follows:
| What is IBM BPM? | What is Appian BPM? |
| IBM BPM is a full-featured, consumable business process management platform. It is specifically designed to enable process owners and business users to engage directly in the improvement of their business processes.
It is available in on-premises and cloud configurations and it is designed to support mobile devices, featuring case management capabilities across its product editions. It operates with a single process server or in a federated topology, depending on the environment setup. It also includes tooling and run time for process design and execution, along with capabilities for monitoring and optimizing work that is executed within the platform.
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Appian BPM is considered as the market leader in modern Business Process Management (BPM) and Case Management software, as this enterprise application integrates seamlessly work automation with data management, native mobility, and social capabilities.
All the data, processes, and documents, as well as the collaborations are in one environment, on any device, and are integrated through a simple social interface. Appian helps organizations deliver the best customer experience for clients, modernize critical business processes, create new market opportunities, and gain competitive advantage. On-premise and in the cloud, Appian provides the fastest way to deliver innovative business applications to its users when they need it.
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All products come in various shapes and sizes and BPM products are not unique to this. When faced with a decision it is always good to have an overview of the main features and benefits. Let’s consider the features:
| IBM Business Process Management Features | Appian BPM Features |
| IBM Business Process Manager comes with third party platform integration support, workflow optimisation, real-time collaboration, BPM mobile capability and full visibility features. The software is perfect for handling both complex and simple approval workflows. The software can help users to automate, measure and standardise business processes. It can increase the productivity of knowledge workers by offering intelligent process automation and ad-hoc activity supported features.
The solution offers built-in support for case handling and business process based on IBM Enterprise Content Management, Business Process Management technologies for advanced edition users. The software can be also used for storing process assets which can be reused for other designs. All the processes of IBM Business Process Manager can be deployed to new installations easily and users will have complete control and visibility over the process activities.
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Appian BPM comes with real-time reporting, business process automation, native-mobile apps support, easy data recovery and navigation, complete platform availability in both on-premise and cloud and social capabilities. The end user feature of this solution includes reports and analytics, mobile access, case management, social collaboration, records, news and alerts, social profile, document management and SharePoint. It’s easy for business users to work from anywhere, anytime with these features.
Users can manage all the documents, all the collaborations and all the processes from one single solution from any internet enabled device using a simple, user-friendly social interface. The solution can enable developers and designers to create powerful enterprise applications with its modern framework that offers mobile development, enterprise records, intelligent analytics, user-interface design, complex event processing, process management, business rules, content management, SOA & integration and cloud BPM deployment features.
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Let’s highlight some benefits for as overview for both products.
| Overview of IBM BPM Benefits | Overview of Appian Benefits |
| IBM BPM is a platform designed to optimize business processes using real-time analytics. It allows users to streamline and manage tasks and track performance using a federated view virtually in real time, enabling continuous process improvement. It helps manage change through a unified model-driven environment, giving team visibility of the same process version. There is also an integration design tooling included for visually constructing services, data transformations, and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) orchestrations.
More importantly, the platform enables business users to access and execute processes, cases, activities and dashboards from a single user interface (UI) without impacting the business user experience. It also identifies and contacts a subject matter expert in real time to accelerate the completion of work while providing continuous process improvement. And with the new Process Portal, users are provided a highly collaborative work environment with increased social capabilities. IBM BPM organises, manages, monitors and deploys process artefacts, applications and services from the business process management program, with a set of adapters so users can service-enable their assets including packaged, custom and heritage applications, technology protocols and databases. As such, it facilitates management of process deployments throughout all runtime environments and helps in managing change through a unified model-driven environment, giving team visibility of the same process version. |
Appian business process management (BPM) software offers solutions that are rapidly built through a simple drag-and-drop functionality that is convenient for its users. Its native process repository captures and stores process models for rapid reuse. Business rules to define your critical policies and procedures while the Forms interface design enables the fast creation of task forms and dashboards. Complex event processing is also available for tracking, analysing, and responding to business events.
Appian BPM also provides instant deployment of newly built solutions set up in your workplace on a scalable, flexible platform while providing out-of-the-box Integration with diverse systems. It offers built-in enterprise mobility that delivers responsive. mobile user experiences with no extra work. There is also Appian Records that serves to unify all data from across systems and processes in a single location and intuitive user interfaces deliver great user experiences Real-time management tools monitor in-flight processes, re-assign tasks, and view performance of your company, while task management increases worker efficiency and reduces costs. There is also real-time visibility that provides granular tracking of process and task progress. Skills-based routing ensures the right worker gets the right task while at the same time, social collaboration across people, processes, and systems drives awareness. |
Let’s state some key pros of each:
| IBM Business Process Management 5 Pros | Appian BPM 5 Pros |
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Let’s state some key cons of each:
| IBM Business Process Management 2 Cons | Appian BPM 2 Con |
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It is crucial to keep in mind that almost no Business Process Management Software is going to be an ideal solution that can fulfil all the requirements of all company types, sizes and industries. Each enterprise has different wants and requires a software that can be personalized for their size, type of workers and buyers, and the specific industry they are in. Others can function with an intention of being easy and intuitive and therefore lack advanced elements desired by more experienced users. You can also find software that support a broad group of users and offer a rich feature set, however that usually comes at a more significant price of such a software. For these reasons, no software can offer perfect functionality off-the-shelf. When you try to find a BPM software product, first be sure what you need it for. Read some BPM reviews and ask yourself do you desire basic tools or do you want sophisticated features? Are there any industry-specific tools that you are looking for? Find the answers to these questions to assist your search. There are plenty of aspects that you need to reflect on and these include your budget, specific business requirements, your organisation size, integration needs etc. Take your time, try out a few free trials, and finally select the BPM product that offers all that you want to enhance your firm efficiency and productivity.
Work with consultants who have plenty of experience in the BPM industry who would be happy to assist you in helping you choose between Appian BPM and IBM BPM and by extension the right BPM solution for your company.