Bonterra Apricot vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Bonterra Apricot
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Bonterra Apricot is a cloud-based solution for nonprofits of all sizes. It's designed to bring data to the forefront in order to bolster a nonprofit organization’s impact. Apricot helps organizations to save time and resources because the tool makes managing data more efficient, so that users increase the time spent delivering the mission. Apricot offers configurable forms and fields so organizations can customize their experience to their clients and mission. It allows…N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow is a solution that helps users automate digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency and insights — on premises or on cloud.N/A
Pricing
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for Bonterra Case Management is driven by individual usage and needs of the nonprofit. Organizations aren't one-size fits all, so neither is Bonterra's pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Features
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Bonterra Apricot
-
Ratings
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
Bonterra Apricot
-
Ratings
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
18% above category average
Process designer00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process simulation00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Business rules engine00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
SOA support00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Process player00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Support for modeling languages00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Form builder00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Model execution00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
Bonterra Apricot
-
Ratings
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
17% above category average
Social collaboration tools00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
Bonterra Apricot
-
Ratings
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Content management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
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Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
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User Ratings
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.9
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
5.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
4.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
2.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Bonterra ApricotIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
For my purposes of tracking participant case notes and data, Apricot functions well. The layout is sleek and organized, and the platform is user friendly making for an easy adjustment period for new staff. We are able to track important deadlines on the home page so the user doesn't need to take time out of their day to see what needs to be prioritized, they can just jump into the work
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It is best suited for streamlining business processes in our enterprise. It acts as middleware and allows to use of mobile development
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Pros
  • Allows us to set notification reminders when residents of our program advance through out program
  • Allows us to create reports tailored to the information that we need
  • Allows us to update information efficiently and in real time so that everyone on the team can be on the same page.
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  • Case management - provides flexibility for dynamic processing.
  • Smarter process - streamlines repeatable activities and does work distributions.
  • Advanced integration - makes integration with other systems very easy.
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Cons
  • There are several things in the "suggestion" area that have been there for a while. For instance, to be able to see the client's age instead of just the birthdate. Many people want this, but I don't understand why it can't be done for us.
  • Luckily, whenever an issue arises, it's not there for long, as you have a fairly quick turnaround for resolving them.
  • Being able to view notes and other information sources with just a drop-down, instead of opening the entire note, would be preferred.
  • There are times when the system is just slow or doesn't work at all and it takes a little extra time for it to be resolved. This causes some stress.
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  • Installation is (typically) a bit painful out of the box and requires expert help.
  • Following installation, initial projects require outside consulting expertise to be successful. Projects without importing BPM expertise tend to have much higher failure rates. Though individually the technologies involved are widely available and not complicated, combined and collectively BPM solutions require a flexible, creative, technical talent to help deliver. It takes time to learn the judgment and craft required.
  • The out-of-the-box UI controls (widgets) are not terribly inspiring- on desktop or mobile. Use of third party toolkits (e.g. Brazos) is recommended. Silver lining: those third party toolkits are quite good.
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Likelihood to Renew
I went to the Summit a few weeks ago to learn about the future expansion and vision of Social Solutions. I already been with Apricot for 5 years and researched other products I still come back to Apricot and where it can grow with us.
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This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.
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Usability
Without any formal IT education, I was able to utilize their articles and videos to teach myself how to configure and customize the software to our organization (although I do recommend their Apricot Admin training to polish your skills). The majority of users are able to adapt immediately with minimal training.Staff that have challenges with technology in general do adapt to using the system once you can create buy in and engagement (although it does take time and training)
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Building complex UIs can be cumbersome. Calling complex SOA services that have a lot of objects, types, anyType attributes, recursive object references, etc can be cumbersome. The Process Designer IDE communicates with the server side Process Center a lot and as a result it is pretty slow. The IDE is also Eclipse based which doesn't make it faster.
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Reliability and Availability
It is usually available when I need to use it
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No answers on this topic
Performance
The system does tend to run slowly when pulling more complex reports
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
This is a difficult question to answer because when I hear the word "support" I think of this in multiple levels. The customer service on the front end, with my account manager is pretty good. There was a time for about a year and a half where I didn't even want to get to know this persons name because they wouldn't be there there long enough for me to get to know them. For the past 8-9 months we've had the same account manager, and this is helpful as a way to grow our trust in Apricot social solutions as well as the account manager understanding the needs of our organization. The technical support is also fine. The issues we most have problems with is how the technical support is calculated and the lack of roll-over of technical support time. If our account has 1 hour of technical support per month, but we don't need any technical support for 4 months, it would be great to have the ability to use those 4 hours (as time allows per the IT calendar) when we need them, even if it falls within one month. We've also had instances of working with IT persons who didn't seem to care at all about our issues, and seemed eager to put our call behind them and get onto the next without much thought as to why we were calling them in the first place. We've also had instances where the IT person didn't seem to really be listening to what it is we needed, and was heck bent on what they THOUGHT we needed rather than listening to what we actually did need. While we also have had experiences of working with IT persons who were absolutely great at working through issues. They were patient and understanding and would explain why a solution (c)would or (c)would not work. We even worked through those options in real time if they were unsure whether a data solution would work or not. That was great because we felt heard.
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Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.
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In-Person Training
Online training only
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• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.
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Online Training
Too difficult to follow and customize for our needs
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
There need to be specialists who know how to best work with an organization developing a new program, not just transferring existing forms to a digital format.
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• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)
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Alternatives Considered
I have used RealTime is a different role and purpose, but I always thought it was hard to navigate and just confusing as a whole. I do not use Apricot for IEP's, which is what RealTime was used for in my previous role. However, I do like the way that Apricot functions and think it is just more user friendly
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Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight. Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it. Pega vs IBM Its difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.
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Scalability
I have never had a problem with the system
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It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load
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Return on Investment
  • Consistent, accurate financial records of program spending are to be provided to Grant Funders.
  • One-stop shop for all program records, including past, current, and waitlisted clients.
  • Continued partnership with Grant Funders due to the ease on both sides with the Bonterra Apricot Software.
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  • Easier to implement and does not take much effort to work on it.
  • Versioning made easy. We can even degrade to the previous version in case of any issue, which is not easier to do in other BPM suites, thereby, saving a good amount of time.
  • Helped in achieving client requirements faster, which results in a higher return of investment.
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ScreenShots

Bonterra Apricot Screenshots

Screenshot of a display of a participant's profile to see important information about that individual at-a-glance.Screenshot of the "My Workspace" area of Bonterra Case Management, that allows users to see upcoming cases, appointments, events, and other notifications in one place.Screenshot of the dashboards that provide at-a-glance insights, while Census data integrations allows users to view demographics of the communities served.Screenshot of the streamlined intake process that helps serve more individuals and ensure they are aligned with the correct services to help them succeed.Screenshot of information, kept secure by assigning users specific roles and permissions to specify access levels.Screenshot of communication with participants to keep them engaged.