CMW Platform vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CMW Platform
Score 8.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
CMW Platform (formerly Comindware) is a business process management software centered on worklows to build automations. It implements a drag-and-drop interface along with Excel-style rules and forms.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
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsComindware Tracker is available for purchase on a per-user subscription plan.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Features
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
CMW Platform
-
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
CMW Platform
-
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
CMW Platform
-
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
CMW Platform
-
Ratings
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Content management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
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CMW Platform
CMW Platform
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CMW PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
CMW has less integration capabilities, this is something that can definitely be improved in the future. On a side note, the MS Outlook integration option is excellent. The UI is decent for its purpose and the platform is well suited for a range of business requirements - customer order management, document tracking and approval management. You name it, they have it.
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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
  • Flexibility in our workflow automation. It’s easy to modify the existing processes when the need arises
  • Web forms creation without a single line of code
  • The parallel approval mechanism allows sending work items to a group rather than a single person
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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
  • I would like to see Comindware Tracker come in a free pricing tier.
  • I would like to see Comindware Tracker offer more granular roles to be assigned to workflow users.
  • I would like to see Comindware Tracker integrate with more ERP systems and to offer more import/export/migration capabilities from other workflow management systems.
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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
Very likely.
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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
As I mentioned in my whole review that it is making opration smoother it's capabilities to automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual errors,and improve productivity.Its low code approach allows us to create business apps quickly and easily without requiring extensibe programming knowledge.although it has lots of positive points but there are some issues which is barrier to become perfect that's why I give 8
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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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Support Rating
It's more of drag and drop functionality. It is quite easy to set up. Creation of form is very easy. Support Team of Comindware Tracker is good and very friendly. It is efficient in terms of task management, project management, team management, vendor/client tracking.
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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
No answers on this topic
• 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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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
• 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
Other than trying Comindware Tracker it is newer to me, I have used Adobe software multiple times and are familiar with their products. I won't stack Comindware Tracker against them because they both are amazing. I like using Comindware tracker because it is easy to use and is great for me, it helps optimize and maintain my workflows.
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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
No answers on this topic
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
  • Reducing time managing tasks and projects by automating workforce without involving manual procedures.
  • Sequential and parallel creation of process steps and multichannel models.
  • Drag and drop capability ease web form designs that are easy to export to MS Excel and Word.
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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

CMW Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of Graphical Workflow BuilderScreenshot of Drag'n'drop Web-form DesignerScreenshot of Collaboration toolsScreenshot of Workflow automationScreenshot of Workflow trackingScreenshot of Outlook intergration