Supporting remote workers (72%), integrating information and workflows across the organization (69%), and changing systems and processes quickly (69%) are the top 3 areas for improvement

London – September 14, 2021 – Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) today announced the availability of “IT’s changing mandate in an age of disruption,” a new report from The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), supported by Appian. The report’s findings are rooted in a twin survey, conducted by The EIU, of more than 1,000 IT decision-makers and senior business executives at major corporations around the globe.

The survey results highlight the shortcomings of existing IT systems. IT backlogs are significant and IT’s control over the digital infrastructure is slipping. As business demand for new software applications grows, more work is spilling into non-IT development, and most business leaders expect that trend to increase.

In parallel, there is overwhelming agreement that applications need to improve to make organizations more responsive to changing business conditions. 83% of respondents say adapting better to external change requires moderate-to-considerable IT infrastructure and apps improvement.

"The report shows organizations are expecting more from IT at a time when employees and enterprise data are more dispersed than ever. With Low-code, IT can gain agility and deliver the complex applications that businesses need,” said Matt Calkins, CEO of Appian.

The survey data also highlights a path forward. The need for business agility, spurred by the COVID pandemic, is causing IT to forge a new role based on delivering organizational resilience. When asked for the most impactful areas to improve, the top three responses were supporting remote workers (72%), Integrating information and workflows across the organisation (69%) and changing systems and processes quickly (69%).

Additional report highlights include:

• 3-12 months is the average backlog for planned IT projects, and the situation is worsening as business project demand outstrips IT budget growth.
• 55% of respondents say business units already do more than IT to procure or develop new applications.
• 53% of business decision-makers believe the volume of applications built or sourced by non-IT business units will increase over the next 12 months.
• 75% of business decision-makers state that when procuring or creating new applications, they prefer to keep their data where it is rather than move it to new repositories.
• 61% of business decision-makers report that they’ve had to cancel a digital project because the proposed app or solution could not access the right data.
• Despite the importance of advanced automation technologies, 71% of respondents report that relatively few of their applications have AI and/or machine learning capabilities, and 57% report that RPA projects often fail.

To learn more, download the full report, and talk to Appian about how low-code automation accelerates IT and improves business collaboration, performance, and resilience.

About the Report

“IT’s changing mandate in an age of disruption” is a survey-based report written by The Economist Intelligence Unit and supported by Appian. The 1,002 survey respondents represent IT and business decision-makers across six sectors (financial services, insurance, healthcare, the public sector, oil and gas, and energy and utilities) and nine countries (the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and Australia). One third are C-level executives and the remainder work at the director level or above. Half of the respondents work in organisations with annual revenues of over US$1bn. The report supplements the survey findings with secondary research and in-depth interviews with experts at organizations including BP, BUPA Australia & New Zealand, Capital One, Mayo Group, Unilabs, and Uniper.