Innovative low-code program recognized for excellence in response to COVID-19
McLEAN, VA — February 21, 2022 — Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) congratulates the University of South Florida (USF) for receiving the Gartner 2021 Eye on Innovation Award for Higher Education in the Process, Insight and Automation category. The annual award program recognizes higher education institutions for their innovative use of technology to drive best-in-class initiatives. USF was recognized for its excellence in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. By leveraging technology, USF was able to maintain continuity in its operations in order to allow students, faculty, and staff to stay on track and reach their goals.
“Our success in dealing with the pandemic was made possible by our pre-COVID technical strategy,” said Sidney Fernandes, Vice President and CIO at USF. “Low-code is central to that strategy because it enables a truly agile culture where many teams can come together quickly to deliver value.”
Throughout the pandemic, USF Information Technology used the Appian Low-Code Platform as a component of its technical architecture to quickly deploy new solutions that aided in efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The team also created applications within weeks that provided financial, academic, and emotional support to students. This included apps for HR hiring freeze exceptions, pass/fail grading option applications, virtual advisor interactions, and a CARES Act financial aid application through which nearly 4,000 applications were approved during the early months of the pandemic. It also included joint creation of the Appian CampusPass™ solution which helped the university create safe on-site conditions for students, faculty, staff, and contractors.
“The CampusPass solution was instrumental in our ability to manage health and safety at a large, multi-campus metropolitan university,” said Dr. Donna Peterson, Dean of the College of Public Health and COVID-19 Task Force Chair at USF. “It created a sense of comfort for our community that we were able to address this enormous challenge, and it helped us keep the number of positive cases low compared to other universities of our size.”
Alice Wei, Senior Director for Digital Innovation and Transformation at USF, has led the university’s Appian program for the last eight years. She said, “We had more demand than IT could meet, so we knew back then that we had to find new ways to increase agility and accelerate delivery. This put us in a position of strength when the pandemic began, because we had already learned how to quickly deploy applications at scale and at high quality.”
Pavel Zamudio-Ramirez, Chief Customer Officer at Appian, said, “We believe USF is highly-deserving of this award, both for the strength of their IT strategy and execution, and for their staunch commitment to student success and to the health and safety of their entire community.”
Watch this video to learn more about USF’s Appian program.
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