Every year, the presentation by Appian CEO Matt Calkins is one of the most highly-anticipated, and this year was no different. Mr. Calkins took the stage to discuss his vision for Appian and BPM in 2013, and introduced some major changes to the way that work gets done.
Calkins started with a quick look at the year-that-was for Appian. In the past year, Appian has welcomed 100 new clients, including marquee names such as Yum! Brands and GSA, and launched new deployments at DISA, Crawford, Starbucks, and more.
Calkins then talked about Appian's approach to BPM. The essence of BPM is not the boxes, but the arrows, the connections. Separation is inefficiency. BPM brings people and information together.
There are two major revolutions in BPM and technology: Social and Mobile. By 2014, over 50% of work will be done via mobile internet access. According to Forbes, "By 2015 mobile app development projects will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1." However, it's a fragmented mobile environment out there. That's why Appian uses responsive design to combat challenges with multiple mobile devices.
Calkins introduced Appian Sail, short for Self Assembling Interface Layer.
Appian Sail pushes mobile BPM development into a new space. It allows you to write once and deploy broadly for BPM, easily pushing BPM to all mobile devices.
Calkins moved on to talking about the social revolution. Collaboration should occur in the medium where the work is performed. The Appian interface is social, intuitive, and requires no training. It makes it as easy as possible for all users within the enterprise to participate and collaborate.
The next big introduction was the addition of two new tabs to Appian: records and reports. With Appian Records, Appian is the first vendor in the industry to solve the business performance and visibility problems created by siloed sets of enterprise data across the organization. Records allow users to navigate data sets, independent of the process, for a case-level view.
For example, a customer record can include a variety of data from CRM, ERP, Legal and other systems. A call center representative fielding a support call can now for the first time see the customer's complete status in one simple view, and can immediately take the appropriate action.
Calkins moved on to talking about Appian's priorities - customer satisfaction and growth. To that end, he introduced another new feature: Appian Labs. Appian Labs is an risk identification and reporting program, providing a consistent touchpoint with customers. The program complements any engagement and delivery models adopted by customers. The goal is higher quality projects through risk awareness, resulting in happier customers.
With all of these new features, it's sure to be a fantastic year for Appian, BPM, and our customers!
Alena Callaghan
Web Marketing Manager
