BPM for Growth: CME Group Drives Revenue, Not Just Efficiency

A modern Work Platform provides organizations across all industry verticals with a better way to work and efficient processes. But at the highest levels, a successful BPM program can be the difference in a win or a loss, determined in a matter of seconds. This is the case for the world's leading security exchange service, CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

Carl Stumpf, Managing Director and Technology Controller, and Brian Toba, Executive Director, Software Engineering, presented CME Group's BPM success story and efficiency for achieving business growth this morning atAppian World 2014.

Serving over three billion multi-industry contracts, CME Group has been running its crucial process applications on Appian since 2010 and piloted their first BPM solution in the Cloud. Based on the rapid success of the pilot, the company moved its Appian platform on-premise and began an aggressive schedule of additional Appian rollouts to other areas of the business.Appian's process automation has allowed for a cross-functional approach to management of new products released, as well as access to data using mobile and social capabilities to improve the speed in which customers make timely trade decisions.

"Appian's modern Work Platform has drastically improved the level of service we provide to our customers," said Stumpf. "Security exchanges are a fast-paced industry, and Appian has allowed us to delivery applications that enable our customers to make smart business decisions in real-time in order to achieve business value."

Rapid delivery of new products to market is central to CME Group for overall business success. With more than 400 new products and services introduced each year, improving cross-functionality of the new product roll-out process was critical. Using Appian's Work Platform, the New Product Introduction (NPI) has streamlined process execution, coordinating hand-offs and accelerating market delivery, as new product launches previously taking 8-10 weeks to reach market were reduced to 2-4 weeks.

"We have to turn discussion into time, Said Stumpf. "We have on-boarded thousands of customers to go along with the hundreds of new products we have added."

In order to satisfy the intense exchange trading process, CME Group needed to provide the best in customer support for new business efforts through the immediate response of an easy to use, one-time submission request with agile delivery. With Appian's help, CME Group developed a 428,000 square foot Co-Location Center for trade customers to access business data quickly via mobile device. The Co-Location Center allows customers to leverage mobile and social processes to make exchanges in a matter of seconds, allowing them to stay ahead of competitors.

"Something that has been very unifying for our solutions is that we have been able to breakdown silos," said Toba. "We have ensured growth, but at the same time reduced inefficiencies for traders at such a large organization."

Below is a breakdown of all CME Group deployed solutions to-date:

New Product Introduction

• • 400 new products introduced annually, 7 depts. involved
  • Cloud BPM for prototype, app launched in 12 weeks
  • Reduced time to market from 8-10 weeks to 2-4 weeks

Co-location: Data Center System for Customers

• • Brand new business unit run on Appian
  • Internal & external customer service, shipping/receiving, remote hands
  • Mobile/Social BPM for rapid issue resolution in 428,000 sq ft data center

Front Door

• • Project portfolio process to estimate, review and prioritize requests between CME Group departments, driving the planning and corresponding budget of each department
  • Previously a "black hole" of emails and spreadsheets with no standardization or visibility
  • Appian handles entire lifecycle of requests, reducing manual labor and delivering greater transparency, coordination, collaboration and efficiency
  • Department heads and executives can now see and compare project portfolios across departments

Employee On-boarding

• • 800 new employees/contracts per year Solution deployed in 8 weeks Achieved Day 1 Productivity for new hires

Be sure to check back at Appian Insights for more customer presentation recaps throughout Appian World 2014!

Mike Ingrisano