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Matt Calkins Lays the Foundation for Modern Apps as Appian World 2015 Kicks-Off

Staff, Appian
April 28, 2015

Power and Simplicity.Two words that typically don't get paired together.

But that is not the case at Appian World 2015, where Appian continues to deliver powerful and innovative custom applications, with ease of use for both the designer and user to modernize the business and live up to brand excellence.

This morning at Appian World 2015, Appian CEO and Founder Matt Calkins delivered his annual conference keynote on the power and simplicity Appian is injecting into the custom software industry and allowing organizations to transform and reach operational excellence.

"Custom software must be easy and powerful," said Calkins. "Easy to build, easy to use, easy to change. Work must be able to take place on all devices, scalable, secure, and always current."

Why custom? Because organizations and strategies are unique to preserve brand loyalty, competitive advantage, or just that extra something that makes an organization great.

Packaged apps can no longer accomplish this in today's business landscape. It's too slow, cumbersome, difficult to deploy and even harder to adapt over time to the ever-evolving business. This traditional approach fails to let organizations be great at being different.

Calkins highlighted the many features of the Appian Application Platform, which allows organizations to rapidly roll out a series of apps across a single platform, which can be continuously altered to serve changing customer needs. Specifically, Calkins introduced Appian's new Designer Interface which delivers a more intuitive design experience. Additional highlights of Appian's latest product release include Sites,a focused interface for heads-down task workers, and new Web APIs to create custom and unique application needs.

"Our new designer interface allows things to be done easily that used to be difficult, said Calkins. "This is the type of experience workers must have in order to maximize the value of an application platform for operations unique to business."

Calkins also touched on the current and future state of mobile as an enterprise solution, one of the hottest topics of the custom software industry.

"We are moving towards a future of mobile and desktop equivalency," said Calkins. "A decade from now we won't care which one goes first. Screens are everywhere and software must follow. No matter what interface the future brings you, Appian has you covered."

To provide an Appian customer example of an organization realizing the promise of modern custom software. Calkins detailed Ryder's use case experience. Ryder, one of the leading rental truck providers has deployed a series of mobile applications across the Appian platformto establish competitive advantage and transform business through a fully-digital customer experience and workplace environment.

Ryder has launched a mobile signature app and it has had a tremendous impact, according to Calkins.

"The amount of time required to complete a rental agreement was cut in half ñ cut to nine to 14 minutes, down from 18 to 22 minutes," said Calkins. "In addition, the percentage of rental agreements that require more than 20 minutes to complete has dropped to less than 1 percent."

Additional highlights of Calkins' keynote address touch on all things Appian, including partner programs, training services, and .

"For too long the software industry has told you that you must lose your identity to be efficient, and this cannot continue," said Calkins. "Good custom apps will give you back your identity, and live up to the expectations of your customers. We can no longer choose between efficiency and identity. Appian gives you both and that is our mission."

-Mike Ingrisano, Media Relations Manager