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Financial Services Technology at Appian World 2018

Appian Contributor
May 18, 2018

My first Appian World in the books! It truly was, three days that change everything! Appian's conference was filled with engaged customers and partners, fantastic presentations, informational panels, great networking opportunities and, gorgeous Miami views.

In Mike Heffner's pre-Appian World blog he talked about the dynamic nature of the financial services industry how everything is changing and will continue to change the important point is that it is not about the destination, it is about the journey. What a fantastic stop along the journey Miami was!

Introducing the Intelligent Contact Centerô

The conference began with an inspiring keynote presentation by Appian Founder and CEO, Matt Calkins. Matt declared that Appian's goal is to make it as easy as humanly possible for you to make, maintain, change and adapt powerful and unique applications. With one-third of the 1,500 attendees representing the financial services industry, Matt's message of simplicity surely resonated. One clear opportunity for reducing complexity in financial services is within the call center. The truth is, many call centers don't offer an omni-channel view of customer interactions or context for each touch point in the customer journey. In response, Matt announced Appian's new offering, the Intelligent Contact Center (ICC) Platform. Appian's ICC makes it easier than ever to build unique and powerful contact center solutions by uniting low-code application development with powerful artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and dynamic case management. ICC brings together an ecosystem of technology partnerships including key industry players Genesys, Twilio, and Temasys. What makes the ICC from Appian unique, and particularly attractive to financial institutions is the ability to host anywhere, run anywhere, and keep your data anywhere. Read our new datasheet to learn more about this exciting new offering.

Drive transformation without sacrificing customer service

There were so many fantastic presentations by some of today's leading financial institutions. One that I'd like to highlight came from Martin Resch, Executive Vice President, Bank of the West. He spoke about how important it is to start with the customer first. In fact, the mantra at Bank of the West is that the customer is the center of everything they do. Appian has been an important enabler of that strategy, because of the modular nature of the Appian platform. Mr. Resch used the analogy of a path "Öyou want to help your customer get from the street to the front door, you could pour concrete and give them one rigid way to get to the front door, or use tiles, and Appian provides the structure for the tiles. So, if in a year you decide you need to change one or two tiles, you won't need to jackhammer the whole thing. This is critically important, given the speed that technology is moving ahead of us you may not always know all the steps in the path, with Appian, you're not locked in." So the key questions are always around, "What does the customer want?" and "How does the customer want to receive it?"

Another key enabler in Bank of the West's strategy of innovation is Finlabs, their fintech partnership program. Bank of the West understands that that they can't do everything and have no desire to do everything. In order to be successful, they need components to come from fintech partners. Because of their modular framework, built on Appian, they can bring in effective, more modern solutions to drive certain tasks, for example, risk metrics that bring in data from non-traditional sources, like social media.

Start small, but think big the whole time

There were countless other phenomenal presentations. R.J. Rondini, Senior Vice President, Alternative Fund Services at Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) spoke about digital transformation in alternative fund services and how they used Appian, along with our trusted technology partner, Vuram to create, plan and execute on their digital transformation project. His advice was "start small but think big the whole time." He spoke about how BBH chose the first project, the right technology tools, partners to engage, and how they measured performance to take their alternative fund services to the next level.

We're making the economy run

Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) spoke about using Appian to build an app in a day. As a SIFMU a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility, it is critically important to quickly demonstrate and enforce strict controls to enhance risk management. OCC is leveraging the Appian platform's speed to do just that.

Bank Vontobel AG and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank each spoke about achieving business value through the effective delivery of business process software and solutions in a complex IT environment, all while operating in the fast evolving and regulated banking industry.

So many important financial institutions made Appian World a stop along their journey this year First Republic Bank, Fidelity, State Street, and many others. The common thread throughout every presentation was, as Mike said in his earlier blog change. The pace of change in financial markets is accelerating, and in a highly regulated industry, Appian empowers our customers to be change agents. We know that change can be complex and difficult, and at Appian, we're doing our best to change that.

Save the date

Thank you for joining us in Miami for Appian World 2018, we look forward to seeing you next year for Appian World 2019 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, May 13-15, 2019. In the meantime, please be sure to meet with us at these events in 2018 EBADay June 12-13 in Munich and Sibos Oct 22-25 in Sydney.