Appian World 2023: Revolutionizing Productivity with AI and Process Automation

Appian World 2023 has officially come to a close, and what an incredible event it was! This year, 1,400 Appian customers, partners, and developers came together in beautiful San Diego to share strategies for delivering end-to-end process automation, gain insights from experts, and build lasting connections with each other—and, for some, even with puppies.

The event kicked off with Appian CEO Matt Calkins talking about some of the challenges and opportunities for organizations today. As he put it, during easy economic times, it’s no problem to grow: you just write another check. You never have to question your own processes. But in years like this, everyone starts to question what productivity means. Every enterprise is looking to do more with less. 

Because of that, says Calkins: “We’re at the edge of a productivity revolution.” That revolution will draw on AI, process technologies, and other emerging technologies like data fabric. 

The theme of process transformation was a common thread throughout the entire conference. Let’s look at some ways that the latest technologies in Appian are revolutionizing productivity today.

As Calkins put it, “AI is only as useful as the practical benefit it can give.” Appian’s approach to AI is uniquely positioned to make sure you get maximum value. 

We announced a brand new feature, Appian AI Skills Designer. AI Skills are a simple, powerful way to create custom AI machine learning models that make it easier to extract information from various document types, as well as classify incoming emails and documents. What’s more, Appian has made generative AI available in the platform via an Open AI ChatGPT integration. With AI and process automation, the possibilities are endless. 

Process inefficiencies cost organizations up to 30% of their revenue every year, according to IDC. Process mining is one way to uncover bottlenecks and other inefficiencies in your business processes—but many process mining tools make it hard for organizations to achieve real value. Data security, data quality, and a lack of specialized data skills all put up roadblocks between discovering inefficiencies and actually taking action to make improvements. 

This week, Appian announced a new program to cut through the red tape. The Appian Insight to Action program gives you an easy way to get started with process optimization. It combines industry-leading process mining and process automation with the deep domain expertise of the Appian Customer Success team. The program accelerates the value of process mining initiatives by providing mining preparation, analysis, and service hours to implement process improvements, all for a one-time fixed fee. And with the power of the Appian Platform underlying it all, you can go from insight to action, fast. 

Your processes are only as good as the data underneath them. But when data lives in silos across disjointed systems, it’s impossible to use it to drive smarter decisions. 

Appian’s data fabric unifies data from multiple systems while leaving it where it is. You get secure and easy access to enterprise data while seeing a 360° view of your organization. 

Axiom Space—a leading provider of space infrastructure, including space suit—joined us on stage to talk about how a data fabric approach has revolutionized their business. Rodney Johnson, enterprise services senior manager at Axiom, has been part of the team working on the latest space suit for NASA. Their group faced a challenging requirement from NASA: to easily access and deliver data from disparate systems, in order to have full traceability into the manufacturing and testing of space technology. Johnson worked to implement Appian’s data fabric and process automation technology at Axiom, which drastically changed the way they interact with NASA. According to Johnson, having all their data accessible in one place makes the difference in what can be life-or-death decisions: “If you can see it and you can quantify it, you can make intelligent decisions.”

Perhaps the best thing about Appian World 2023 was the sense of connectedness that attendees felt. From the 5k to the dance floor, from the keynotes to the Live Build Challenge, the feeling of community and camaraderie permeated throughout the event. Whether you played the claw machine, cuddled with puppies, awed at fireworks, or simply ate up all the expert content, we hope you left feeling energized and excited about transforming your processes with Appian.