Media Coverage

I recently spoke to Matt Calkins, CEO and co-founder of no-code and low-code software company Appian Corp. (NASDAQ: APPN), along with a few-dozen CEOs of our region’s fastest-growing companies. They restored my faith and my optimism that we can fix this from the inside out.

Low-code application platforms tout themselves as easy-to-use, even for people without coding experience. Our reviewer tries Appian to find out.

The next 12 months are going to see an unprecedented amount of federal money given to citizens, businesses, non-profits and state and local governments through the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. This is on top of the billions typically awarded through traditional grant programs through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), the Transportation Department and other agencies.

Let’s take a step back and remember how the federal government interacted with its constituents 12 months ago. In some cases, you’d go in person into an office or call a phone number. If in person, you’d manually fill out some forms, wait in line and eventually hand the papers and your documentation over to someone behind a desk who’d manually input the information into some application. If you picked up the phone, you’d wait on hold until an operator could speak with you. They’d listen, take some notes and type away in the same application. The mail was a third option, requiring you to print out forms, compile documentation, make copies and head on down to wait in line at the post office.

Matt Calkins, co-founder and CEO of Tysons-based Appian Corp., has some simple advice for companies eyeing an initial public offering: Keep it small.

Appian is leading the way for low-code technology by fostering a culture where employees feel empowered to drive positive change.

As working from home hits the one-year mark, software engineers find no commute is good but always working alone is bad.

Everyone in the federal government is under pressure to modernize. Modernize processes. Modernize applications. Modernize infrastructure. Rising citizen expectations are driving the need to create consumer-like experiences — both on the front end and the back end. Taking advantage of best practices fine-tuned and honed by the private sector will help federal agencies empower public servants to work smarter, make government more efficient and improve citizen experiences.

Governments may not have classed developers as “essential workers” during the pandemic, but we know they are. The companies in our most innovative companies list for 2021 are helping developers to deliver the full potential of their visions quickly which, in turn, is often helping end-users in ways that can’t be understated.

The automation technology landscape offers all sorts of exciting and innovative solutions government agencies can use to streamline operations, enhance citizen experiences and make government work smarter — from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to robotic process automation (RPA) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Digital transformation is changing how the federal government works and engages with citizens. Processes that used to require a person to physically get up from her desk, walk down the hall, log onto a separate system or open a file cabinet and manually search for a required piece of information have been automated — to a certain degree.

Continuing my series on how low-code development platforms can transform citizen experience, I’d like to talk about streamlining and improving government support.

Using low-code development platforms to improve citizen experience can improve data accuracy, increase the adoption of government services, and ensure accountability. It can also enable enterprise-like agility, giving federal agencies the flexibility to react quickly to changing policies.

Ongoing market uncertainty fuelled by the impact of COVID-19 and the seemingly never-ending acceleration of the pace of change make every day a potential ‘new normal’.

Tysons software firm Appian Corp continues to grow as its low-code “slow revolution” speeds up — and it’s hiring across every department. “I mean to hire more than Appian has ever hired and substantially more,” said CEO and co-founder Matt Calkins, who shied away from a specific hiring number but stressed most growth has been local. “We are growing in a serious way.” The company has also grown to about 1,500 employees.

For organisations across Australia and New Zealand, 2020 was a massive year of change. In responding and adapting, organisations learnt that any change in behaviour or methodology — whether it be supporting an entirely remote workforce or putting a digital health strategy in place — is governed by software.

Low-code development, with its graphical interfaces and tools that enable the development of applications with minimal coding, is gaining ground.

We explored how an enhanced citizen experience can improve data accuracy and increase adoption of government services. Now, I’d like to talk about how federal agencies can use low-code development platforms to ensure accountability and improve trust in government.

With enterprise operations and customer experience evolving in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, we explore the roles that AI has played.

In the fall of 2019, the information technology industry analysis firm Gartner announced its top 10 strategic technology trends for 2020. At the top of the list: hyperautomation. Now that it’s 2021, has hyperautomation lived up to its hype?