The insurance industry is at the forefront in understanding the need for process improvement. At the same time, insurance is an industry particularly hampered by aging, brittle and burdensome IT systems. Hear what Forrester Research thinks insurance companies need to know in a one-hour webinar on Thursday, February 16 at 11:00am EST. Ellen Carney, Forrester Research Senior Analyst and insurance industry expert, will be our guest for “Fueling Insurance Provider Success with BPM.” Click the link to register today.

The webinar is co-sponsored by Appian’s insurance solution partner, MajeskoMastek. MajescoMastek has teamed with Appian around a series of templates and frameworks to accelerate implementation of crucial BPM for Insurance solutions.

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Tags: , BPM for Insurance, Forrester, MajeskoMastek, process improvement for insurance

I enjoyed Adam Deane’s recent post on “BPM: Priorities.” He points out how limited typical BPM systems are in dealing with the complexities of how work actually gets done based on the often chaotic nature of how business and task priorities constantly change. In my opinion, this is where Social BPM capabilities become so critical.

The problem is, most BPM software vendors (and frankly, many industry pundits) have a limited view of what Social BPM really is. They relegate it to collaborative process design – making it easier for a handful of pre-designated people to work together in developing a process diagram. This is, at best, a single. The grand-slam homerun happens when Social BPM is applied to real-time collaborations across all employees (and customers) while business processes are being executed.

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Tags: , Appian 6, BPM for Case Management, Business Process Management, Social, Social BPM, social technology

As reported in Federal Computer Week, a January 19 report from the Defense Business Board (DBB) states that “pursuing IT efficiencies could save DoD between 25 and 50 percent on annual expenditures, while also improving mission effectiveness and achieving return on investment even ahead of schedule.”

The report outlines a four-step approach of “normalizing, standardizing and rationalizing applications; rationalizing and consolidating data centers; rationalizing data and security; and then migrating appropriate components to the cloud.” The DBB urged the department to act decisively in these areas, warning that the consequences could otherwise be disastrous.

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Tags: , BPM for Government, BPM in the Cloud, Business Process Management and Government, Cloud Computing, defense business board, Government 2.0

Earlier this week we announced Appian’s results for 2011. In the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, “it was a very good year.” The numbers speak for themselves: 90 new-name customers, a 219 percent jump in license orders over 2010, and nearly 40 percent of total orders coming for Appian Cloud.

The story behind the numbers is testament to how enterprise mobility, social collaboration and cloud computing are reshaping the IT landscape. Appian’s Mobile BPM, Cloud BPM and Social BPM address the broken state of enterprise software today.

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Tags: , Appian, Appian 6, Appian Cloud, BPM in the Cloud, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

BPM software is key to how federal departments and agencies are going to cope with the unrelenting pressures to increase agility, transparency, accountability, cost reduction and constituent service.  If you work in the public sector and have a focus on process improvement, you can’t afford to miss Appian World 2012. The conference (April 15-17 at the Reston Hyatt outside Washington, D.C.) is free, and in addition to great content and networking, it is the only place you can hear Kenneth Percell, former CIO of the U.S. Air Force Materiel Command, deliver his “Confessions of a Federal CIO.”

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Tags: , Appian World 2012, BPM for Federal Acquisitions, BPM for Government, Business Process Management and Government, Kenneth Percell, Process Improvement for Government

Forrester analyst Craig Le Clair has published an excellent report called “Stuck In Cement: When Packaged Apps Create Barriers To Innovation.” In his related blog post, he frets that “concrete” is the more apt, but less poetic analogy. Based on the research findings, I suggest “Packaged Apps Are the Concrete Shoes Pulling Business Down.” That’s how dire a picture Craig paints, but he offers a ray of hope by positing that BPM Software is the answer.

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Tags: , application development, BPM software, Enterprise Resource Planning, Forrester, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

Gartner’s Jim Sinur recently predicted that 2012 will be “The Year of Intelligent Business Operations (IBO),” and stated that Intelligent Business Process Management Software (iBPMS) is the central enabling technology. Appian customers are among the vanguard of “leading edge organizations” Jim mentioned that are making IBO a reality today. This is because the innovations Appian has pioneered (Mobile BPM, Social BPM, Cloud BPM, real-time event architecture, in-memory analytics, extreme ease-of-use) are all crucial components to enacting an IBO strategy.

Click here to read a paper by Appian Principal Consultant Glenn Smith on “Intelligent Business Operations: BPM & Analytics in the Event-Driven Enterprise.”

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, Gartner, iBPMS, intelligent business operations, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

Global IT industry analyst firm Ovum has published its annual “Decision Matrix: Selecting a Business Process Management Vendor” report, a comparative evaluation of the top BPM software vendors. Appian has been named the #1 vendor on Ovum’s prestigious “Shortlist.” This is based on unmatched scores across Technology criteria (including a call-out of our innovation around Mobile BPM, Cloud BPM and Social BPM) and User Sentiment (i.e., making sure customers are happy and successful with our software).

The report places the top vendors in the “Shortlist” category, with others placed in “Explore” or “Consider” categories. We’ll have the report available as a download on our site shortly, but in the meantime, here are some stand-out quotes:

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, Business Process Management, Decision Matrix, mobile BPM, Ovum, Social, Social BPM

Discussions around customer service strategies have shifted from “customer management” to “customer engagement.” A recent piece in InformationWeek on  “Seven Ways IT Can Improve Customer Service” highlights this shift. The article, by Forrester Research senior analyst Kate Leggett, pays a lot of attention to process improvement and process consistency. Kate is a leading expert on customer service strategies, and a member of Forrester’s Business Process team, so this comes as no surprise. What is a little surprising is that she didn’t call out Mobile BPM and Social BPM more directly in her analysis. These components of Appian’s BPM software are playing a huge roll in the strategies our customers are rolling out to engage with their customers.

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Tags: , Business Process Management, customer experience, Forrester, Informationweek, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

Ellen Carney, lead insurance industry analyst at Forrester Research, has just published an insightful report on the changing tide for insurance companies. You can read an excerpt here. “Tech Opportunities in the North American Insurance Industry” details the transition from “business-as-usual” to what Ellen calls a “business-as-unusual” model where the customer experience takes precedence over the products and services an insurer provides. BPM software, particularly Mobile BPM and Social BPM, are key technology enablers for this transition.

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Tags: , BPM for Insurance, Business Process Management, Forrester, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM