A good indication of where organizations are making technology investments comes from looking at their job postings.

Indeed.com, a search engine that aggregates job postings across a large number of employer and recruiting sites, has a nifty ‘job trends’ feature that tracks the growth of specific keywords being used.

A search for the keyword ‘bpm’ shows a 450% increase, since January 2005, in its use in job postings. This aligns with the widely experienced growth of the BPM software market and Gartner’s recent prediction about increasing BPM spending in 2011.

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

When Appian released our last iOS update, we added the capability to capture images directly from a mobile device and submit as part of an Appian task or form.  The feedback was overwhelmingly positive as customer began to imagine the many use cases inside their business, but the most immediate response was “What about voice capture?”

Well just a few weeks later, we’ve been able to add another update to our Mobile BPM offering that includes voice capture and playback directly inside an Appian task or form.

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Tags: , Apple, mobile BPM, Voice

We had our quarterly company meeting yesterday. Everyone was in a pretty good mood based on our success in the first half of the year. As usual, our executive team did a great job talking about numbers, goals and strategies. Our CEO Matt Calkins, however, spent most of his time on something much bigger. He talked to us about redefining Business Process Management by redefining BPM software – how it looks, what it does, and where it does it. By doing that, he said, we will change the very nature of how organizations operate and how work gets done.

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Tags: , Appian, Business Process Management, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

Tags: , Cloud, IT Management

I’ve been speaking with many clients and analysts over the past several months discussing what exactly is this “social” thing inside the enterprise.  I’ve heard from some analysts that social is not really a market, but just a feature that could be applied to several areas inside the enterprise.  While many clients are just asking  ”How will social inside my enterprise help my business?”

To get some answers we need to look at consumer trends in social platform adoption by asking a simple question:

“What are consumer social platforms replacing?”

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Tags: , Portal, Social

It is a truism that for every person in an organization that cares about enterprise software there are nine people that care a lot less. This silent majority is often referred to as the ‘end user’ or ‘business user’ community. These are the folks that just want to get their work done in the least burdensome manner. They don’t care much (if at all) about what the underlying technology is. It is this majority that has driven the adoption of new platforms and paradigms such as iOS and Salesforce.

The hockey stick growth that BPM analysts continue to predict year after year is achievable. But it will not come from the minority of people already focused on process. Neither will it come from incremental updates to old BPM paradigms or from the resolution of debates over BPMN minutiae, for examples. Exponential BPM growth will come through the majority and its rapid adoption of Mobile, Social and Cloud technology.

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Tags: , BPM Adoption, BPM in the Cloud, Business Process Management, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

David Carr at Informationweek wrote a story yesterday asking “Should Enterprise Software be Just Like Facebook?” He makes some very good points about what has become of the former simplicity of the Facebook user experience. But I believe there are two key points missing from his piece. Through our BPM software, Appian addresses both in our approach to the Social Enterprise and Social BPM.

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Tags: , Appian 6, Facebook, Informationweek, Social, Social BPM, social technology

We are just 9 days from Appian World 2011, and final preparations are underway.  We have planned a special interaction for those attendees with Apple iPhone, iPad, RIM Blackberry and Google Android devices.  Prior to Appian World, we are encouraging everyone to download the Appian Mobile application from the Appian World website and install on your mobile device.

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Tags: , mobile BPM

Last week, I visited the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci . It’s a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, painted during the early Italian Renaissance. It is the only Leonardo da Vinci painting on display in North America, and it is breathtaking. You can observe Leonardo’s experimentation with the new medium of oil paint, his use of shadow and light, naturalism and atmospheric perspective.

Within a few years, the use of these techniques from Italian masters like Leonardo would spread throughout Europe and revolutionize art. It was the beginning of the Renaissance. Exciting times! It made me realize there is a parallel to the exciting times happening now in BPM software.

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Tags: , Appian 6, Business Process Management, mobile BPM