Not to bring up “Joe the Plumber” again, one month after the election, but I’d like to take a minute to highlight how “Sharing the Wealth” among Appian users has benefitted our Appian customers.

At the end of October, Appian went live with Appian ShareBase.  Appian ShareBase is a sub-portal on Appian Access (the Appian customer and partner support site) that allows Appian employees, customers and partners to share processes and process components.

Appian Access and Appian ShareBase have become the virtual Center of Excellence for Appian customers.  Sharing questions, best practices, and guidelines, Appian customers have been able to collaborate directly with other customers, partners and Appian employees on the best way to execute and manage their BPM initiative.  Appian ShareBase introduced important new functionality to the Appian Access site, allowing these users to upload processes, and process components they have built in their environments and share them with other users of Appian Enterprise and Appian Anywhere.

Within Appian ShareBase, users can upload process components and services for use in various Appian installations.  Appian’s unique modularity in application components, such as Portlets, Smart Services, Form Inputs, etc.. allows customers to share and download process services and easily deploy them in their environments. 

For example, a process component currently available on the Appian ShareBase is the Content Viewer Channel.  This is a new Portlet for the Appian Portal environment that allows a document management folder view to be placed on a dashboard based on a completely dynamic value in a process.   Its found use in a variety of Applications built on Appian.

In one example for a Marketing Review process, the folder location of the marketing images to be reviewed changes once they are approved.  The portal page that allows a manager to track and lookup the images in process includes the Content Viewer Channel.  As the content shifts locations, the portal page is automatically updated to reflect the new location.    The same Content Viewer Channel is being used in a Case Management application where document locations also shift often.

These small additions in process and application components can have a huge impact in usability.  Each component helps our Appian customers create a more easily navigated and simpler end-user experience.

In addition, Appian has begun developing our library of process templates to help jumpstart customers into certain BPM initiatives.  Process templates for incident management, sales and marketing, compliance, purchasing, and others are all in the works and to be shared on Appian ShareBase.  As new customers join Appian, they will immediately benefit from this wealth of knowledge building inside the Appian community.

Appian as well as our customers and partners continue to contribute a variety of template processes and process components to share amongst each other.  Its a great example how communities are building using BPM Center of Excellence principals and SOA object sharing to build new innovative applications.

As Appian ShareBase expands, I’ll be sure to provide updates.

Thanks

Malcolm Ross

Gartner issued a press release from the show outlining the “Nine Most Contentious IT Issues for the Next Two Years.” Almost all of them are directly related to process control and improvement within IT. Whether talking about business expectations that have outstripped IT capacity, infrastructure and application modernization, or accountability and risk management, it comes down to process:

• Automation and the ability to make better resource allocation decisions based on process performance mean more productivity for short-staffed IT teams
• BPM-based composite Web applications mean new life and increased value from legacy systems
• Documented policy enforcement and audit trails mean more accountability and reduced risk

Gartner names BPM specifically as one of three core disciplines IT must master (along with Enterprise Architecture and Service Management) to minimize turf wars, align viewpoints and “provide the architectural guidance required to build solutions.” To foster and support a process-oriented culture, Gartner talks about creating Business Process Competency Centers, also called Centers of Excellence (COE). This is absolutely in keeping with what we have seen with our customers, and it is why we have created services packages including our own BPM Center of Excellence that puts customers on the fast-track to success, facilitates knowledge transfer to make customers BPM self-sufficient, and helps them develop their own on-going BPM COE.

We want to help IT leaders get a jump-start on using BPM to overcome their “contentious issues.” To that end, we’re offering a webinar on BPM for IT called “Improve Your Processes. Control Your Destiny,” where some of our IT customers will discuss their BPM successes. Follow this link to register, and while you’re there, take a look at some of the BPM for IT case studies we have collected.   

Don’t delay, because as the Gartner press release concludes, “IT leaders should use this time, before obtaining new post financial crisis direction from CEOs, to resolve these issues. . . Resolving these issues will place IT leaders in a far better position to take on the challenges of the new future that lies ahead.”

Ben Farrell

Director of Corporate Communications

IT departments are tasked with two primary, and sometimes competing, objectives. The first, driven by executive management, is to make IT transformative to the business through new and innovative services. The second, driven by the realities of complex technology infrastructures, is to fight the daily fires and do the maintenance and upgrades required just to keep the lights on. With fewer and fewer resources available (the result of cost cutting across the organization), managers on the IT front line know they are often lucky to meet SLAs for the services already available, let alone develop, deploy and maintain new services.

Business Process Management technologies are emerging as the common solution to both the executive mandate, and the IT management nightmare. BPM lets IT create, document, execute, manage, and modify standards-compliant processes to ensure consistent execution. This process standardization and automation in IT Service Management (ITSM) leads to more efficiency and increased productivity in what IT is already doing. More importantly, it enables a redirection of IT resources to focus on strategic projects that can move the needle for the business.

Success happens when both IT and the business harmonize, using appropriate technology underpinnings to support a process-centric mentality that looks for and eliminates waste and inefficiency. Using BPM for ITSM is a single solution that solves both of IT’s primary challenges, thereby enabling transformative new IT services with unlimited potential for the business.  

Appian will be a sponsor at the Gartner IT Expo in Orlando from October 12-16. If you’re going to be there, stop by our booth so we can talk about the team effort required to make the shift in IT mentality from one of managing assets, to one of delivering valuable and high-quality services.

Ben Farrell

Director of Corporate Communications

The Appian Forum was kicked off by Forrester Vice President and Research Director Connie Moore .  Followed by Connie, we had six great customer presentations by Nokia Siemens Network, AGF, Archstone, Defense Acquisition University, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Mercer HR Consulting on how they managed their BPM implementation.  In addition, presentations were provided by Appian partners on BPM best practices, methodologies and tools by Satyam, SMART, Oakbrook Solutions, and Mega. 

On the second day, Appian held a number of technical sessions providing tips and tricks in managing your BPM systems, code examples for performing some more complex actions, best practices in setting up your BPM initiative, and some sneak peeks on future versions of Appian Enterprise.

I’d certainly like to provide a special thank you to Sandy Kemsley for providing detailed blogs and summaries of each presentation.  Sandy takes time from her busy schedule to attend these sessions and provide useful feedback in improving our conferences.  Next time Sandy we’ll try to have a power plug nearby to keep you going throughout the day.

Overall, we could not have asked for a better event.  We had close to 200 total attendees, a great location at the Ritz Carlton, informative presentations, and even beautiful weather. 

Thanks again to everyone who attended.  If you happened to miss it, all the presentations are available on Appian Access.  We look forward to seeing everyone at the next Appian Forum.

Malcolm Ross

The Appian / Mega partnership is an exciting relationship that provides an unmatched value proposition to the BPM market.  Mega has lead the way in Business Process Analysis and Enterprise Architecture tools while Appian is the innovation leader in Business Process Management in the execution and management of enterprise processes.  Binding these products together will provide unmatched capability in modeling, analysis, simulation, execution, and management of processes.

We’ll disclose more details as the integration evolves, but suffice to say, it goes far beyond what has ever been attempted before in integrating a BPA and BPM tool together.   The partnership will close the gap on round-trip modeling, execution and analysis.  Furthmore, it will raise the bar in change management and architecture for all application platforms.

Look for an upcoming webinar in Q4/2008 that will highlight the partnership and integration between the two products.

Malcolm Ross

If you are pursuing your first project, I highly recommend this quick read on BPM Centers of Excellence.

One of our local services experts, Glenn Smith, recently wrote an article on How to Establish a BPM Center of Excellence for BPM Enterprise.com.   This is a great overview on how to get started with a company’s first foray into a business process management endeavor.   Glenn provides some basic starting steps on what to consider in defining the roles and make-up of the Center of Excellence team.

Malcolm

If you have never been involved with organizing a global user conference, suffice to say, alot of planning and effort goes into these events to ensure their success.  Appian started the planning process in December, 2007 with site visits of potential locations, lining up agendas, and selecting the best dates that will drive the most attendance. 

After much wrangling with event locations, we selected the Ritz Carlton Tysons Corner as the best facility that would allow for the most interaction in a quality setting.  Maybe to the displeasure of a few, we did not choose the golf resort and spa, in favor of a location that was conveinent to the Appian headquarters for one-on-one meetings with any of our technology and implementation professionals.  We also purposely selected a date that would be sure to drive the most interest and discussion in the DC area around BPM, the week of the Gartner BPM Summit.  The timing with the Gartner event has been much appreciated by Appian customers like Nokia Siemens Networks and Archstone who will be speaking at both events, and press who appreciate being able to easily attend both events in a single week.

I hope you will be able to join us for the first Appian Forum on September 8th, 9th, and 10th and find out what we and our customers have been up to with the Appian Enterprise product.  If you have not had a chance to register already, please check out our dedicated website for Appian Forum and register for the events and seminars.  We promise these sessions will be valuable in learning how customers have realized big efficiency gains in their BPM implementation, technical tips-and-tricks in making your Appian Enterprise deployment better, and finally what the latest features of Appian Enterprise will have to offer.

Thanks and hope to see you there.

Malcolm Ross

Director Product Management

This blog will feature a variety of insights from managers and executives inside Appian, including members of our BPM Center of Excellence group, Product Development, and Executive teams. 

Comments are encouraged, so please join us and Be Part of the Process in sharing our Business Process Management stories and insights.

Malcolm Ross

Director Product Management