Here are some startling facts:

ERP software maintenance fees alone “represented one-third if enterprise IT software budgets in 2010, with license fees accounting for another 25%.” That’s right: just keeping the ERP lights on eats up more than half of the total IT budget.

Perhaps that would be acceptable if ERP software delivered what the business needs today, but Craig shows that it clearly does not. Of ERP and other monolithic packaged apps he states, “These systems have developed inflexible architectures and have become aligned with silos built around business functions that now present a serious barrier to many fast-moving companies.” In other words, the limited extensibility of those apps leaves them stuck in business silos that they then help perpetuate, while required business functions existing in the white space between packaged apps continues to be paper- and email-based, cumbersome and non-standardized.

What’s the Conclusion?

Craig states that, “Enterprises that deployed ERP six to nine years ago are now questioning the budget for upgrades – and they should.” Business has changed dramatically in that time – and the rate of change is increasing. The business “wants more value and is reluctant to invest just to maintain functionality that many already view as lacking.”

What’s the Alternative?

Craig says that what’s required is a “Process-first Perspective” based on “an outside-in focus that starts with the needs of the customer.” To paraphrase again: build your business processes based on what’s going to optimize the customer experience, not based on the limited capabilities of your packaged apps.

How Do You Get There?

Do you need to take a jackhammer to the cement (or concrete) for a massive “rip and replace”? Luckily, no (have you ever used a jackhammer? It’s hard and slow work.). Instead, you can get the new and flexible functionality you need, and breathe new life into those legacy systems, by overlaying your packaged apps with a flexible process layer. In Craig’s words, “In the future, companies will address process and application gaps not by customizing on-premises software, but by linking best-of-breed applications using accessible and adaptable processes built on top of Dynamic Case Management or BPM Suites.”

What’s the Next Step?

Modern BPM software, with native mobile and social capabilities, is creating a seismic shift in corporate IT. Contact Appian to learn more about removing the concrete shoes.

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

Mobile BPM is changing how and where organizations get work done, while it knocks down barriers to include executives, partners and customers in process. In combination with Social BPM, it’s creating new opportunities for customer engagement and brand-building. Cloud BPM is fundamentally changing the relationship between IT and the business. Innovative BPM is providing a complete platform that gives CIOs and their teams new economies of scale in application creation and delivery, while it unifies an enterprise that is fractured across divergent operating systems, applications and devices.

That last point is crucial. More than any other vendor, Appian is advancing BPM to meet the challenges faced by today’s CIO.

One example: Crawford & Company, the world’s largest independent claims management provider, had previously launched an Appian cloud application in the UK. The success of that project drew the attention of Brian Flynn, Crawford’s Global CIO, who saw Appian as a way to radically alter the way Crawford develops software applications. Crawford signed a global enterprise deal with us in Q3, with Brian stating: “The Appian BPM Suite, with its mobile and social capabilities, is truly an enabler that will change the way we work with our business partners and ultimately how we service our clients. Initially, we will use it to drive operational efficiencies, but ultimately we will use it to help us develop new services and solutions.”

We know first-hand what he’s talking about because we run virtually our entire organization on the Appian BPM Suite. We use both on-premise and cloud instances of Appian across our Finance, HR, Technology, Marketing, Sales, Support and Legal departments. Every Appian employee uses our Appian-branded native mobile app. Our executive leadership team in particular uses mobile BPM to stay informed and speed decision-making in the office and on the road. Regardless of location, they have transparency into operational performance and the ability to take quick business action.

You can hear a lot more about how we and our customers are pushing the boundaries of BPM at our Appian World 2012 conference (April 15-17). More on the conference to come, but in the meantime check out the agenda, mark your calendar and register today.

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

Crawford is a long-time Appian customer, first using our BPM software to drive the creation of repairNet, the Company’s managed repair service in the U.K. Based on the success of that first project, Crawford acquired Appian for global deployment to radically alter the way the Company develops software applications.

In the words of Crawford Global Chief Information Officer Brian Flynn, “The Appian BPM Suite, with its mobile and social capabilities, is truly an enabler that will change the way we work with our business partners and ultimately how we service our clients.”

This is the kind of innovative thinking that secured Crawford’s highest IW 500 placement to-date. In the past three years, Crawford has developed a global systems roadmap that unifies BPM, applications and data into a standard global enterprise portal. In conjunction with that plan, the Company has increased investments in advanced technology to help feed the growing appetite among insurers and self-insured businesses for data that helps them manage risks and reduce costs.

Congratulations as well to a number of other Appian customers whose innovation leadership was rewarded with recognition on this year’s list,  including UPS, Raytheon, CME Group and Ameren.

-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications

UPS has achieved its position of global market leadership through a constant focus on reinventing itself and the technologies that drive its business. The IT services delivered to all UPS employees by UPS Shared Services are core to the company’s ability to operate efficiently and provide service excellence and accountability to its customers. Although UPS is a technology-driven organization, with an appetite for innovation, the Shared Services group lacked a cohesive infrastructure to deliver end-to-end visibility across its processes. The department used a combination of disparate systems, from mainframes to COTS applications to spreadsheets. While SLAs were in place, there was no consistent method for ensuring that they were met.

A new solution was needed to help Shared Services deconstruct the siloed approach of the past, where individual groups focused on process development and management without looking at the “big picture,” and there was no end-to-end ownership as processes crossed groups.

UPS’ search for a solution led the group to investigate BPM technologies. However, an immediate roadblock became apparent in that most technologies UPS looked at required heavy outside services involvement due to the complexity of the platforms. Because UPS intended to internally own all solution development, deployment and management without the aid of any vendor professional services capabilities, extreme ease-of-use quickly rose to the top of the requirements list.

Using the Appian platform, UPS has deployed more than 100 process applications – almost entirely on their own with practically no involvement from our professional services organization. These BPM applications have improved operational efficiencies, enhanced customer service excellence, and generated significant cost-savings. This is a great testament both to the UPS business process management team, and to the combination of simplicity and power that Appian delivers.

-Ben Farrell, Director of Corporate Communications

Ingolv Urnes, co-founder and principal of psHEALTH, talks about the variety of benefits the Appian Anywhere BPM PaaS delivers for his organization’s development of healthcare case management solutions. As opposed to coding from scratch, Urnes champions the speed of model-driven development possible with BPM. He also talks about the flexibility benefits, as opposed to attempting to modify existing applications, stating:

“Our view is that there isn’t an application that does healthcare case management, because the cases are so diverse. . .and then we’ve all seen examples of people buying an off-the-shelf solution and using 20 percent of the functionality, and it’s really not the right tool.”

With the mainstreaming of cloud delivery, BPM software gives ISVs a powerful tool to rapidly deliver a new generation of software and solutions that meet evolving customer requirements. By breaking the traditional mold of packaged application software, a BPM platform cam help ISVs radically transform their markets, realize substantial new revenue streams, and create strong competitive differentiation.

Read the IDC case study here. You can read more about BPM for ISVs in Appian’s “Next-Generation Software and Solutions” whitepaper.

Ben Farrell, Director of Corporate Communications

We’ve seen these positive impacts through cutting-edge Appian case management deployments with customers like the Benenden Healthcare Society, the U.S. Army’s Wounded Warrior application, and many others. We are now very excited to announce a new development: Appian partner psHEALTH is leveraging our Appian Anywhere SaaS BPM platform to rapidly develop and deliver new case management solutions for its healthcare clients.

psHEALTH is the leading provider of cloud-based, customized patient management and workflow solutions to independent healthcare providers in the UK. Combining their extensive healthcare experience with our BPM technology allows psHEALTH to deliver complex solutions at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional projects.

For example, psHEALTH delivered an end-to-end patient case management system to its customer Chartis Medical & Rehabilitation in under 60 days. The solution, called Symbio-Sys, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Claims Technology Awards in the Client Care category. (The Awards recognize excellence in the development and application of technology to enhance the efficiency, speed and cost-effectiveness of the claims process).

Appian, psHEALTH and Chartis are presenting a webinar on July 8 at 11:00am ET/16:00 London. The event will highlight Symbio-Sys as an example of a new breed of case management applications that can be delivered quickly, with no upfront investment or IT resource drain, to dramatically raise the bar for organizational performance and patient/customer service.

Please join us for the webinar. Register here. 

Ben Farrell, director of Corporate Communications

As he states in his conclusion, “it is inevitable that at the same time that BPM moves towards the peak of the strategic enterprise pyramid, it will also migrate toward the vast number of small opportunities at the base of the pyramid.  These solutions will be developed by end users to satisfy their specific needs.  The unique advantages of BPM over traditional development will facilitate a new category of solutions which could not be developed otherwise.”

BPM is opening a new world of possibilities by arming business people with a platform they can use to implement their own solutions to their unique problems. Read Part 2 of the article here: http://www.bpm.com/bpm-the-next-stage-of-end-user-programming-part-ii.html.

Ben Farrell, Director, Corp. Communications