Appian’s Center of Excellence (CoE), part of our Professional Services offerings, provides on-going services to impart governance and best practices related to Appian BPM deployments. Ultimately, our CoE’s mission is to support the BPM knowledge transfer that makes our customers and partners self-sufficient in driving their own BPM programs.

This week the Appian CoE is releasing an update to its best practices regarding organization and management of applications built on Appian. The new set of guidelines are part of the Change and Configuration Management track of Appian’s proven STAR methodology (Strategize, Transform, Actualize and Rollout). They outline the differences between managing a code base in a custom application and Appian’s Application objects. These guidelines have been compiled from experiences and data our Professional Services team has collected over numerous engagements of varying sizes and complexities.

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Tags: , BPM Methodology, Business Process Management, Business Process Management Software, Center of Excellence

Is the Federal Government trying to put round pegs in square holes?  That certainly seems to be the case with the acquisition and contract writing systems they are buying. 

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Tags: , Appian, BPM for Federal Acquisitions, Business Process Management

September is a month of change and growth. The leaves start to turn, the days get shorter, football starts up, and thousands of college seniors start to think about what they’re going to do after graduation. If you’re a talented computer science student, the possibilities seem endless. The career fairs are packed with major employers like Google and IBM, offering the chance to be part of large teams working on sophisticated technology.

But for all the upsides of large, well-known companies, there are also some downsides. It’s all too easy to get lost in the shuffle, and become just another cog in the machine. How can you change the world and make an immediate impact? That’s where Appian enters the picture. More »

Tags: , Business Process Management, IT jobs, jobs, technology jobs, worksocial

Worksocial is powerful, and that power is being used to address one of the most urgent issues in America today: unemployment. As reported by Government Computer News, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is using Appian case management for mobile and social engagement with U.S. veterans to help them find government and civilian work.

At a recent VA Job Fair in Detroit, volunteer event support staff spent a matter of minutes getting used to the simple Appian social interface, then used iPads to register, schedule meetings and track progress for thousands of attending veterns. The result, according to the Veterans Employment Services Office (VESO), was that more than 1,300 veterans received tentative job offers, and close to 800 more scored second-round interviews. I can’t think of a more powerful testament to the connectedness and rapid action that just one day of worksocial can deliver.

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Tags: , BPM for Government, Business Process Management, Cloud BPM, enterprise mobility, Social Business Software, worksocial

Appian is a proud sponsor of CXO Media’s “CIO Perspectives” conference series. Today, we’ll be at CIO Perspectives Boston.  CIO Perspectives meetings, which are one-day executive events for senior IT leaders at mid- to large-sized organizations in the private and public sectors, always provide compelling, content-rich networking where CIOs and senior executives can collaborate on business and technology issues.

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Tags: , Appian, application sprawl, Business Process Management, CIO Perspectives, mobile BPM, worksocial

An important factor in the buying decision for any large capital purchase is determining the “total cost of ownership.”  For example, in purchasing a new car, you take into consideration not just the selling price, but the gas mileage, expected breakdown frequency, average cost of repairs, etc.

The same general approach also applies when evaluating multi-million dollar software investments that you hope will be the backbone of your operations for the next 10 or 15 years.  But the factors for consideration are very different in technology-based purchases.  It’s imperative to get this process right if you want to have a system that fits your needs, provides the highest benefit, and has the lowest lifecycle cost of ownership.  There are two common mistake areas in TCO analysis that everyone should note and avoid.

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Tags: , Appian, BPM, BPM for Federal Acquisitions, BPM for Government, Business Process Management

We’ve all been there.  It’s the end of a software company’s presentation showing you how their application will be able to solve all your problems.  Life with them will be total bliss.  You find yourself eager to sign up and put the pain of your current software application behind you.

What’s the antidote for the spell that good sales people put on you?  Ask for a copy of their end user license agreement (EULA).  Here you’ll find all the caveats and disclaimers that will bring you back down from Cloud 9 and let you see reality for what it is.

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Tags: , Appian, BPM for Federal Acquisitions, BPM for Government, Business Process Management, Government and Efficiency, mobile BPM, Process Improvement for Government, Social BPM

Austin Rosenfeld, founder of Macedon Technologies, has written an insightful article for BPTrends on the interconnected nature of business processes and business data. “The relationship between process and data,” he states, “is bidirectional, so a well designed system accounts for both the data processes needed to operate and the data they collect and calculate.”

In other words, it is time for BPM software to start treating data like a first-class citizen. As BPM is applied to increasingly-complex processes, the data dependencies in those processes become more complex. Appian has long been focused on moving past mere data integration to create the process/data symbiosis that organizations require for modern business.

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Tags: , Big Data, BPM, Business Process Management, Business Process Management Software, Social BPM, worksocial

One of the most common phrases uttered at last week’s Insurance Accounting and Systems Association (IASA) show was “legacy modernization.”  It was the central topic in many of the educational sessions and a common talking point on the trade show floor.

But what was missing from these conversations was recognition that modernizing an IT system without rethinking the way your organization gets work done is only a few steps above “putting lipstick on a pig.”

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Tags: , Appian, BPM, BPM for Insurance, Business Process Management

Vivek Kundra, the first Federal Government CIO, was the keynote speaker at a trade show I attended last week.  This was my first time hearing him tell his personal story of leading government IT transformation.  Vivek recounted a number of specific government IT failures with dollars attached on a scale I’m not used to working with.  It’s no wonder that every agency CIO now finds themselves on the hot seat.

Compounding the challenge for agency CIOs is a series of new initiatives from the Office of the Federal CIO.  These initiatives provide important guidelines CIOs are required to follow in the quest for more effective and cost efficient applications.  However, those guidelines do not lay out a specific approach likely to lead to success, leaving it up to CIOs and their staffs to find their own way.

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Tags: , Appian, BPM for Federal Acquisitions, BPM for Government, Business Process Management, Business Process Management and Government, Government 2.0, Government and Efficiency, Process Improvement for Government