Gartner, Inc. recently published a Top 10 CIO Business & Technology Priorities in 2013 list. It’s interesting to note that BPM can address and achieve all top ten business priorities, when implemented with the right technologies and methodologies. The green check mark next to each Business priority indicates that BPM can help accomplish this goal.

The check mark next to each Technology priority signifies a match with Appian BPM Suite‘s capabilities: either as part of the product or as a solution. Furthermore, the worksocial approach from Appian is essentially taking collaboration technologies with workflow BPM (#4), enabling greater access of data and analytics (#1) to all users via mobile technologies (#2), available in the cloud (#3) or on-premise.

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Tags: , BPM, Gartner, Mobile, Social

If you were to list three modern technologies that you cannot live without, what would they be? For many people, it’s their mobile phone, the Internet, and increasingly, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you answered one or all three, you’re not alone.

According to IDC Research, almost half a billion smartphones shipped globally in 2011, a 61.3% growth from the year before. There are over 2 billion Internet users worldwide while over 90% of the US population are wired (Source: Internet World States) to search and access content in the cloud. Lastly, there are over 900 million Facebook users as of last month.

Computing Professionals in the 1920s

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Tags: , BPM, Cloud, Mobile, Social, Webinar

What are the new technology imperatives in a workplace for process improvement? If you missed the Modern BPM for Process Innovation Webinar, the recording is available on demand. You may also download the slides on slideshare and read a quick recap of the webinar on a blog. Here are the questions and answers from the webinar:

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Tags: , BPM, Cloud, Integration, Mobile, security, services, Social, standards, Webinar

Social media is pervasive and increasingly, an important communications channel. Anthony Bradley, Group Vice President in Gartner Research and author of The Social Organization, advocates that the real value of social media is massive collaboration. In his keynote at Gartner’s 2012 BPM Summit, the theme is combining social media and business process transformation to drive organization success.

Most people understand and agree that processes can be messy, hidden, chaotic, and unpredictable. Bradley asserts that some of the most important processes within an organization may not be structured and linear. So rather than trying to tame these ad hoc and unstructured processes, why not embrace and leverage social media, tap into the power of people to help discover, nurture, and improve business processes?

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Tags: , Appian Tempo, BPM, Collaboration, Gartner, Social

Tammy Erickson wrote a great blog post a few weeks ago on the Harvard Business Review’s website titled, “Why We Use Social Media in Our Personal Lives — But Not for Work.”  One phrase in particular really grabbed me.  “The use of collaborative technology for work will continue to grow over the years ahead because when it’s used properly, social technology enables a very different level of performance. Your competition will shift the playing field in your industry by integrating this technology into how work gets done if you don’t. This train is leaving the station.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Tammy’s blog is one more drumbeat that insurance leaders need to heed.  Insurers must break the cycle of legacy application maintenance eating their budgets so they can invest in new technologies and get ahead of the competition.  Yes, I know.  That last statement is a platitude.  Before you click your mouse to move on because you think this blog post will add nothing new, consider what’s not a platitude.  The smartest insurance companies are already investing in capabilities to rapidly create their own custom tailored applications with social media and mobile capabilities already fully integrated.  Not only is the train leaving the station, it’s a bullet train.

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

CIO released its 2012 “State of the CIO” survey results in January. The summary article states that, “Overall, as 2012 unfolds, companies plan to complete major initiatives using technologies that they expect will change the role of CIO… These include analytics, cloud, mobility and social media.” CIOs in regions throughout the U.S. will examine what precisely that means for them during the 2012 CIO Perspectives event series, produced by CIO Magazine.

As a sponsor of the series, Appian will be on-hand to discuss how our Mobile, Cloud and Social BPM combines with real-time predictive analytics to deliver smarter processes that automatically adjust based on new events. This is what Gartner calls “Intelligent Business Operations (IBO),” and it is a path to corporate Super-Star status for the CIO.

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, CIO, CIO Perspectives, intelligent business operations, mobile BPM, Social, Social BPM

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

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

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