Earlier this week, we announced the opening of our new Australia/New Zealand regional headquarters office in Sydney. The market for BPM Software across ANZ is growing rapidly. Economies across Asia-Pacific appear to be much stronger than in other areas of the world right now. Australia, in particular, has done very well through this protracted period of global economic crisis. According to Dr. Michael Rosemann of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), as quoted in a recent interview with Gartner, Inc. (subscription required), the country had the second-strongest currency in the world in 2010.
Economic strength means business growth, which demands scalable business processes and invites innovation. That's why Appian already has an impressive roster of customers in the region - customers that are expanding BPM projects into enterprise-wide BPM programs - and it's why we expect continued growth in the area. Dedicated Appian sales and professional services staff in-country will help us capitalize on the opportunity, and will ensure the success of our customers in the region.
In Dr. Rosemann's interview, he states that Australia's BPM community of practice is "one of the largest communities of BPM professionals in the world." He attributes this partly to the country's government having a very sophisticated focus on process management approaches, with this focus trickling through to the commercial sector. But he also makes the point that Australia's commercial organizations, facing the competitive pressures of global commercial markets, are increasingly focused on process innovation.
He also echoes a sentiment we are already seeing in our established ANZ customer base; namely, the maturation from single projects to strategic programs. He says, "When BPM became popular [5-10 years ago], it was a lot of one-off projects, often not initiated by senior executives...It started somewhere in unexpected corners of the organization. I believe we now have
consolidated our capabilities much better. We see a higher attention toward enterprise-wide BPM, and we see more mature, technical BPM implementations."
Speaking of Appian's ANZ customer base, it echoes our global roster with marquee clients across government and commercial sectors, including strong penetration in financial services and insurance. For example, if President Obama needs to file a claim with Territory Insurance Office (TIO) on that crocodile insurance policy he received on his trip to Australia (Heaven forbid, of course), TIO would process it through their Appian-based claims management system.
-Ben Farrell, Director, Corporate Communications
