Appian is a low-code development and business process management platform. It features drag-and-drop design for app building, automated work processes, unified data management, and cloud-based deployment.
$0
Mendix
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Mendix is a low code platform-as-a-service offering with mobile and social extensions. Mendix was acquired by Siemens August 2018.
$0
Salesforce Agentforce Service
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Service Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.
$25
per month
Pricing
Appian
Mendix
Salesforce Agentforce Service
Editions & Modules
Appian Community Edition
$0
Application - Input-Only
$2
per month per user
Application - Infrequent
$9
per month per user
Application - Standard
$75
per month per user
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
minimum 100 users, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
unlimited
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
Minimum 100, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
Mendix is more flexible and custom making oriented than Appian. OutSystems is almost the same as Mendix but more directed to the traditional developer, whereas Mendix is trying to make it possible for everyone to be able to model.
Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.
Mendix excels in scenarios involving Business Process Automation, making it a strong choice for applications requiring workflow automation, including processes like request approvals, document management, and other business workflows.Conversely, Mendix may be less suitable for projects that demand highly customized solutions with extensive custom coding. Its primary focus on low-code development may not align well with the requirements of projects that heavily rely on intricate and specialized coding.
I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.
We're able to really easily develop different views that are very specific to a customer's needs or customer's different types of user needs. So for example, the production managers can have a certain view that's relevant to them and then certain line managers can have views that are specific to them that allow them to run different scenarios which they define. So it allows us to easily build customized apps for each different type of user.
Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.
We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian
Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.
A 10 would say I have nothing to wish for. A 9 means I haven't seen anything better.This tool really helps you in the whole creation and maintenace cycle, so from requirements to building/modeling to testing to deploying to capturing feedback.
I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.
Response times are quick and you will get updates regularly about the status of your request. Even with very technical questions they have specialists that can help you with your problems it will give you an answer or help you with a work around.
Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.
Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?
Mendix would be my preferred system all the way. The system is designed for these kinds of works. I've worked with WP and DNN but they should be used just for websites. To create an app for a business value, I would suggest Mendix. Also, the offline capabilities of Mendix have greatly improved since the deployment of Mendix 7.13.
We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code."
The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications.
There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others.
It helps to speed up application development because of its low code by the fact that it's low code. It allows professional developers to focus more on specialized application development rather than the more routine application development that business IT and super users can do for themselves with some coaching from the IT department. So it's just allowing the more specialist professional developers.net, for example, Java in our organization to focus on more complex engineering application developments.
We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
