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Appian

Appian

Overview

What is Appian?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Automation Platform

10 out of 10
December 19, 2023
Incentivized
Appian is being used by a department in my company, it usually helps us solve business problems provided by various customers. And …
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TrustRadius Insights

Appian has proven to be a versatile and valuable tool for a wide range of use cases across various industries. Users and customers have …
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remote user

8 out of 10
December 21, 2021
Incentivized
attestations and validation for company policies (i.e. covid protocol and vaccine requirements). attestations prior to building entry.
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A+ for Appian

9 out of 10
December 16, 2021
Incentivized
Within my organization, Appian is utilized to provide a tracking solution for contractors going through the recruitment and placement …
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its helpful

10 out of 10
December 13, 2021
Incentivized
We have automated the whole business process and its associated business activities. We collect data from a lot of different users and …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 6 features
  • Platform Scalability (73)
    9.4
    94%
  • Reusability (75)
    9.4
    94%
  • Drag-and-drop Interfaces (72)
    8.9
    89%
  • Visual Modeling (73)
    8.8
    88%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Appian Community Edition

$0

Cloud

Application - Input-Only

$2

On Premise
per month per user

Application - Infrequent

$9

On Premise
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.appian.com/platform/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

APPIAN DEMO RECORDING SESSION # 91-9866955524

YouTube

Appian Developer Tutorial for Beginners | Appian Training

YouTube

APPIAN DEMO

YouTube

APPIAN DEMO | Harsha Trainings |

YouTube
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Features

Low-Code Development

Low-code development tools allow non developers to build simple process applications with little oversight. These tools simplify the application building process, and are frequently used for simple process applications.

9.1
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is Appian?

Appian provides a software development platform that combines Full-Stack Automation and enterprise low-code to rapidly deliver business applications. Appian can be used to improve customer experience, achieve operational excellence, and simplify global risk and compliance.

Appian is a platform for building enterprise software applications. Appian boasts running some of the most important processes at companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Aviva, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and the US Department of the Treasury.

Some Appian use cases include - Intelligent Business Process Management Systems (iBPMS), Dynamic Case Management (DCM), Digital Process Automation (DPA), Robotics Process Automation (RPA), and Low-code Development.

Appian Features

Low-Code Development Features

  • Supported: Visual Modeling
  • Supported: Drag-and-drop Interfaces
  • Supported: Platform Security
  • Supported: Platform User Management
  • Supported: Reusability
  • Supported: Platform Scalability

Appian Screenshots

Screenshot of Low-Code DevelopmentScreenshot of Business Process Management SuiteScreenshot of Dynamic Case ManagementScreenshot of Mobile App DevelopmentScreenshot of Appian RPA with Blue Prism

Appian Videos

The world’s leading enterprises trust Appian to unify humans, bots, and AI across their organization with speed and simplicity.
Ryder is the leader in commercial truck rentals and leasing, dedicated to continuous process improvement to solve customer problems, increase cost effectiveness, and ensure driver safety. Appian supports Ryder with the technology they need to deliver. Beginning with solutions ...
 Show More
FirstBank deployed Appian for intelligent case management to rapidly identify and resolve potential money laundering schemes. FirstBank ensures safety, achieves 100% compliance, and saves more than 1,000 work hours each year with the AML solution.
Alabama Power wanted to modernize their in-house energy improvement financing program. With Appian, they created the Smart Financing application, which automates and streamlines the entire financing process. Alabama Power has increased ally financing in some cases by 1200%.
In this video, Target IT and business leaders talk about their remarkable achievement and how they worked with Appian to transform customer journeys, streamline operations, and galvanize Target’s efforts to overcome the disruption that is so pervasive in the financial services industry.
Chris Lee of Merck and Evjatar Cohen of Appian delve into Merck's digital transformation with Appian. They discuss Merck's journey from siloed data and disjointed systems, to Appian's end-to-end solution providing workers with a simplified interface, unified data, and the comp...
 Show More
At Appian, we believe companies need a simpler, faster way to create powerful software. That’s why we pioneered the low-code market. Learn more about low-code in Appian CEO Matt Calkins' own words.
Hear from some of the world’s leading enterprises trust Appian to unify humans, bots, and AI across their organization with speed and simplicity.

Appian Competitors

Appian Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

OutSystems and Pega Platform are common alternatives for Appian.

Reviewers rate Reusability and Platform Scalability highest, with a score of 9.4.

The most common users of Appian are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(268)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Appian has proven to be a versatile and valuable tool for a wide range of use cases across various industries. Users and customers have reported success in automating business processes, improving productivity, and streamlining operations. Organizations have utilized Appian to replace manual paper-based systems, enabling online applications, document uploads, and simultaneous stakeholder reviews. This has greatly enhanced collaboration and cross-referencing of applications between different organizations.

In the healthcare sector, Appian has been instrumental in automating patient registration, diagnosis, and treatment workflows, eliminating paper-based processes and connecting patients with doctors and departments in a faster and more streamlined way. The platform has also been widely used for low code development and migrating older applications to the Appian code base. Additionally, Appian's capabilities in digital transformation and data analysis have allowed departments to study their own data and generate insightful reports.

Users have found Appian to be particularly beneficial for managing processes in areas such as trade reporting, client mailing process automation, onboarding new hires, workforce planning, case management, consumer marketing lists generation, CRM management, retail store remodeling, and even setting up cafes. They appreciate its ability to simplify complex tasks, automate mundane processes, and integrate with various systems. Furthermore, reviewers have commended Appian for its performance and scalability in handling large volumes of data and processes.

Overall, Appian's flexibility, customization options, user-friendly interface, collaboration features, advanced analytics capabilities, seamless integration with other systems, and overall capability for rapid development and deployment have made it a reliable choice for organizations looking to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

Intuitive User Interface: Users have consistently praised Appian for its visually uncluttered and intuitive user interface, with many stating that it allows for quick adoption by both internal and external users. The simplicity and user-friendly nature of the interface make it easy for business users with minimal training to navigate and perform tasks efficiently.

Low-Code Development Platform: Many reviewers appreciate the ease of use provided by Appian's low-code development platform. They find it beneficial that they can develop user interfaces without extensive coding knowledge, allowing for rapid application development and reduced reliance on traditional programming languages. This feature has made the development process more accessible and efficient.

Flexible Access Control: A significant number of users praise Appian for its flexibility in providing different levels of access to users based on their roles. This capability contributes to better data security and control within organizations, enhancing overall data management. Additionally, the ability to tailor processes for specific business needs and configure processes for new business users is seen as a major advantage, contributing to the software's adaptability.

Inflexible and Expensive License Model: Some users have found the license model of Appian to be inflexible and expensive, making it challenging for them to include end customer processes due to limitations in named user licenses or big bang packages.

Limited Exporting and Data Analysis Capabilities: Reviewers have mentioned limitations on exporting data to Excel, causing inconvenience for users who need to analyze large amounts of data. They have also encountered issues with the date-time stamp of exported data, leading to problems in data analysis.

Steep Learning Curve and Technical Limitations: Users have highlighted a learning curve associated with the different paradigms in Appian and experienced technical limitations when using certain browsers, particularly with date controls. Workarounds were needed to overcome these limitations.

The most common recommendations from users are:

  1. Try Appian for quick application development with less resources. Users have found Appian to be a reliable platform for rapidly building applications without requiring excessive time or resources.

  2. Create evaluation criteria and apply a defined score to each platform for an informed decision. Users suggest defining specific criteria to evaluate different platforms and assigning scores to objectively compare them. This approach helps in making an informed decision when selecting the most suitable platform.

  3. Develop a small Proof of Concept (POC) to determine the requirements before deploying Appian. Users recommend starting with a small POC to understand the specific requirements and capabilities of Appian within the organization. This allows for a better understanding of how Appian can meet the organization's needs and ensures a successful deployment.

By following these recommendations, organizations can leverage the benefits of Appian and efficiently develop applications while making informed decisions about their technology choices.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 139)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are implementing Appian across various organizations to help automate their workflows and reduce processing times. We are also helping solve audit challenges, as we are able to track all activity and changes within the system. We not only work as developers, but we also work with our clients to solve their most challenging problems and find the best solutions in Appian.
  • Strong user experience and user interface design capabilities.
  • Intuitive platform, making developing simple and enjoyable.
  • Fast implementation and the ability to iterate easily with really slick object and application comparisons, as well.
  • Appian documentation is really challenging to navigate and contains broken links.
  • Appian Community contains valuable information from real developers of Appian, but it is hard to navigate and is disorganized.
  • Process modeling screens are challenging to use because the windows are tiny, but there have been some changes to improve this in different releases.
- Well suited if your business wants to automate workflows, increase productivity, work iteratively with the development team to improve the system in an Agile manner.

- Not well-suited if your business is going to need very intricate capabilities that are not simple customizable features in Appian.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appia is being used to automate processes within the company. We understand processes as the way EDPR employees do their own job. For example, if we have two departments that request information by e-mail and they are storing them in Excel files, then we implement an Appian tool to manage the requests and store the information. Also to generate automatic notifications or to support approval flows.
  • Easy way to develop.
  • Good to manage data and generate reports.
  • No high programming skills needed.
  • Not enough report capabilities.
  • Not easy to generate beautiful tools.
  • Sometimes rigid.
To support approval workflows is perfect because you can program automatic e-mails, the approvers can do their approvals really easily, and also it allows you to find the bottle knecks. To allow employees to interact between them, and have all the information generated in a process in the same place centralized.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Quickly implementing an approval process for form submission. Email mailbox integration with a Microsoft Graph API. Appian was offering a pre-built solution that we could easily customize to meet our specific purposes.
  • Easy to get non-technical people up to speed.
  • Compare and deploy means that deployments are simplified and avoid error.
  • Integration is generally easy.
  • Debugging can be difficult as error messages are not always detailed enough.
  • Support is hard to get for individual freelancers and small company business partners.
  • The flexibility between desktop and mobile development can sometimes limit specific development toward one platform.
Well suited:
  • Simple workflows with approval processes e.g. with e-mail notifications, etc.
  • Simple page-able and searchable lists to display data.
  • Simple data entry screens.
  • Quick implementations.
  • Proof of concepts, potentially a very powerful tool.

Not so suited:
  • Complex workflows with complex business validation rules.
  • Complex integrations or UIs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian to develop solutions that we bring to the market to sell. Our main focus is on healthcare-centric solutions that aim to bring patient and providers together virtually. We integrate with many systems and pull in data from many places to display in a single pane of glass for providers, reducing time spent looking into multiple systems, and increasing time on what's important - patients.
  • OOTB UI elements enable quick building of forms
  • Low or no code integration creation makes integrating with other sources easy
  • Build once, deploy anywhere makes it easy to put an application in users hands, regardless of form factor (desktop, mobile, etc)
  • I would like to see more flexibility in Appian's UI components
  • We're currently locked in to needing to have a user account if you want to interact with the system - it would be great to be able to have anonymous users
  • Appian's RPA capabilities are still growing. I would like to see more user friendly management/creation of RPA processes
Appian is great for pretty much anything where you have a workflow. It can be configured to automatically assign tasks to groups of users and direct work based on pre-configured logic, speeding up hand-off points in the process. Appian currently isn't best suited to cases where you need a public portal where users aren't logged in to an account.
Sana Maghzaoui | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hands-on experience in the Appian BPM Suite, along with Level 1 certification from the Appian corporation.
Proficient in Appian application development, process modeling, and user interface. Knowledge and experience in design and development of process model, UI screen design (tempo forms), rules, SAIL (self-assembling interface layer) Interface, Appian records and reports, data management, document management, and expression rules.
  • The best part about Appian is the low code experience and ability to link to a number of other applications for reporting, automation, data entry, and even API integration.
  • Extremely easy to learn and ramp-up other developers.
  • Database management in cloud solutions seems outdated; I'd like to see more options than MySQL.
  • Process model designers need to be modernized.
It's easy-to-learn and easy-to-use for both developers and end-users. The interface is slick and powerful. Both the Appian product and the implementation team have been an excellent fit for our organization.
December 16, 2020

Appian - Great Start

William Mannaberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian across the whole organization. We use it as a workflow process to approve expedited freight costs.
  • Workflow
  • Automation
  • Ease of Use
  • Presentation, I think new and innovative ways to present an app is always aprpeciated
I could think anyone could use Appian for the smallest business case use and a large use.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being rolled out in our company as a central BPMS for assigning work to our staff. At this moment the assigning is done manually but we want to use Appian to automate the process. We are currently implementing it as a prototype for 2 areas of the company to see how we can implement the system and support it.
  • Building of workflows and UI/UX
  • Support/Training
  • None found so far, but may do later in the PoC phase
  • Not using the standar BPMN 2.0 notation, as they have additional more detailed notation derived from BPMN
Quickly build an UI for uploading or downloading data into a database. We have a weekly process where a file from the business is uploaded into a table by IT. With Appian we should be able to quickly build a UI where the analyst can select the file, have the system validate the file and after passing the validation upload the file to the data and give feedback to the user of any success/failure.

The same for data extracts that some users may be interested in where they are given a self service platform to select the data and export.
May 05, 2020

Appian Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is used to organize workflows within the company for procurement, legal, engineering, and GIS mapping. Project information is also stored in Appian.
  • Workflows, assigning things to people, and delineating steps
  • Providing structure to an organization
  • UI design: some things are just clunky--circular references
  • Presentation of information is rough in some places.
  • Integrations with other tools such as ESRIs Portal
Appian is well suited for a rapidly growing company that needs to scale up and standardize its internal processes to meet growing demand.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used to run a specific business line. It is the application used by our business users to manage our customer rentals and vehicle maintenance. We use Appian to provide APIs used by our eCommerce website. It is used as the source of record for the whole business line.
  • Easy to develop new forms and workflows
  • Easily manage security
  • UI is slick
  • Development can be done without any special software installed on developers' machines
  • Appian does not scale up and down without adding physical hardware.
  • Have to size your environment for peak loads even when the majority of the time it will sit idle
  • No way to refresh non-prod environments from prod as well as spin up temporary sandboxes
You can develop new workflows quickly using Appian and deployments are easy. It is easy to build slick UI forms. If you need to continuously refresh non-prod data from production, Appian is not well suited for this. Appian also does not allow you to create sandboxes. If you need an environment that will scale up and down with peak loads automatically, then Appian is not well suited either.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Entire org, customer onboarding, product development, and other use cases.
  • Cloud implementation.
  • Low code platform.
  • Quick implementation to benefit.
  • Less consulting resources vs competitors.
  • Basic usability use cases in the platform for example difficult to remove defunct groups.
  • In-flight upgrade of process model not as sophisticated vs some competitors.
  • Tuning of performance/response times can be challenging.
Document-centric workflows are a core strength as is a longer duration process. Challenges in balancing structured long-duration workflows vs the need to be extremely agile and use the platform when processes need to be fast-tracked.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being implemented by my Organization, it addresses the business problems of capturing and manipulating data.
  • Speed: you can design something on the front end and show it to the client within a few hours for feedback.
  • Weird quirks: There are some weird quirks that Appian has that are not well documented.
  • Process modeling as a developer: There are many improvements with the GUI that could be made to make it easier to develop process models.
Well suited: Easy business processes without a ton of data needed, quick and easy turnaround to get a workflow automated. Less appropriate: Highly complex systems with a lot of data and where complex reporting is needed.
Alex Peker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The custom application developed in Appian is used by the production group of our organization. It is used to maintain and run the processes that allow users to generate marketing lists based on a comprehensive set of multi-stage selection criteria and apply statistical models out of predefined consumer audience dataset. It involves building a complex UI and communication with various outside systems through the use of web services.
  • Ease of building modern uniformed and dynamic UI.
  • Web services support.
  • In-place testing.
  • Ability to extend application with usage of custom plug-ins.
  • Unstable and sometimes forgiving and/or implied behavior for various complex language constructs, especially involving collections processing.
  • Inability to customize UI only for a specific platform (e.g. Desktop) given priority to the notion of the universal platform support (desktop, tablet, mobile).
  • Run-time error descriptions are not really helpful in many circumstances.
  • The low-code environment is not low-code at all if you need to build UI of relatively medium complexity.
If you need to build simple workflow like approval process, for example, with e-mail notifications, rejections, etc., then Appian is great. Or, simple page-able and searchable lists to display data to the user, then it's great. If you need simple data entry screens, even supporting header/detail capabilities, then it's great as well. However, do not expect to have a no-code or even low-code development environment if you need to implement even not so complex validation business rules. The ability to communicate with outside systems is very well supported through the usage of web services and other integration tools. Complex UIs and complex screen navigation maps are not supported very well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian across the whole organization. It is used in various ways. The main purpose is to supply needed approval and processing that the enterprise systems do not provide. For instance, it is a way for employees to request company-provided mobile devices to help support customer contracts. An employee can request a device and it will go to the proper approvers and then an order can be placed. There are may be examples within IT processing that Appian fills the need. New employees/contractors requesting user accounts to login to various applications. For HR use, employees can put in requests for Charity fundraising. Also, managers can put in merit request for Recognition Awards. For Financial integration, Project Managers can setup Project Work Authorizations as well and put in Project Risk factors to manage contracts. We also use Appian to request work or long term items that will need to be capitalized over a period of time. Basically, Appian is used as an interface to integrate HR, IT and Financial data across the organization. It provides the necessary tool for approval workflows that are missing in the enterprise systems.
  • Automatic Email Task Notification: Very simple with almost no code required.
  • Task Escalation: If a user has not completed a task within a certain time frame, tasks can be automatically escalated on a set schedule.
  • One platform for development. The majority of what is developed for the Internet browser will translate seamlessly to a mobile device. Developers are maintaining code for a browser application and a mobile device application.
  • Easy to develop applications and re-use code for multiple applications.
  • Better integration with external DB other than SQL Server.
  • Export limit of data to Excel needs to be increased.
  • Date/time stamp of exported data into Excel fix.
I believe that Appian is very well-suited to provide an approval work-flow. For making requests where there is a specific hierarchy of approvals that must occur, it is great. For example, if an employee needs to make a capital request for a long term project, the number of approvals can be set based on the amount of the items/work that is to be capitalized. If the amount is < 10000, maybe only manager approval is required. If the amount is over 10,000, Department Budgetary approval is also required. Over 25,000, Finance approval is required. Over 100,000, executive approval is required. Appian makes it very easy to set these conditions and send out tasks based on them. Appian also Excels at reporting. Appian provides the tools to report on any of the data that is captured in the request. This data can be exported to Excel to be used for audits or data management. Data can be reported in a variety of ways grid format, generate a pdf, or with charts and graphs. I don't believe that Appian should be used to replace any cost accounting type of functions. There are enterprise systems, such as Oracle that do a better job with that. Appian's strength is providing workflows.
April 17, 2020

Robust BPM

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian as a case management solution for our operational needs. It allows us to automate processes end to end and to offer a "one-stop solution", it orchestrates on top of the various internal and external systems.
Currently, being used by one large size department.
  • Very intuitive development.
  • Open platform that can easily integrate to any external system.
  • Great product releases updates every Q.
  • Excellent customer support.
  • Shortens the development cycle and allows faster delivery.
  • They can do much better in terms of training for developers. Online resources are of low quality. Training should be improved with more in-depth hands-on technical sessions offered free of charge.
  • Need to follow up on the customer journey, especially in the early implementation phase, with direct communication regardless of the company size.
Excellent for automating business processes with a high level of complexity, that require integrations and ongoing development as the business needs change.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian has been selected as an enterprise standard for workflow for my company. I specifically represent the side of our company that provides services to our clients and more specifically our contact center. We are using Appian together with other contact center technologies to process client service requests received by mail, fax, and web. Appian is the component we are using to orchestrate our processes and to support automation where possible and to engage our associates when automation is not possible.

We made the selection of Appian in order to meet two primary objectives, one to replace older expensive technologies that no longer satisfied our objectives and to implement new processes to provide improved processing efficiencies for our associates and clients.
  • Rapid development of working code
  • Process orchestration
  • Integration with external systems
  • Support for code deployment (continuous delivery/continuous deployment)
  • Support for complex user interface behaviors
  • Better support for code development when required
Appian is well suited for scenarios that are significantly process-driven. For example, if you are conducting a process that requires integration between multiple systems and engagement of users throughout. Appian provides strong, flexible, and easy to develop capabilities to define and execute a wide range of processing of data and documents.

Appian is also suited for small to medium applications suitable for a business unit and business capability.
Ivan Vazquez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is deep inside the University of South Florida. We have focused the work in two different areas
- Student: providing all kinds of solutions like portfolio, scheduling, student records, and general support for many activities for student success
- Faculty and Staff: travel requests, faculty evaluations, and assignments, Tenure and Promotion, HR Onboarding, etc.
  • Bringing data together from the different source systems to build actionable information
  • Fast implementation - low code
  • Looking for weaknesses to improve their product
  • No standard programming knowledge
  • No pool of developers available
Appian is an excellent tool but requires a commitment from the organization due to investment in human resources. Really well suited for all types of business workflows, both for manual intervention and also automated.

It is not a specialized tool. If you are looking for an advanced CRM, buy a CRM rather than trying to build your own. Focus on letting other tools what they do best, and integrate with Appian.
April 08, 2020

Appian Rocks!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is currently being used by one department. We have an annual program where we distribute items for our members so they can prepare for working in the heat of summer. Appian manages the entire distribution of the items to the members, allowing users to see requests, manage the number of items shipped to members, and ship the items out.
  • Follow business processes
  • Customize the display to the current user and show them relevant information
  • Integrate with just about anything
  • Appian has new releases every 3 months, and it's hard to find anything it doesn't do well.
Appian is fantastic as a business process management tool. If you have a business process where things have to get done in a specific order by a specific group of users, these are the things that Appian shines at.

Where Appian falls short is in data crunching or vast data visualizations, as it was not designed for that. While it can do those things, there are better tools for them.
March 05, 2020

Appian user's review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used to support various groups and business processes, as well as to help track user-identified issues/concerns.
  • Keeps track of the 'who' and 'what' and 'when' various tasks are completed.
  • Helps us make sure steps are not missed/skipped in a process.
  • Makes it easier to show an audit trail.
  • Make it easier for any 'normal' user to create their own workflows with minimal training. The easier it is to rollout use of the tool, the more it would be used even just to help with an individual's or team's personal/team use.
It is good to use anywhere where there is a repetitive process to follow, where 1 task shouldn't take place before others are completed, etc. It is also good to use when you need an audit trail available.

It is not a great idea to use appian if the process, inputs, users, etc., are constantly changing - you can quickly find yourself always in a development lifecycle of an always-changing process.
Steffen Liedtke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used as a BPM application for new customer signup and follow up on process task management, including SLA reporting. The next major development utilizing the Appian platform to receive real-time information from our national fleet about collection/service outcome with back office teams task creation and performing off system tasks based on information provided.
  • quick mockup simple forms to show end user how the data will flow.
  • task setup based on time or other triggers works very well with the the SLA reporting streamlining teams performances.
  • real time information now available and we can pro actively resolve issues now and inform our customers that issues are resolved before they actually knew the issue existed.
  • whole Appian Version updates require our full change team to do UAT. There should be an automated tool provided by Appian to highlight what processes will be affected by the version update.
  • we have issues with time/date conversion to Australian standard time as some of the time stamps are based on Washington DC time. This makes GAP analysis when issues reported by end-users challenging some times.
  • certain default form layouts cannot be amended to our needs and require a total new sprint to get exactly what we need - which again is time and money we need to invest and something a change request on a form should do the trick
BPM, real time data visibility, task tracking
March 18, 2019

TrustAppian

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We customize Appian to support various business processes in the organization. There are multiple business units that currently use it.
  • It's easy to configure/customize.
  • It provides a consistent workflow across multiple pages/functions.
  • It's designer interface allows for quick troubleshooting.
  • There are places that come out-of-the-box that we can't customize, especially the user profile which sometimes, depending on the country/region privacy requirements, we need to be able to modify.
  • There are places where brute force or hard coding is necessary
Well suited: Process workflows, requesting for approvals, submitting requests.
Not appropriate: Huge, complex business processes that would involve multiple users across a single transaction.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used to create and in some cases smooth over a complex interdepartmental workflow. It is being used by the whole organization.it is very applicable where you have cross-departmental workflow
  • Easy to use
  • Easy to debug
  • Easy to get people onboard
  • low code
  • Dashboards on appian data
  • Include option to use bots
  • native dashboards with tableau integration
  • actual low-code effort which can be created by business users and not by IT
  • integrate it with sharepoint
Very apt to manage a interdepartmental workflow but not very applicable to a ticketing or issue tracking situations.


With the rise of other low code BPM applications, Appian needs to keep pace with RPA, OCR, NLP and other associated technologies. They should make dashboards easy to construct as well.
March 11, 2019

Appian FTW

Jason Shelton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Appian is being used to automate processes enterprise wide. We currently have over 60 process automated across IT, HR and Finance, with more in development.
  • As a developer, the fact that the entire platform is web based, is invaluable. I can work from anywhere that I can access the Internet.
  • Like any other platform, Appian is constantly adding new features. It's a con that is also a benefit. You really have to stay on top of all the new offerings.
Personally, I have not run into a scenario not suited for Appian. It's an amazingly flexible platform that has handled anything we've thrown at it.
Reetwick Ghosh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Appian is the platform [we use] to onboard new clients.
  • Responsive UI
  • Records
  • Backend integration
  • Customer relationship management
  • Have industry specific frameworks which reduce implementation timeline
[Appian BPM is well suited to] Scenarios where data orchestration and process orchestration can be linked.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian in our R&D organization. We use it to build solutions for complex processes that require something more advanced to efficiently support them. These are processes that were quite difficult to solution with traditional methods. Appian allows us to address these highly complex processes. Also, there are many solution requests in our backlog that Appian can now efficiently fulfill. These would be spreadsheet or document based processes that are currently inefficient. With Appian, we can build out solutions for them to increase efficiency. Furthermore, the processes can now talk to each other so we can make gains that were simply not achievable before.
  • Appian is great for sharing information across processes. The platform is designed such that objects from one application can be simply referenced in another (if your security permits it, of course.) This makes information sharing across processes quite simple from a technical implementation perspective.
  • Development cycles on Appian are shorter as compared to traditional methods. We're able to churn out solutions at a higher velocity.
  • Building a user interface is fast and simple. It has limited widgets but meets our needs 95% of the time out of the box. Appian regularly enhances there UI capabilities.
  • Appian has drag and drop UI building, so a proficient Appian designer can build the interface in real time along side the business stakeholders.
  • Advanced functionality requires use of the Appian expression language. The more advanced the logic, the harder it is to build with the expression language. This means development expertise is more relevant if you need advanced functionality, which I imagine applies almost all the time. I would much prefer if they allowed some common language such as JavaScript out of the box.
  • Debugging has proved difficult. It’s easy for developers to get the app to or feature to a “working” state but it needs robust alpha testing.
  • Deployment can be tricky. When a solution gets big and there are many teams and dependencies, it needs a careful process to ensure things don’t break.
  • Reasuability of Appian objects is both a pro and con. Reusing objects across apps may be more trouble than its worth because of creating heavy dependencies. Experience is helpful to strike the right balance.
Appian is very well suited for complex business processes. If implementing using traditional methods is daunting, then Appian would be a good alternative. It follows that simpler business processes would be a breeze. Also, it's well suited for situations where sharing data across processes/applications is likely. There's no need to "integrate" from Appian app to Appian app, so sharing data within the platform is trivial from a technical implementation perspective. Appian may not be as well suited for dealing with very large datasets (tens of thousands of records), it seems too much data may start taxing the system.
March 08, 2019

Appian Review

Raul E. Menendez, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used as a supplement to programs like Excel and Access to incorporate data for customers and business partners. Appian is currently helping in organizing data, and we are currently working on integrating Appian into replacing legacy systems, and allowing non-tech users to readily access data.
  • Organization of data into an easily, readable format.
  • Providing different levels of access, depending on the role of the user.
  • Being able to develop UIs without having to use code.
  • I am a new user to Appian, and am not too familiar with the product just yet to find a weakness.
Depending on the data, Appian is well suited for database-type functions. I am currently researching Appian’s functionalities so that it can be implemented in other areas as well.
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