Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading

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.
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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 8.6
Return to navigation

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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

(1-25 of 35)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize it to create automated workflows in several different back-office areas. It has replaced several single-sourced systems which did not allow for easy development or integration. We definitely appreciate the low code aspect of development and the ability to rapidly deploy new workflows.
  • Low code for rapid deployment.
  • Great search capabilities.
  • New features deployed frequently.
  • Strong customer focus.
  • Some constraints on custom reporting.
  • Version management could be more flexible.
  • Could integrate with other 3rd party deployment tools.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian for our Client Acceptance form. Based on questions answered different questions will be shown to the user. After completion, the form is reviewed, and depending on the office, industry and other fields it will assign specific reviewers to the engagement. After it is fully completed it is then transferred into a printable file.
  • Process Models - they error in the background and the user does not know and support can fix it at a later time without the user having an issue.
  • Support - I have had a good experience with Appian support responding in a timely manner.
  • It's a Platform as a Service so the database, code, and application are all available through the same portal.
  • It would be good to be able to capture data as an expression from the process modeler rather than the 'Raw' format with square brackets.
  • Version Control that supports branching.
  • Ability to see the state of child interfaces in the designer.
I support Appian so when a process model errors. I like that users do not get an error in the UI and only the devs can see the error and fix it and afterward, the process model will complete them without issue. Debugging can be hard compared to other coding languages.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by a department for client onboarding. It helps to automate the existing client onboarding process which was previously done manually. We are using it to manage onboarding questions that need to be answered by the client and send email notifications to the relevant parties within the organisation so that onboarding process times are reduced.
  • Easy to pick up on how to use the tool by going through a paid class organised by Appian.
  • Good documentation on the website to support developers.
  • Simplifies business process management so that companies do not have to reinvent the wheel.
  • Request for features to fix security findings is generally a slow process.
  • Request for features to support business objective is generally a slow process.
  • Appian cloud performance lags behind in-house solution.
It's a great tool to manage business processes because it has features to allow you to manage different users and control permission of who has access to certain UI or documents. It takes very little time to develop new features for business needs. Great monitoring tool to help troubleshoot production issues.

If performance is critical, Appian will lag behind.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used to digitize and improve operational efficiencies within our organization. As with all digitization initiatives, Appian is used where a combination of users and processes are involved in business operations. We also aim to move away from legal Excel spreadsheets to workflows.
  • Workflow automation
  • Rapid time to market of applications
  • Starting with version 21.1, Appian also does a great job at allowing developers to compare code changes from one version to another and highlighting differences
  • Learning curve with Appian is lesser than with products like Pega
  • Appian could introduce version control for certain key components like record types
  • Parallel development of code with Appian is really hard when multiple developers share the same objects. This is an area where Appian could do better.
  • Appian can keep getting better at robotic process automation to make it easier for 'low-code' developers without much knowledge of Java programming to implement RPA.
Appian is best suited when the need for rapid time-to-market of business functionality outweighs the need for very specific user interface requirements. Appian comes with a rich set of user interface capabilities and implementing a UX design that operates within the realm of these capabilities is ideal. On the other hand, if the UX design is rigid, it makes for a poor use case for Appian.
August 03, 2021

A developer's opinion.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is currently being used to develop any new software services applications within my department. Currently, Appian development is happening in a few different departments, but as of now, not many. The applications developed using Appian address the need for updated forms collections. The previous methods are tedious and require a lot of uploads/downloads for the tasking to be completed. Using Appian has made it easier on the user when completing forms and seeing tasks through to the end. This includes the processes where more than one type of user is required to complete one step of the process and push it to the next step. There are some issues that I've encountered, but I believe that these issues come from our specific business rules and how we are using Appian. Furthermore, after having several meetings with Appian representatives, a lot of our requests for features are already in the process of being created and it's just a matter to time before they are available.
  • It's easy to get started with little development experience.
  • Changes are immediately visible.
  • The Appian Community website usually has quick responses to questions.
  • Better configuration management.
  • Better control over change management.
  • Error messages contain more specific errors.
I believe it is well suited for the financial world, maybe even medical. I'm not completely convinced it is best for military yet. I would need more time in the coming years before giving that answer. I would also think that small businesses would benefit from using Appian, I'm just not sure they could afford the cost for something as simple as a basic website.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian allows us to give our offshore operations team a platform where they can quickly create web portal workflows that accommodate special project demands.
  • Role based access
  • Visualization of data
  • Connection to multiple third party flows (FTP, email, filedrop)
  • Enterprise database access
  • Common development language for extensions (.NET, Java)
  • User license costs
Centralizing small workflows to one platform that can control authentication, logging, design, and security.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FRB is the largest Appian customer in the West Coast I believe. It is used across multiple line[s] of business like deposits, PWM, lending etc. It solves many workflow oriented problems such as onboarding.
  • Manages businesses workflows well. Increases delivery by [up] to 50% against traditional programming languages.
  • Fast to develop onboarding related applications.
  • Integrations- authentication mechanisms are still some[times] not out of the box like Snowflake, OAuth 2.0, [etc.]
  • Lack of source control makes it hard to manage environments. Need something similar to GitHub for Appian
Any onboarding use case, automating manual workflows. Lot of availability of skilled offshore developers who do Appian. It's good for implementing internal applications where UX / UI limitations would not be a big deal.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian was selected as the platform to help implement a global workflow management process for contract, premium, and claim management in our organization. The implemented solution allows our organization to standardize our processes, consolidate the information and provide a dashboard for our executives. Aside from this, it has considerably reduced our time to market and improved the quality of the solutions we deliver to the users in our organization.

The solution(s) implemented in Appian are deployed worldwide across all Aon Reinsurance offices.
  • Low code platform.
  • High availability and scalability.
  • Streamline integrations with external APIs.
  • Monitoring and error logging.
  • Integration with third party source control tools.
  • Better CI/CD capabilities.
  • Debug capabilities.
  • OCR capabilities.
Well suited for work management processes. Not very well suited for solutions that rely on heavy (mathematical) calculations.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian for low code development, specifically, we are migrating several older applications to our Appian code base. Specifically, we are using in the Production and Technology workspace and slowly expanding the Appian footprint across the organization. Given the distributed nature of our workforce, using a tool like Appian allows us to leverage more expensive managers with our emergent coding organization.
  • 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.
  • There is a definite learning curve associated with Appian and functional information may be difficult to find.
  • Better in line help would be a welcome addition.
  • The pace of change means that, just about the time we are mastering this version, the NEXT version is coming out.
We use Appian to build out the behind the scenes workflows in our applications and the web dev aspect to skin those new apps. If you have extremely complex algorithms or logic, Appian may struggle a bit... and the low code makes altering as needed for ADA requirements, extremely challenging.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is a key component of our initiative to automate business processes and improve the quality of manual work through tailored LOB applications. It enables rapid delivery and iteration on these internal applications. We are also taking advantage of its strengths in the case management area.
  • Making process models the core of the solutions you build, with AI, Bot and human interactions through low-code UX.
  • Highly skilled professional services team.
  • Low code data integration that provides a platform for unifying data across back-end systems.
  • Ideal for building tailored case management solutions.
  • No built-in support for integrating with messaging or event streaming systems.
  • Limited ability to customize UX beyond the out of the box components.
  • No true cloud auto-scaling (yet); relies on reserved VM instances.
  • Great for internal applications where complete control of the UX is not needed and the rapid development cycle of low-code can really shine.
  • Great for building tailored case management solutions where the underlying escalation process can be customized via the BPM editor.
  • Not appropriate for external/customer facing web portals that are public and/or where per-user licensing is a concern.
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 07, 2019

Good BPM Platform

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company bought Appian 6 years ago as the new BPM system to replace an old one from IBM. After that migrating existing and implementing new workflows have been going all the time. And it is now used by most of the business departments and has become one of the core platforms in IT.
  • Workflow runs in memory and faster than others based on rational database
  • New features and versions released in a fast way
  • Support and community runs well
  • Be able to refactor object names
  • Upgrades could be easier
  • Easy for HA on premises
It's a good fit for companies without existing and BPM platform and fewer legacy systems. It will be a little difficult if that is not the case.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Appian at Sunsuper to upgrade and solve a lot of business processes. We are currently moving away from older technologies and manual processes. It allows our company to automate a lot of super related operations that always required manual input and turning an operation that took days to just minutes.
  • Allows the use of BPMN to describe and implement a business process. Its not pure BPMN 2.0, but does the job nicely in most cases.
  • Forms can be build relatively easily and with 19.1 and will allow for a lot of flexibility in the layout too.
  • The ability to build Java plugins where needed is a huge benefit as there are very few solutions that can't be implemented using Appian.
  • Can port to multiple platforms relatively easily.
  • Database access is abstracted away, so trivial to move from one DB engine to another.
  • The new objects to allow connections to web services is very nicely done and handles OAuth very well.
  • No source control. In 19.1 they have included very minimal source control, but basically if you want to use GIT etc. you might be out of luck.
  • Very minimal debugging.
  • Appian boasts it is "low code", but it is anything but, especially if you want to do anything non trivial. To Appian's defence on this one, I've not seen any framework that is truely "low code". I've also noticed Appian's marketing has moved away from this.
  • Very hard to install and upgrade. This should be easy, but very hard to get right, very easy to mess up.
  • Doesn't scale easily, this again is a lot of hard work to get right and hard to maintain.
Depending on the area you want to implement, and the size of your business, Appian might be a perfect fit or a very bad decision. If you are a medium to large business with a lot of manual processes and work flows, then I would highly recommend Appian.

For a lot of business needs there are a lot of very good open source solutions that would do a much better job. Ruby on Rails (RoR) is one example that comes to mind (but there are many many others such as NodeJS, ASP.net etc.). RoR creates applications quickly, has full source control, is easy to install and maintain, has a lot of 3rd party plugins to build your application quickly, integrates with technologies to allow scaling, multiple environments (dev, UAT, Prod etc) and has a huge web support presence.

So basically pick the right tool for the job.
Peter Newnam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used as our primary BPM product.
  • Rapid application development
  • Low code development
  • Quick applications to manage workflow
  • Fast screen mockups
  • Change control and version control is lagging
  • Integration testing is difficult
  • Plugins are more difficult to develop than they should be
Great for anything involving business process management, BAs doing basic workflow without learning coding. Not so great for solutions requiring functionality not available out of the box which requires plugins.
Michael Campbell, PMP,CSM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Appian was selected initially to solve a very specific business problem; how to integrate our work intake. Once we introduced Appian and its tools to the organization we have since discovered a myriad of other processes that should be enhanced by their movement onto the Appian platform.

Appian is currently being used across our Digital operations. There has been interest however from our Enterprise IT division to access Appian in how it may be able to resolve specific business issues on the Enterprise side.

Currently we are focusing the use of Appian in three primary areas: Work Intake, Time Tracking and Resource Management and Reporting. However, we have a broad strategic backlog of work that we have planned over the next 3 years. We look at Appian as being the backbone that connects disparate systems together to facilitate process improvement and overall visibility into the organization. Since this initial entry we have moved Appian to Enterprise and as such we have expanded our audience significantly.
  • Process Modeling - The Appian designer interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. It allows a designer, once familiar with the basic setup to quickly create process models
  • Flexibility - We often tell our end users that Appian is a blank slate from which they can request and design practically whatever process and or business solution they can envision. Where as users are often relegated to and limited by what an off the shelf application provides Appian provides tremendous flexibility.
  • Mobile - Appian has successfully accomplished the build once deploy to all platforms for BPM. Their mobile versions of the application are excellent.
  • Cloud Services - Appian offers a cloud service that is simple to set up and insures that you are always up to date with the latest of versions.
  • Integration - Appian's API capabililties to push/pull data allows it to become what we call the "spine" of our organization. Connecting to and interacting with other enterprise platforms to provide its users with a one stop complete picture.
  • Process Modeling - Appian is currently moving away from their desktop portal model and into web-based access. This requires some significant reworking of their underlying structures. That being said, their new technology and modeling options are extremely exciting and should provide significant enhancements and flexibility over the plain portal environment option.
  • Form Design - I would like to see greater flexibility in form design and form preview.
  • Training - Appian offers a plethora of training but the ability to tailor training to meet specific needs of an audience would be a welcomed addition.
  • Reports - There needs to be greater flexibility in configuring and printing of reports.
Appian is very well suited for workflow management. It truly is flexible enough to resolve just about any workflow and or process improvement project one might encounter. Their Solutions Delivery and Professional Services resources are excellent and are always willing to step in for assistance at a moments notice. Here we had Appian setup a test instance of their services and then created multiple proof of concept models that we used to socialize their capabilities. It is critical from a selection process to test the platform with a process that you are familiar with. Second, we would look to obtain hands-on experience with the tool before licensing. Several of our users here attended training prior to the POC work so we could actually get our hands into the application.
Michael Keevil | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization is using Appian across our entire population to enhance daily processes and to create new processes that facilitate the sharing of common information.
  • Appian allows us to rapidly configure a process for a new business user sharing information previously developed.
  • Appian allows us to build new processes rapidly, following requests from business owners.
  • Appian allows us to custom tailor processes for business customers who have seen functionality in other Appian processes.
  • I miss the ability to designate items, particularly rules, as Favorites, and return to them quickly.
I’ve recommended it to HR departments for onboarding processes, where it works well. I’ve seen it implemented as the master control for manipulation of huge amounts of data, where it can be difficult to configure.
December 07, 2017

My Sights

Ravi Joshi, PMI-ACP® | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is used within Fidelity to automate the processes workflow to Launch any New Fund or Share class within the market. There are a couple of other use cases where we are using Appian as a tool of choice like Trade Reporting, Client Mailing process automation & others. The main business problem that we are addressing with Appian is, all the manual processes, phone & mail communication & SLA bound dependency has removed now. We are also now able to meet all the Regulatory SLA pressure after implementing Appian.
  • I have observed after version 17.1 we have a lot of good features in Appian that improve usability (UX). This adds real value in this competitive Digital space.
  • You can understand business use case and convert it to a logical process automation.
  • Process Modeller has improved a lot and providing smart services use adds more value.
  • Service integration helps us to seamlessly integrate with third-party systems
  • There is an improvement required for Reporting part.
  • UX can also improve such as in consideration of some CMS system. Sometimes business usually compares the UX with some CMS systems like SharePoint.
  • Tableau or any other visualization tool integration is Key to provide Single customer View.
Surely Appian is not a Site Development Tool. So we should avoid the use of a system for just UX development. We should look for process automation as much as we can mature the use cases.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is being used across our entire organisation for a range of purposes from customer management to breach reporting. We have found Appian to be very flexible and well suited to whatever requirement we have thrown at it.
  • Easy and simple to use
  • Very flexible
  • Regular product enhancements by Appian
  • Appian training is quite basic and linear
  • On premise support could be better
  • So many product releases in a year can also make it difficult to stay on the latest version

Scenarios where Appian is well suited

  • When overlaid over multiple systems or legacy systems to provide a simple layer for users and provide automation in place of manual tasks
  • Where the "customer journey" can be simplified and made more consistent

Scenarios where Appian is less appropriate

  • Where a fully customised end to end solution is needed with very specific interface requirements
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[It's] Used by two main departments within CenturyLink (Network and Wholesale). Both departments utilize Appian for project management functions supporting cellular carrier site completion for multiple cellular carrier customers. It is used to track and report on various business process tasks. We have three main business process flows and several supporting process flows. It replaced manual tracking of these activities through the use of various manual tools; spreadsheets, PC based tracking applications and paper.
  • Ability to map out complex business processes within the tool and ease of use to define and make ongoing changes to the processes.
  • Reporting capabilities of the software is very good and intuitive to use the reporting definition tools.
  • Technical support from Appian Support team is top notch; very responsive and customer focused!
  • Very technologically advanced, continually upgrading the software with excellent supporting documentation/explanation of capabilities.
  • Utilize customer input and feedback when making improvements to their software.
  • We have an earlier version of the Appian software and it is not always intuitive to relate our current process modeling application to Appian's current technological abilities in their current software.
  • Deprecations of some existing functions as they make technological advances at times makes it a risk to ensure our processes are not negatively impacted.
Ability to develop complex process models with intuitive user interfaces and supporting reports can be done fairly quickly. Software has many built in wizard type tools that help in coding complex business rule and process flow logic. Defining highly complex reports can be somewhat difficult, however, this could be due to our company not using most current software and not having process variable data stored in an external database as opposed to stored locally.
Paul Cabrelle | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian was introduced to replace a completely manual paper based planning approvals application system. Both internal and external users had to supply nine copies of printed applications and supporting documentation for circulation among the airport stakeholders. Often folders were lost or misplaced, stakeholders reviewed the information in silos. With the introduction of Appian, we created a 24/7 online application system which consisted of electronic forms, provided document upload facilities for supporting documentation, enabled simultaneous stakeholder reviews, sped up the approval time and enabled greater throughput. We now have a greater collaborative approach to planning approvals and are soon to start work on automating the Airport Works Permits which is the missing link for completion of the planning approvals process. We also facilitated access to the Airport Building Controller to allow them to cross reference their paper based applications with our electronic applications to ensure that the same information is being provided to both organisations. We have also just completed the development for airline delays claims which is a service recovery mechanism for airlines when selected airport infrastructure causes delays to inbound or outbound flights. This will be primarily used by airline representatives. They will be able to lodge new claims, view their existing claims and receive outcome notifications.
  • Ease of Use - one of our main drivers was that it had to be simple to use. Moreso when a large proportion of our userbase are external to the airport and sometimes unknown, which makes training a particularly difficult task. We also didn't want our internal users to be slowed down after the introduction so again we put a lot of effort into making the interface as simple to use and visually uncluttered.
  • Version upgrades, enhancements, minor bug fixes and all loaded without much interruption to the system availability time. We generally schedule version upgrades so that they occur at 1am local time to avoid any impact on our user base.
  • Appian & Cognizant resources assigned to our implementation were and still are absolutely amazing. Going above and beyond to maximise the benefits that we obtain from the implementation. Proactive when it comes to dealing with business units that are somewhat stuck in their ways, happy to demonstrate better ways of doing things and providing solutions to problems that would have been otherwise assigned to the too hard basket.
  • Because of the low numbers employed by our organisation, our ability to make use of an enterprise licence model has been restricted. To their credit, Appian have come up with mutually beneficial solutions to help contain costs and allow us to grow our numbers.
The possibilities are endless once you start looking at individual processes. You really start to question why you have previously implemented solution specific systems when workflows and apps can do the same job without the added expense. You are really only limited by your organisation's ability to develop apps and flows. We have a high contractor population in technology so building an in-house capability is somewhat restricted.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our company Appian is used across almost all the organization. We use it to develop end-to-end processes that involve different offices. The business problems we try to solve by Appian are mainly: foster the communication between departments, manage the tasks that every department should do, being sure that every department has all the information to do the task they are assigned, to and control the time every department needs to complete their tasks.
  • Easy to modify the appreance of a form: you can do it with users.
  • Flexibility: you can really create a lot of different apps for different topics.
  • The speed in development in order to have the first functional mock-up as soon as possible.
  • Even if Appian is working a lot on it, it should improve the low-coding features.
  • Improvement of the form design not using sail.
  • Foster the connection for different customers, all of them using Appian. Having a process across companies and not only offices could be great.
The most suitable scenario is every company with low digitalization involvement. Appian is very flexible and can be adapted to different processes, starting from the oldest one. For companies with standard processes, Appian is going to work effectively and fast. Probably nowadays it is not the best for small companies that don't have the budget to spend on consultants or in the creation of an excellence team inside.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian is used in a complex workflow with approvals and notification in a timely manner. We implement across R&D and in commercial. It addressed the process of automation in replacing a manual process.
  • Low code. Easy to build workflow.
  • Low maintenance. Best practices can be easily applied. Supports Agile development. Version controls of process, rules, constants, reusable components, and community of plug-ins available.
  • Available on the cloud which is great for companies that don't require the overhead to manage upgrade and hot fixes.
  • Performance is excellent with performance monitoring.
  • Concurrent development needs to improve.
  • Deep analysis of dependency and make automatic changes in regard to dependency of objects.
  • Better support for agile deployment and versioning.
  • More integration with Office 365, and improvement on the flexibility of SITES.
Appian is suited in building low code quick wins. It is suited as well for complex workflow where SharePoint can't solved - difficult to manage and maintain. Low maintenance of low codes. It is a good case for PoC (proof of concept), small projects, and medium size projects. For a complex project, we need to be careful about performance and the duration of the development.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appian as a BPM platform is being used to simplify, optimize, and automate business processes in the R&D organization. Solutions developed on the Appian platform for the Clinical business unit are used to bridge the gap between foundation systems and improve compliance and data quality. They also improve collaboration between Business and Business and Business and IT organization.
  • Low code platform - easy to develop and quick to deploy.
  • Easy to integrate with other systems using APIs.
  • Cross-browser and mobile compatibility.
  • Need to incorporate some commonly used plugins into its product to provide proper support and Appian version compatibility.
  • Missing the ability to customize its date/calendar display for international users.
  • Need to expand its graphics/icon library.

Appian works very well as a platform for BPM solutions.

It's not the best tool if user expects extensive UI interactions such as drag and drop.

September 15, 2017

Appian User's Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Appian to support our institutional product line. It replaced legacy homegrown applications that did not scale.
  • Appian is able to hit the ground running and develop quickly
  • Appian is always putting out new features
  • Appian installs are difficult and time consuming
  • Appian could give more control to designers on the user experience
It's well suited when you have a team that is interested in building their own applications and doing Agile. It's less appropriate when you have long-running processes.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization Appian is used across the whole organization and it is solving a lot of problems for our organization by automating a lot of daily tasks and providing [ease] across the organization. It is also helping our organization in keeping track of the assigned tasks and making the process easy across the organization.
  • Assign Tasks
  • Send Email Reminders about the tasks.
  • Reporting.
  • Process Flow Model can be more intuitive.
  • Quick Apps.
  • User interface enhancements.
It is less appropriate for process-oriented systems. It is difficult to build it around an existing system, on the other hand, it is very effective when a system is built around appain and requirements are defined keeping the appian process flow in mind. It is suited for tracking of a system rather than the management of the process.
Return to navigation