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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 8.7
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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

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used to automate our IT automated procurement processes. It allows the process of getting quotes from vendors to the approval person to be done much faster. We also use it to automate sending reminders to relevant employees to continue the tasks left unfinished in dev, test, and prod environments.
  • Automate processes like reminders
  • Keeping data secure
  • Process modeling
  • Most of the platform is hard to use
  • Difficult for new users
  • Little to no explanation on how to do things
  • Not very good at advice on use-cases
  • Not aesthetically pleasing, especially compared to its competitors
It is well suited for business-critical automation, especially when sensitive data is involved. It is not good for citizen development. It is definitely more suited to pro developers who write code for a living. Quick apps are helpful for those not well versed in the platform. Automated reminder emails are consistently and frequently sent out looking very official and full of detail.
Low-Code Development (6)
55%
5.5
Visual Modeling
50%
5.0
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
50%
5.0
Platform Security
90%
9.0
Platform User Management
20%
2.0
Reusability
30%
3.0
Platform Scalability
90%
9.0
  • Our IT automated procurement process has sped up time to get paid by a few days on every transaction
  • Our approvals are more organized as a result of being put in digitally
  • Managing our own tenant requires more than we have available, given the quarterly updates
  • Since we have business-critical functions running in the platform, we have to thoroughly review every note of every update. Because of this we skip half of the updates since we don't have enough time to review these changes four times a year.
I haven't used Appian support before.
I think what it does well, it does really well, but the platform as a whole is not very new-user friendly. As someone who works in IT, I can almost guarantee that someone who works on the business side would be completely clueless and not be able to derive any use from being the primary user of the platform.
I personally think Appian will win the discussion of pricing between itself and Microsoft Power Automate currently, but since I don't feel as though the average person would be able to learn how to automate processes on Appian, I have to give the nod to Microsoft Power Automate and the rest of the Power platform. I believe it is far better for citizen development and overall ease of use. Unfortunately, the Power platform did have a recent data leak, so it is not yet considered suitable for using confidential data per my company's rulings.
20
Approving budgets and spending, approving the use of various forms of software financially
3
Strong coding background, maybe a CS degree, serious dedication to learning the platform as it is not easy or enjoyable to pick up the first time around.
  • Automation
  • Reminders
  • Organization of the digital tasks occuring
  • Speeding up time to receive payment from vendors
  • We don't currently know of ways to further use Appian in way that is simple, inexpensive, and highly effective
Business-critical functions are now performed on this platform; transitioning them to another system would be far too cumbersome of a task to do with our current resources
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
Price, security, automation capabilities
The Power platform would be much more of a contender in the selection process
  • Don't know
I was not involved.
  • Online training
Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.
I think we did since we knew we would not be experienced in the platform at first.
No
  • Process modeling
  • Any kind of automation
  • Personal site management
  • User access management
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
Low-Code Development
N/A
N/A
  • we are using Appian platform on tablets for our whole recycling trucks/fleet and have for first time a real time visibility on how we are tracking (daily over 1500 collections nationwide)
  • customer billing dispute has decreased dramatically due to real time driver comments with photo and GPS data available straight away.
  • SLA reporting helps us to identify bottlenecks in our internal processes across teams and we have improved our whole operations.
  • before Appian platform BPM it took us 2-3 weeks to deliver a recycling bin after a customer signed up with us, but NOW 48hr max after the customer signed electronically the recycling bin is at customer location and the service can commence.
The team that we worked with and still get support from are amazing. Their skill set and willingness to get the best outcome for us was/is very impressive.
The flexibility to use the platform for any business process makes it extremely competitive. We are already planning our next engagements with the Appian team to get other processes on this platform.
more intuitive as it can be changed quickly into what we needed.
200
Enduser (truck driver), Approval Management, Field sales reps, back office teams
4
IT professional, BA's
  • User stories
  • Bugs
  • Enhancements
  • improved reporting
  • surfacing process issues we could improve our over processes
  • more approval tasks
  • digitalisation of still ongoing paper-based processes
use it every day and it improved the way we do business
No
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
I would get a better understanding of the after project implementation support. That also forms questions in regards to BAU support and adding features that are constantly promoted by Appian.
Their 80/20 approach (80% workable / 20% fix bugs after implementation) at the time is not the best way when several processes are implemented and documentation should be done, but business SME's are tight up with the next process implementation.
Appian should provide a list of external vendors who are able to support their product at the same high standard as Appian does it - but with the fraction of the cost.
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
The after project implementation support needs to be handled better.
  • Server speed - unsure it could handle our new processes as intended
  • documentation not apparent
no
Yes
The bug was not resolved, and it took a long time to get an answer. One major issue for us is the time difference. We are based in Australia and the Appian engineers are based mainly in the east coast of the USA.
The bug we have raised is about Date/Timestamp displays with our automated data extracts in EST and not in AEDT. That makes it difficult for reports, as time converters are required.
The Appian team in Melbourne helped within minutes of raising an issue with our database on the server and they could get it working within 30min which included a restart of the whole system. This minor outage was handled exceptional well by the local support team and suprise to us, it was free of charge.
  • Task completion
  • Reports
  • reverse tasks (e.g. cancel previous inputs)
  • some button functionality
Yes
great
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.
Low-Code Development (6)
N/A
N/A
Visual Modeling
N/A
N/A
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
N/A
N/A
Platform Security
N/A
N/A
Platform User Management
N/A
N/A
Reusability
N/A
N/A
Platform Scalability
N/A
N/A
  • Easy to implement
  • Less learning curve
  • Performance and best practices needs attention
In terms of Appian production support, we have two tiers of supports within our organization, application support group and core Appian team group, support business users based on priority and SLA, and Appian support will be contacted if any urgent system issue, in general Appian support responses in a timely manner.
Appian has been widely used by all different business groups including customer service representatives and back office clerks. Most of customer requests are processed by Appian, and it is one of core IT applications and now more business processes are being migrated to Appian platform from legacies
  • IBM
Supports and costs
200
All types of business functions including customer service representatives, back office clerks and applications support groups. It is one of the most well adopted software platform within organization
10
The first tier of support mainly for business production issues, and the second tier of support is the main Appian agile team, mainly solving escalated issues
  • Take customer call and submit requests
  • Back office task list management
  • Process orchestration
  • How to access Appian applications easily
  • How to use Appian to manage documents and assets
  • How to use Appian to support different crm channels
  • Core business functions
  • Business rules management
  • Cloud
Appian has been adopted and widely used by business users, There are more IT developers gaining required skills to build new applications
Yes
IBM MQ Based process management tool
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
Given new proof of concept requirement, how long and efficient to take different vendors to complete including installation and development
There might be many considerations and requirements needed to evaluate new software, but the approach we took was still effective
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
From development, to quality assurance, to business users training, and then production deployment. Also big project will be broken down into small pieces by following agile approach
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
Automated deployment and testing Version control Environment management Upgrade
  • Upgrade process
  • Upgrade frequency
  • Clean up
Use Appian best practices Use Health check Automated testing approach Modular design and building blocks
No
We used to have production issues related to performance, and it’s hard to trace and reproduce. One of Appian support has been following up all the time and helped diagnose the issues, and resolved issue at the end.
  • Process orchestration
  • System integration
  • User interface
  • Version control
  • Upgrade
  • System Maintenance
Yes, but I don't use it
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.
Low-Code Development (6)
80%
8.0
Visual Modeling
70%
7.0
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
90%
9.0
Platform Security
90%
9.0
Platform User Management
90%
9.0
Reusability
90%
9.0
Platform Scalability
50%
5.0
  • Positive impact is fast delivery
  • Another positive is web based development so now development environment setup required
  • Easy to learn
In the cloud environment we have fast and knowledgeable support.
All web based and works really well without having to know front-end languages.
The Microsoft 365 suite is very powerful but Appian is easier to use once the initial concepts are understood.
[object Object], [object Object], [object Object]
45000
Either Administrative staff or Students use it for paper form replacement or workflow.
The Appian installation is setup as a SaaS solution so we don't support the product as such other than to administer it.
  • Building case management applications
  • Replacing paper forms with electronic forms
  • Creating portals of information by reading from other datasource like web services and ESB sources
  • Works really well as a replication mechanism between databases
  • Allows us to connect to multiple datasource depending on the application need
  • Auto generates scripts to generate tables changes for the backend
  • We would like to look into the BluePrism to improve legacy system integration
  • The CI/CD potential in the new version looks very promising
  • The quick apps are something we would like to allow end users to use in the future
It works as expected and is very productive.
Not Sure
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Vendor Reputation
We wanted a product with a good reputation and good support. Appian has exceeded our expectations in this regard.
I think the evaluation resulted in the correct product choice so I believe we would not change our evaluation process.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
It was really easy to get implemented. Within a couple of days we were using Appian for development. All we had to do was update firewalls, authentication and user management.
  • No major issues. User access management was not great but we were able to get a solution working within a couple of days.
It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.
Yes
It was investigated and flagged as fixed in the next release. We have also had version rollbacks for bugs and both have been handled seamlessly.
We have had production issues with memory consumption which had started effecting system performance. The Appian team has been proactive and informed us of the issues prior to us experiencing downtime and performance degradation. This was exceptional service.
  • Building interfaces
  • Building web services
  • Processing XML and JSON is very easy
  • It takes a while to learn all the functions to be productive
  • Saving data to the database was not initially intuitive but is easy once understood
  • External access management is cumbersome if trying to integrate into existing access management systems like AD etc.
Yes
The pages built are automatically mobile friendly and look really good without having to a have a dedicate mobile application (which is available as well for additional functionality). We have never had the need to use the mobile application other than to test it.
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