Appian Reviews

We use Appian to automate processes that we are currently doing manually. We are working on an agile project. We have 500 people using this solution, most of which are operational.

This particular project started with four cases, or four processes. Next year we plan on doubling this and implementing eight more cases.

Prior to Appian, when we were handling a particular process manually, it took 40 days to resolve. After Appian was implemented, it took only seven days. The improvement in time is amazing.

I find the BPM the most valuable feature. It is easy to develop as it is a local solution. Appian is quick to understand and develop.

Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example. This would make implementation quicker.

I have been using Appian for three years.

We had some concerns with the stability of Appian when we had a lot of cases. During normal operation it is a stable solution.

Scalability depends on how much you want to embrace the capacity of Appian. If you have a lot of cases, 150,000 for example, the stability will not be good because the memory required is so heavy that the RAM that you need is backed in. If you pass a certain number of cases, and the processes are complex, the situation is not suitable for Appian.

I have had no concerns with customer service. 

The initial setup of Appian was straightforward. We have an architect on our team who did the deployment. The deployment depends on the environment. For us, configuration took a day and to deploy no more than an hour.

We use one person, the architect, to maintain the program.

The ROI has been good. Profits increased because of this solution, this is why we are going to implement eight more cases next year.

The cost can be improved, however it is not too high for the customers here in Spain.

My advice before starting to implement this solution you need to consider what you want to do in Appian because everything is not possible. Sometimes when you think BPM process, you think that the interface application is the same, but it's not.

I would rate Appian an 8 out of 10.

I work on the system administration side. I have customers who develop their applications on it for sourcing and procurement. In the past, it has been mostly related to nuclear facility management and risk applications.

The low code functionality and being able to get applications faster to customers or to the market are valuable.

There should be more flexibility for the developers to choose the look and feel of the UI. They should have a better ability to design their widgets and customize them with different colors, shapes, and sizes. That is a limitation that could be improved upon.

I would like to be able to integrate Appian and store various codes in external repos rather than just having everything within the Appian platform. 

It should integrate with open source a little bit more. There should be more flexibility and integration with various other tools in the organization, such as Jira and Confluence for release tracking, bug tracking, and being able to automatically tag items related to bug fixes and things like that. It is currently a little bit difficult to do in Appian. If it opens up to external integrations, it would be great.

I have been using this solution for about 10 years.

It is pretty stable.

It is scalable. You can horizontally scale the servers to add more nodes and have a clustered and high-availability environment.

Currently, we have about 20,000 users in the company. For maintenance, we have a big team of about 50 people, but they don't maintain just this environment. There are a couple of other environments that they maintain.

I have interacted with them several times. They're pretty good, pretty helpful, and knowledgeable. So far, it has been great.

I didn't use any other BPM solution prior to Appian. Appian was my first solution. Prior to that, I was basically developing applications from scratch using J2EE. In that aspect, Appian has been very helpful in getting the applications out very fast.

Its initial setup was not complex. It has been a pretty straightforward installation for the most part. There have been a few changes over the years in the support of app servers, and they've improved the functionality. Initially, it needed more work, but recently, they have added a lot of functionalities to be able to deploy quickly and migrate the code between environments. There used to be a few more steps previously, whereas now, it takes just a few clicks to get the code from one environment to another and finally into production.

It was implemented in-house.

I don't work on that side of things, but I have worked with various implementations of Appian in various organizations. Everybody seems to be liking it very much. They seem to be sticking with it for a long time and adopting it for more and more applications and different organizations within the company. I've seen good success with Appian across organizations.

I would advise starting small and developing applications in phases and adding as you grow. It is a pretty scalable environment, and it is easy to start small and learn along the way to be able to develop high-performance, complex applications.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I work for the largest distributor of Toyota Lexus in the Middle East. My area is related to car motors. I'm an IT senior general manager and we are customers of Appian. 

The workflow engines are a valuable feature. We use them to bridge the gaps of processes within our core systems that are either too difficult or too costly to develop within the core system. We bridge those gaps using Appian. 

We'd like to see the employee experience improved, something we can integrate with SharePoint. Right now we're looking at the Power BI which belongs to Microsoft. It has a lot of good features for low-code no-code development kinds of things. I'd like to see the ability of the software itself to integrate with the core systems. It's a gap that Appian hasn't fulfilled. 

I'd like to see integration with Microsoft products as an additional feature. Microsoft Team, or something like that. It's not there or if it is, it requires some work to enable easy integration with SharePoint. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The scalability and stability of this solution are good. 

I'd say that the technical support is good. 

We visited the workflows that are provided within SharePoint but they did not fulfill the kind of things that we were looking for, or the problems that we were trying to solve at that point of time. We were planning to work on specific domains, specific areas, but you cannot make it work for complex things. 

The setup is not completely straightforward but not too complex either. The deployment itself wasn't too difficult, but this is something where features evolve and the things within it over time start moving. Adapting to any new feature while continuing to work is not simple. It makes things more complex. There are around 5,000 people using the product and we have five people dealing with maintenance. 

The price should be lower. It's not too expensive but I believe the price could be better. 

The product needs to be supported by top management for it to work. This is one of the things that we faced at the very beginning. Second, from a technical point of view, you need to have a dedicated team taking care of this from a product management point of view, not necessarily from a technical point of view because that can be outsourced. I recommend not doing the development in-house, rather to outsource it with one or two partners and the corporate team. I recommend going for the full cloud-based solution architecture rather than having part of it inside and part of it outside. If there is no issue with data sharing then I would recommend going for a fully cloud-based solution. It gives an advantage and reduces a lot of management headaches. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Being able to model requirements in BPMN 2.0, get agreement from business and IT, and then have Appian BPMN 2.0 compliant engine execute the diagram. This has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly.

• Transparency of process flows, including number of instances of the process in-flight
• Identification of bottlenecks,
• Average time to completion of tasks and process, etc.

The employee onboarding process went from a mass email saying who is arriving for their first day, and just hoping all the things necessary got set up: phone, computer, badge, desk, login accounts, role specific access and accounts, etc. The Appian platform took from a blind mass email to full transparency with reporting, and greatly improved efficiency and effectiveness, as well as making continuous improvement possible.

Form creation and SAIL proprietary language still basically require programming. The claim a BA type can do everything is hogwash. They should be honest and say a developer is needed for web service integrations, etc. and complex forms; and a BA type can do the rest - requirements, architecture (collaborating with architects), design, process model, testing, deployment, and support. That is incredible powerful, but to say a developer is never needed is a lie.

Two years.

Very few.

No.

Poor. Very helpful at times and willing to go above and beyond, but very expensive, so overall poor.

Yes. IBM, Oracle, and Activiti open source. A different organization I was with selected Appian.

Complex: Data strategy and authorization to push data to the cloud was a big hurdle. How organizational data is going to be pushed to Appian, updated by Appian, and pushed back to the organization with or without approval steps needs to be planned and executed strategically.

It is expensive, but powerful. I would recommend comparing against cheaper licensing products and open source.

No.

Have 20% of a programmer as a resource, plan the round trip data integration, and get all approvals needed.

Appian is a platform that focuses on human-centric workflows around processes. It facilitates requests for policies or incidents involving groups of people. The application manages the workflow between individuals to negotiate and confirm these policies.

Appian is managed and upgraded regularly.

The most productive aspect of Appian lies in its ability to develop interfaces, particularly user interfaces. Creating user interfaces is highly productive when these interfaces are integrated with the original database. In such cases, using record types proves to be a very efficient method of handling data. The synergy between interfaces and record types enhances productivity.

The case management studio is still immature, but it looks very nice. However, the VPN should be improved. The case management system needs improvement, but it has some promising features. Appian has the commitment to continuous improvement. With each new release, they enhance the platform for all users.Currently, making changes requires too much backend development work. They're working on streamlining this process, particularly with VPN integration. As it stands, storing everything in memory doesn't effectively handle large datasets. Transitioning VPN processes to a more traditional database approach would greatly improve scalability and usability in real-world scenarios

When the sentences are too long, they become difficult to manage. The scalability is low, when they become complex. The integrations are fine. There are some minor errors and details, but it does a great job in explaining errors within Appian. Internally, there is much information to help you understand what's going on, but not always. Sometimes, it's difficult to know what's happening, but these instances are rare.

Architecturally, there is an issue with Appian that it tends to put all the applications in the same infrastructure. Big customers resort to having several installations of Appian to deploy different applications in different infrastructures. They face the problem of managing assignments. Appian should make it easy to deploy different applications in separate infrastructures. Additionally, there needs to be a way to unify them because without using VPN, users are left without a unified inbox. Applications can't use the VPN and have to resort to their own solutions to show users their work, leading to inconsistency. Since each application is different, it becomes crucial to have a centralized point where users can find their work. Even if the applications are split into different installations, there needs to be a single way for users to find all their work.

I have been using Appian for two to three years. We are the using V24 of the solution.

The solution's stability is better.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution is difficult to scale. 1,000-2,000 users are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability a six out of ten.

I have used SoftEther VPN.

I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The platform was set up by third party.

The solution is expensive. 

I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

We evaluated Outsystems. Appian is much proactive to create solutions applications.

The most frustrating aspect is its DPM offering. It fails to support VPN due to its limited scalability. You can only use the VPN for isolated cases. When attempting to apply it in a real-world scenario with multiple applications, it becomes unusable due to its lack of scalability. It boosts everything into memory. 

It is very easy to develop interfaces and access data with Appian. The local code acts as a communicator. The interfaces function as record types, and the logic you program use special rules, which resemble a kind of functional language exclusive. This combination of user interfaces and record types, along with the special rules, is very productive. You typically need to write much less code compared to other platforms

Intergration is good.

I recommend the solution, One should evaluate the VPN needs very closely. Not everybody needs VPN, but those who do should take a closer look to avoid surprises. You can use VPN in Appian, but it's somewhat different from what you might expect.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Appian for the automation of processes. The solution is typically used to automate case management.

The most valuable features of Appian are workflow management and the ease with which you can build the UI.

One of the areas that Appian is working on is to improve its UI capabilities and give more flexibility to the UI.

I have been working with the solution for around seven years.

Appian is a very stable solution. We've never faced any huge glitches or bugs with the solution.

I rate Appian ten out of ten for stability.

Appian is a scalable solution. However, we have to be a bit cautious if large volumes of data are being exchanged and if there are any use cases to transform the data in between.

I rate Appian a six out of ten for scalability.

Appian's technical support is pretty decent. The support team responds on time and sticks to their SLAs, which is good. Appian provides good support from an infrastructure and platform perspective.

Positive

Appian's deployment is pretty good. To run your deployment processes, it has separate built-in utilities and tools to deploy packages across the environment. I work for a services company, and I have built applications for some of our clients leveraging Appian as a platform, which is used probably every day.

I am using the latest version of Appian. Appian is deployed on Appian's own cloud in our organization.

Appian has a very strong workflow engine compared to other solutions like OutSystems and Mendix. I would definitely recommend Appian to someone who is looking for strong workflow and process capabilities. However, I recommend other platforms like OutSystems and Mendix to someone looking to build their own mobile app or looking for a lot more flexibility with respect to user experiences.

Appian is a pretty good tool. It's a low-code platform where you can start building your applications pretty fast. It has got really good workflow capabilities and a very good process engine. The solution has started integrating with cognitive services, RPA, and other services, which are probably at their initial stages, but the platform's roadmap is really good. Appian is definitely a platform to explore if you are considering a low-code platform to be part of your tech portfolio.

Overall, I rate Appian a seven out of ten.

We use the solution internally. It is for internal front ends for capturing transactions and then managing the workflows and sending them to back-end systems. 

The rapid deployment of solutions is excellent. 

It's cloud-based, and it was a smooth transition from the cloud to on-premises. We've really enjoyed the automatic updates. We never have to manually upgrade to the latest platform. It saves us some work. The cloud setup is simple.

The solution is very stable.

It can scale well.

Technical support is quite responsive. 

We have a growing need for more DevOps for deploying branching strategies, and Appian is not great at that. If that had more DevOps capabilities, it would be an excellent product.

On-premises setup can take a while. 

We've used the solution for the last five years. 

We've only had one 15-minute downtime incident that was related to an AWS hardware issue in their 1AZ. That wasn't Appian's fault. That was it. It's been pretty stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. I'd rate the solution's stability nine out of ten. 

The solution can scale. 

They've promised they will bring out Kubernetes, which we currently don't have. Right now, it vertically scales. There is no horizontal scaling yet.

So far, we've scaled from 4XL to 8XL without issue. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We have 400 users on the solution right now. 

We do plan to increase usage. The solution is mission-critical. 

Pi and P2 issues get responses within a couple of minutes. Support is very responsive. 

Positive

We did try to shoehorn Cibo into doing everything. We unbundled it into different domains. 

If you do the setup, there is a bit of a learning curve you have during the initial setup. On the cloud, the deployment is much easier. They spin it up for you and manage it for you. It's less work. For the on-premises deployment, I'd rate the ease of setup six out of ten. It took a few months to deploy. Cloud deployment, of course, is much easier since there really is nothing to do. We deployed over a weekend.

We deploy every month. It takes a couple of minutes to deploy the latest features. 

We run a lean show and only have about five people dealing with the solution. There's an architect, two engineers, and a few QAs.

We have an integrator helping us from India. 

I don't deal with licensing. However, my understanding is that it's not the most expensive. It is moderate. I'd rate the pricing seven out of ten in terms of how expensive it is. 

We're a financial institution, and we're customers. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I'd advise users to choose their implementation partner very carefully. Do the due diligence on the implementation partner for the best results. 

Our plan on using the solution will be to basically utilize it for business process management, and for case management as well. We want to use their local platform offering and some of their niche markets, to see how they can provide dynamic case management all in one place. 

One of the features that we felt was valuable to us was the business case management and how seemingly easy it was to use.

The combination of business process management, dynamic case management over the local platform has vastly improved.

We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features. 

They seem to be introducing a lot of automation into their product, which is exciting for us. They're apparently partnering up with different companies to offer robotic process automation in the future.

The initial setup is very easy.

You can easily integrate other applications into the product.

We're still researching the platform. I don't have a strong opinion on what might be missing. They seem to be constantly upgrading their products.

The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively.

We're not really using the solution so much as testing its capabilities and discovering its resources. We've been doing this now for about two months.

The solution has been pretty stable. I haven't had any downtime whatsoever, or any disruptions or anything of that nature. There hasn't been any lag in service. It's been good.

The solution is very agile. It's very easily expandable too. You're able to integrate different applications or different interfaces with this platform. It's actually quite flexible, I should say.

That said, at this point, we don't plan to increase usage. We're still learning about the product. We hope, in the future, if we take it on, we will be able to expand it.

Due to the fact that we haven't had any issues yet, and we've been using the solution for a short amount of time, we haven't needed to contact technical support. If I need to in the future, I will. However, at this point, I can't speak to their level of service as I've never used them.

We did not find the initial setup complex. Our engineers, who handled the implementation, found it to be quite straightforward.

The deployment process was fast. I can't recall the exact number of hours it took, however, it was not a drawn-out process.

Maintenence seems to be minimal, however it would be helpful if there was someone on staff to maintain it as needed.

Our engineers handled the implementation. We were able to do everything in-house. We didn't need assistance from consultants or resellers.

The solution offers a monthly subscription model. That's what we use. I recall it being about $90 a month. They do have different tiers. 

We're currently doing a case study on this specific solution. We didn't look at other solutions.

We don't have a business relationship with Appian. We're just customers.

We're most likely using the latest version of the solution.

I would definitely recommend the solution and invite other companies to try it out. They even have the trial edition. That way, you can test the solution before having to purchase the application edition. If you decide to go forward, it is $90 per user per month. They have the enterprise edition as well which is a bit more. 

The solution is that it's available on different devices as well, which makes it very flexible and easily adaptable to a lot of different environments, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android.

The product also caters to all sizes of companies, whether you are small or large.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.