Appian Reviews

We primarily use the solution for approvals. 

The data types that we've built in Appian are very vast. We can customize the solution or point to predefined data sources. That makes it very unique.

The reusability is great. You can build it in one place and use it in many places. 

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale well.

Technical support is helpful.

It is easy to set up.

There is no UI customization possible. We'd like it to be more flexible for branding purposes. 

I've been using the solution for almost two years. 

The solution is stable. There sometimes is downtime during upgrades, however, it is reliable. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

We have about 500 users right now, and we expect to expand usage in the future. 

We've had good support from the Appian team. They have a good support model and are easy to reach. 

I'm not sure if there was another solution used previously.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex. It's a cloud-based tool which makes it very light. There's not a lot of overhead.

We had basically a one-click deployment. The implementation is deployed via predefined screens. It makes it very simple.

There are also good import/export features that are helpful. 

Appian mostly manages the deployment, and one or two people are required to manage the overall platform once deployed. 

We did not use any outside assistance. 

It does take time to get an ROI. Depending on the licensing type, chances are you will begin to see an ROI, especially for time to market.

I don't deal with licensing. I'm not sure of the exact cost. 

I'm an end-user. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

While there are a lot of factors when it comes to choosing a solution like this, Appian is a very robust platform, and it does offer advanced use cases. If you are more into Microsoft, however, Power Apps may be a better option.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use Appian for some exam results, and related material, as well as some publishing solution material.

The workflow designer is the most valuable feature.

It's pretty good as it stands at the moment.

In terms of usability, there is a learning curve.

Licensing fees could be reduced.

I have been working with Appian for a year.

Appian is a stable solution.

Appian is scalable.

In our company, we have approximately 100 users.

Appian's use may be expanded in the future. It's a bit of a niche on the exam side right now.

According to my understanding, the technical support team is quite impressive.

It's fine; there's no need to improve technical support.

We are also working with Salesforce.

The initial setup is fine once you get your head around it, but there is a steep learning curve.

We have developers to maintain this solution.

We were able to complete the installation ourselves.

The price could always be better.

The full user license is quite expensive. It's cheap if all you want them to do is look at things, but if more people use an Appian app to update their information, it becomes more expensive.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

You must consider what your use cases will be and ensure that there is a fit, because it is not a cheap option, you must ensure that you get a good return on investment.

I would rate Appian a seven out of ten.

It is mostly for our API, BPM, workflows, web services, and enterprise integration.

We have been focusing on building all of our digital and mobile applications with a lot of earlier code, as the platforms were legacy. We had to write code from scratch, because it was not possible to use the existing code. For most of our digital applications, like payment systems or digital payments, the use case was for our mobile apps.

The agile manner that we require to create our workflows. This is probably the most critical part of our solution and the time it takes to start processing the solution. This is also quite fast. It is important for us to develop the solution in an agile manner.

Newer features, especially in terms scalability. It has to become more scalable than what it is today. It is not a issue today. However, going forward, due to the growth in the number of users and the workloads, it will have to be more scalable.

It needs better integration with our existing application ecosystem.

I would like more connectors for calls and integration features. Typically in enterprise banks, we have 200 to 300 plus applications. Training and documentation on how to integrate this would help.

We would like to see more reduced latency. We would like to make sure that the scale-out factor will be much more as workloads come in. The scale-out should be improved as we grapple with more workloads and users.

We feel the latency could further be reduced, but the access time for the throughput time or the general access time could be further reduced. 

We do not see any issues with overall scalability right now.

The tech support is quite good. Maybe it is not as good as large enterprise vendors, especially when it comes to more technical troubleshooting. Overall, the response is okay, since most problems are solved. Though, if there are major issues, then break times possibly increase. If they could focus on that, it would be helpful.

We have been using tools from IBM, Oracle, CA (formerly known as Computer Associates), so mostly these enterprise tools at the same time are very complex and not very agile. The learning curve is much more than we found with the learning curve for Appian, so it is a trade-off between the agility of using a tool versus the complexity. To a large extent, more functions can be serviced through the tools previously mentioned from a enterprise perspective. However, most of the functions that we have are requirements for our services that we run through Appian, therefore we see this coverage as okay

It was between straightforward and complex. There were a few issues in terms of configurations, but overall, getting the system started was quite fast. There were a few configuration parameters that we had to change, for which, it took us a couple of days more than expected. The way to start this tool is quite quick, so we did not face any issues with it.

Product pricing compared to some of the earlier vendors, like IBM, CA, and Oracle, is quite well-priced. Although, we do feel that as we increase the number of users and the workload increases, we will have to spend more. 

We will have to have a dialogue or negotiate a price for future use. To start with, it is a reasonable price. As we go ahead, we will have to make sure the costs are inline with our expectations as we grow our user base and workloads.

In terms of licensing, instead of user-based, you should go more on a workload basis. It could be helpful, since we feel that we will be growing the workload part of it more than the user part of it. I think they give us a good price on workload characteristics and it would be a better option.

We already had IBM. We evaluated Oracle and CA. We found this product to be good price-wise as well as quick implementation-wise. From IBM, at that time, we evaluated WebSphere, APM Manager, and Workflow Manager. So, it was centered around their WebSphere, Lombardi product. 

How to integrate with their application ecosystem is probably a priority. Once you get a product like this, it is important to have that integration upfront rather than later on to work on. Otherwise, you will grapple with a very complex application ecosystem for large enterprises. These features must be provided for, understood, and the expectations of the enterprise integration bus, service, or whatever you do should be well covered by the solution, so you do not face problems down the road.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We make sure it is a recognized and credible name/vendor. We typically look at the top four or five vendors on independent research ratings, then we form a committee so we do not take personal decisions. We have a committee, we arrive at a consensus, then we put up our selection criteria. This revolves around the technical aspects, the credibility of the vendor, the coverage of the vendor, and the cost as well as where do we see the future roadmap of the vendor.

It is a business process management platform. We used it while working on a loan origination process for a bank.

The product's most valuable feature is the low code aspect of development. We can develop an end-to-end VPN solution using a single platform. It is easier to focus on business cases and problems rather than consume much time in the development process.

The product’s pricing could be improved from the developers' perspective.

We have been using Appian for a year and a half.

I rate the software’s stability a nine out of ten.

We can resolve many issues with the help of their community and documentation or in-house trial and error.

The initial setup for the on-cloud platform is quite straightforward. 

We can implement the on-premise version in-house. However, Appian helps us set up cloud-based clusters.

We purchase the software’s yearly license. The cost is calculated on a per-user basis. It might be expensive for small and mid-sized enterprises.

I recommend Appian to others and rate it a nine out of ten.

We use this solution because End-to-End Process Automation in Appian is robust and scalable. Thousands of process instances can run concurrently. Apart from that, development is fast for process and workflow automation when the developers are experienced, and the code can be reusable.

This solution has helped in creating a process platform for the bank because it can handle cross-department processes. Process culture is making noise inside the organization because now, everybody knows that their time is being monitored. 

This solution provides for fast development with Quick Apps and simple CRUD user interfaces. 

Some of the other features are:

• Fast development with SAIL
• Beautiful user interfaces that are limited in customization but have the benefit of fewer problems with usability
• Having data in memory using KDB technology is also a good idea
  

I would like to see better monitoring for business events in synchronization with business rules.

There should be a better development for Cases, because it is not really a capability of the product. You have to develop the behavior.

The documentation needs to be improved.

This is a scalable solution that can run thousands of processes concurrently and fault tolerant

I used IBM BPM 8.5.7 prior to adopting this solution.

The cost depends on the number of users, although I recommend taking an unlimited license.

We evaluated both Pega and Activiti before choosing this solution.

In general, Appian is a great competitor in process automation. However, in my opinion, compared with IBM they lack documentation, development methodology guides (scrum is not enough for BPM adoption) organizational change management is a prerequisite for any BPM journey, real examples like IBM Redbooks, the academy is great I think that more real business cases would be better, webinars etc

In my opinion, it is not good to let developers design their own business database. Normally, they are not experienced at this. Perhaps for mid-size business, there is no problem, but when you have a big business it gets complicated and a database designer is required.

Process Automation and Forms Digitisation, implementation of organisational wide processes rather than use of COTS.

Appian was not selected by any of the organisations I've worked with to date for production use.

Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product.

Support for complex models really needs significant improvement

Flexibility in the architecture is not there

Management or reusable assets is extremely limited and poorly designed

Business rules are not aligned to industry best practices

Authoring tool slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built

Integration to project SDLC (such as testing methods, build systems etc needs work)

Trial/evaluations only.

This product is targeted to mid size companies and not highly scalable complex processes.

Customer Service:

Average, although a small responsive team Appian has been fast growing stretching their ability to service customer needs.

Technical Support:

Reasonable, stronger than say IBM or Oracle technical support but it is still critical to engage in a full POC activity with this product to ensure it fits your needs before proceeding with an implementation. The closed nature of the platform means there is limited to no help outside of that technical support team which is already stretched based on the ever increasing customer base.

Compare this product closely to open source options, IBM and Pega. For simple solutions using simple models Appian may be sufficient and would provide better ROI than investing in building a team to support a more complex tool but for complex models I'd look for a stronger tool-set.

• Process Designer - If properly used, the executable flow itself helps you understand the business flow.
• Call Web Service Smart Service - Web service integrations with other systems are super simple and fast to create, supported by low code menus.
• Write to Data Store Entity - Saving data in SQL databases is done easily using entities. Entities (CDTs in Appian terminology) define relationships and target schema tables via XSD files.
• SAIL interfaces - Writing code that creates forms requires coding skills in Appian SAIL, a proprietary language. The forms are mobile-ready and components can be reused in forms and reports.

Even though the company has made great improvements in online documentation, featuring rich material which includes case studies of real-life use cases, the material could definitely be better in quality and coverage of use cases.

Another point of improvement would be the SAIL forms. The built-in tool used to generate forms does not have debugging support (to view local variables as they change on live preview, and step-by-step valuation) which is a big drawback for form development. Moreover, the script language used to build SAIL forms does not support inheritance or lambda expressions (functions as arguments of other functions), which makes the code base more verbose.

Last but not least, I am missing a team collaboration solution. Only one person at a time can work on objects. This is not a big issue really, because, if you follow the Appian best practices, all objects are pieces that fit single-person workloads.

The platform is super stable in BPMS and rules execution. 

Issues can appear in the following ways, related to development and design choices:

1. The underlying database is facing locking or performance issues. The instability of the database is very quickly propagated in the flows and forms executions (Appian engines/application server) and the platform can become non-responsive, experience deteriorating performance, or create numerous exceptions in running processes.
2. If the platform is used for data-intensive tasks, especially in deep nesting of data manipulation rules, the performance can quickly be affected and may also lead to exceptions.
3. If you don't follow the Appian best practices, and your application is scaling up, then on pick times the performance will be bad or exceptions may occur. This situation can be avoided by identifying potential issues by running the health check diagnostic tool.

Scalability is very good, but there are limits imposed by the underlying hardware and the JVM's heap size. Notably, even with a configuration having multiple application servers, the Appian engines installation is always one. However, the capacity of the topologies is very high and will not be an issue for companies with up to 10 applications per installation and up to 4000 active users per day. Appian provides a sizing document and Professional Services to help with decisions on the subject.

Technical support is considered good, and various levels of support can be selected.

Prior to Appian, there was a Java-based BPMS solution, but Appian was valued for its low-code characteristics that lead to the fastest development cycles in the industry. It was also valued for the scalability, the flexibility on development, the level of support, and the increasing developer base.

Appian has two offerings for its customers, on-premise and Appian Cloud (PaaS). In the case of PaaS, setup is very minimal and straightforward. For the on-premise product, the initial setup is pretty straightforward in most cases but requires a level of systems expertise, especially if you are setting up a high-performance production machine.

After some initial use, tuning the database is advisable. For mission-critical applications, an initial round of stress testing may be a good idea for identifying potential bottlenecks in your applications. Setup can also be tricky if you try to migrate from very old installations which used a different topology. If this is your situation, you may need support from Appian Professional Services.

The alternative we evaluated was Pega BPM.

If licensing cost is not a problem, then Appian is definitely a go, either as a stand-alone platform or with the PaaS offering in the Appian Cloud. When it comes to speed of development, system integrations, BMPS workflows, and digitization of manual processes, Appian is possibly the best choice there is.

We use Appian for business process management.

I like how quickly you can build applications. The low code aspect of it is really useful to get things out to market quickly. Compared to other code tools that I've seen, Appian has a more robust rules engine.

I've been an Appian consultant for three years now.

Appian virtually has a 99.99% uptime rating. It's very stable. 

Appian is very scalable. There's a lot of options for bigger enterprises, like high availability. It's enterprise-grade for smaller to mid-sized businesses.

I have used their tech support, honestly, I'd probably give their support a rating of eight out of 10. They work pretty hard to try to figure out what's going on if there's an issue.

I wouldn't say their response time is long, but it could be quicker. 

There's a one-time setup fee. I think they usually set it up for you. For the typical business user, it's straightforward as they don't have to do anything.

The pricing can be a little confusing to customers. Clients sometimes have to lay out their whole set of use cases and get them approved for specific types of licensing— it's on a case-to-case basis. I think that they're very actively working on improving this, but it can be quite difficult to work out the licensing.

Other than the pricing concerns, it's a really great platform. 

If you're considering using Appian, my advice is to work with people that have experience building solutions with it, because that's going to lead to fewer problems down the line.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Appian a rating of nine. It's a great business management platform.