Appian holds a unique position in the BPM market. The company was founded in 1999 in order to help organizations across industries optimize their business processes. With three of its founders coming from business intelligence vendor MicroStrategy, the company wanted to move beyond mere reporting to help its customers tie high-level business goals to the work employees do every day. Therefore, to help organizations turn insight into action Appian began to build out a standards-based BPM platform that provided an easy-to-use framework for designing, managing and optimizing business processes. Appian’s BPM suite was designed and optimized around a completely Web-based interface using AJAX and Web 2.0 technologies.
Appian’s BPM suite has evolved into two primary product lines: Appian Enterprise, for commercial-off-the-shelf enterprise BPM software needs behind the firewall, and Appian Anywhere a BPM suite offered in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Appian Corporation is completely self-funded and has been profitable since its inception.
COMPANY STRATEGY
• Strategically satisfy the high-end of the enterprise market with Appian Enterprise, bringing significant depth in professional services (75 employees) and experience as a core differentiator.
• By growing organically Appian has been able to take a long-term approach to the market, making customer success its number one priority.
• Serve the small-to-medium size market for process improvement with Appian Anywhere.
• Develop strategic OEM, VAR and technology partnerships to drive channel sales to augment direct sales approach.
• Bring targeted solutions to market to address specific customer needs, including the small and mid-sized markets.
UPSIDE ANALYSIS
Appian Enterprise BPM suite is built with the business analyst in mind. Throughout the product, Appian’s in-depth background in business intelligence and analytics is visible. From the manager-oriented dashboard through the process modeler that includes the ability to add analytics and reports at each step, Appian has closely linked business process management with the analytics and business intelligence that are needed to optimize their processes. Upside Research believes this is a particular strength of the solution, and Appian benefits competitively from this built-in functionality.
Upside Research believes that Appian has been a quiet but growing force in the BPM market. Since the company has only recently focused on building market awareness, Appian doesn’t have the brand awareness
of some of the other pure-play BPM solutions. However, with its strong product and focus on customer success and ROI, Appian has already built an impressive customer base. Upside Research believes that Appian will benefit from building broader market awareness, and as it continues to add marquis customers it is well-positioned to become a major force in the enterprise business process management market.
Download the full Appian Upside Research Product Brief.
