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. 

Appian is primarily used for building workflows and low code applications.

Appian helps you do a lot of things. It's easy to configure and build an application platform, and it offers a lot of features. It's flexible so you can reuse it for a variety of use cases.

While Appian is generally flexible, it's rigid in some ways, doesn't allow you lot of options to cutomize. It takes longer to do something that isn't available out of the box. 

I've been using Appian for a couple of years.

Appian is stable.

Appian is scalable. We have a few more ongoing deployments, so the number of users will definitely go up.

There can be some improvement in support, start giving customer more importance than process

Neutral

The cloud version is managed by Appian, so it doesn't take a lot of time. 

The cost of Appian varies depending on the kind of license, and there are no additional costs that I'm aware of. 

I rate Appian eight out of 10.

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.

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.

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.