Even before COVID-19 became the biggest challenge to operational resilience in a generation, organizations were struggling with a gap between digital transformation and internal processes that felt decidedly “pre-digital.” Automation presents a solution, connecting new tools to old, legacy systems through three key shifts in technology.
Suddenly there’s a crisis. What do you do? Many organizations responded to the COVID-19 crisis by quickly automating with digitally-distanced work processes such as telemedicine, digital learning, working from home and the like. But few were positioned to do it well. So says best-selling author George Westerman in his essay: Digital Transformation Isn’t Really a Technology Challenge.
If your COVID-19 reopening plans have gone through more phases than you can count, you’re not alone. What was once planned for October has pushed to January or June or maybe never. Even the companies that have managed to get back onsite or into the office often live in constant vigilance, knowing that a single positive COVID-19 test could send them into lockdown.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced government organizations to reassess their strategies, plans, and aspirations for digital transformation. Despite the uncertainty, IT leaders must quickly identify and act on strategies and plans that lead to positive outcomes. In many cases, governments will expand the role of digital technologies in service and program delivery.
One of the biggest failings of old-school, custom software development is its inability to help large organizations survive against unexpected challenges and quickly adapt to change. It could hardly be otherwise. For decades, companies were limited by inflexible business applications that took so much time to architect, develop, test and deploy. Not to mention the time it took to maintain, upgrade and enhance them. All of which set the stage for a revolution.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has added new urgency to the quest for digital transformation. The pandemic disrupted business processes and displaced and disconnected people. Organizations across the globe witnessed first-hand that the speed with which they could get new automations and applications in place could literally make or break the company. The world quickly learned what some industry leaders already knew: the ability to develop an application and quickly bring it to market is crucial.
For the past two years, Appian has scored high marks in both categories, landing in the upper right corner of the Magic Quadrant as a leader.
The software development life cycle doesn’t stop at development. Many low-code options today provide tools to accelerate application development. However, they do little to help developers deploy or maintain applications. Appian recognized these issues years ago and have worked to build a platform that delivers the value of low-code throughout the entire application lifecycle.
In 20.1, Appian introduced Intelligent Document Processing or IDP. IDP lets Appian users leverage artificial intelligence to transform unstructured data from their business documents into structured data. Many business documents such as invoices, POs, loan applications, insurance claims, etc., include forms and/or check boxes. To support such use cases 20.3 now includes the ability to recognize and extract table and checkbox data from documents.
