When the COVID-19 crisis hit, guidelines for responding to a global pandemic probably weren't in your company’s disaster recovery playbook. But that probably changed after the pandemic fired up a remote-work revolution that has also accelerated business process automation across industries. Yes, we’re almost on the other side of the pandemic. But future crises are unavoidable. And the next one could be worse than the one we’re experiencing now.

Every year Deloitte comes out with its annual Tech Trends, which provide “insights and inspiration for the digital journey ahead.” They aim to identify opportunities that are likely to transform businesses over the next 18-24 months. This year we couldn’t help but picture the important role that Appian can play in helping our customers capitalize on these trends. Let’s discuss two of these trends.

Business leaders are increasingly turning to IT organizations to help drive digital transformation through automation and innovation across lines of business. These leaders are selecting, implementing, and maintaining technology investments that support their businesses, while keeping IT costs down. Unfortunately, escalating technical debt and a lack of skilled talent are preventing IT from being as impactful as it could be.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted organizations around the world in many ways. Changing government regulations have created challenges for businesses and customers as they try to comply with mandates. As a result, customers have shifted their demands to digital channels for accessing goods and services. Business operations have also hit road bumps as their workforces may have decreased and/or have limited capacity working from home.

In response to the many disruptions across supply chains over the past year, new trends are emerging and others are gaining more traction to help bolster resilience in this space. Organizations are pivoting operations, leveraging different resources, and taking advantage of new technologies to streamline their supply chain orchestration moving forward.

In 2020, companies had just a few short months to transform the way they conducted business in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. IT had to find new, more efficient ways to deliver powerful software applications that would keep businesses running. At the same time, IT teams continued to deal with three key challenges that plague every company: 1. Lack of developers. 2. Lack of time. 3. Lack of alignment between business leaders and IT.

The remote work revolution is here to stay. But making the emotional pivot to make remote work pay off won’t be easy. So says Joe Kennedy, a Partner and Technology Consulting Leader with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In the last episode of this two-part post, Kennedy reminded us that we’ve always had the capability to do remote work. He says that the challenge now is to find and fix the rough patches in our business processes to make work more efficient.

There’s no science to getting a good idea to spread, but it helps if you can get your idea across without the hype. Which is why automation expert Arjun Devadas talks about hyperautomation in terms a non-tech exec in any organization can understand. For example, Devadas talks about how insurance companies are using hyperautomation to process truckloads of documents to settle numerous claims.

On March 5, 2021, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) launched the CATALYST application. The CATALYST application integrates the people, processes, and data involved in the USMC weapon systems repair, part provisioning, and cataloging. Provisioning and cataloging are critical logistics support processes. They help connect the iterative acquisition and logistics sustainment life cycle management processes for weapon systems and equipment.