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The landscape of enterprise automation is undergoing a major shift, moving beyond bots and predefined workflows. The 2025 Gartner Hype Cycle for Enterprise Process Automation provides a clear roadmap for this new era, assessing the key innovations that will redefine how businesses operate. The central theme? As automation becomes more intelligent, autonomous, and democratized, the need for strategic orchestration has never been more critical.

In this year’s Appian Developer Sentiment Survey, nearly 1,000 Appian developers from six continents shared their insights—a 53% increase from the last survey. The result? The most representative snapshot of the global Appian developer community yet. This report captures what matters most to you—from views on AI and certifications to career goals and go-to resources—and how these inputs are shaping what’s next for Appian developers.

IT leaders have long believed that integration is the best way to connect a chaotic enterprise technology landscape. However, that approach is falling short. It's not powerful enough to manage the complexity, which has only increased with the introduction of AI. What’s needed now is an overarching, holistic view of people, data, processes, and AI—a view that’s made possible with end-to-end process orchestration.

Financial institutions face growing operational demands in an environment defined by regulatory complexity, legacy system inertia, and the rapid evolution of customer expectations. At the same time, IT leaders are under pressure to not only maintain infrastructure but also demonstrate value to their operations counterparts. The opportunity is clear: use technology to drive operational agility without disrupting existing systems. This is where Appian excels.

A new MIT study reveals 95% of gen AI pilots fail. But that’s not an AI problem. It’s an implementation problem. The real issue is the messy, fragmented way AI is used. Too many organizations treat AI as a helper on the sidelines—chatbots, copilots, and assistants that wait to be called upon. While helpful, this approach barely scratches the surface of what’s possible. Real transformation happens when AI is embedded directly into the core operations of your enterprise.

How to make your enterprise data accessible, usable, and insightful.

Ask anyone who has wrestled with legacy contract lifecycle management (CLM) software what frustrates them most, and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: “I can’t see what’s going on.” Whether it’s a missing status update, a buried clause, or an unexpected bottleneck, lack of visibility in the contract lifecycle slows deals, increases risk, and erodes trust between teams. But “visibility” is more than a buzzword.

You've heard the promises. You've seen the hype. Every vendor is pitching "AI-powered, synergistic, next-generation" automation. But you're still asking the same question: "When do we see the results?" The truth is, AI is only as good as the action it enables. It's not about chasing shiny objects; it's about solving real-world business problems—eliminating bottlenecks, delighting customers, and making your operations smarter and faster. That's where we put our focus.

Automation has long been a key driver of efficiency. Traditional RPA and IDP technology promised to relieve carriers from rekeying, extracting data from forms, and other repetitive tasks. At Appian, we saw early that automation in isolation doesn't achieve transformative outcomes. Why? Because AI has too often been deployed at the edges of workflows: copilots, chatbots, or analytics dashboards that assist us when prompted.