Appian uses Google Workspace to drive collaboration and creativity across the company, enhancing end-to-end engagement among 2,400 employees and delivering innovative product offerings to customers.
Appian is a software company that automates business processes. Its software uses low-code development to allow customers to easily design, automate, and optimize complex processes. Leading global organizations trust Appian to improve their workflows, unify data, and optimize operations, resulting in better growth and superior customer experiences.
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Appian uses Google Workspace to drive collaboration and creativity across the company, enhancing end-to-end engagement among 2,400 employees and delivering innovative product offerings to customers.
Google Workspace Results
31% growth in cloud subscription revenue year-over-year
• Reduces business costs considerably by unifying critical functions onto one central platform
• Drives collaboration and creativity for building new product offerings, marketing programs, and more
• Unites employees across over 15 countries who bond over interests, hobbies, and industry news using Google Chat
• Helps engineers to expressly meet customer needs by using malleable Google Workspace tools that work in tandem with Appian's software
“Our mission is to change how work is done in the digital world by unifying systems and delivering process automation from start to finish. As a team of 2,400 spread across four continents, we rely on the agility of Google Workspace to work together in bringing our vision to life.” - Michael Beckley, a founder, and CTO at Appian
operates much like an expert team at the pinnacle of their favorite board game: aptly and with skilled coordination. When the process automation software company was founded in 1999, its leadership prioritized creating a culture that nurtures ingenuity and encourages autonomy; an organizational ethos rooted in the belief that talent and passion yield extraordinary results.
Appian customers range from industry giants burdened by copious amounts of data, manual processes, and location-specific functions to local enterprises looking to modernize and scale operations. As a low-code platform, Appian provides businesses with a faster and simpler way to build applications that unify people, data, and processes into a seamless workflow.
"Our mission is to change how work is done in the digital world by unifying systems and delivering process automation from start to finish," said Michael Beckley, a founder, and CTO at Appian. "As a team of 2,400 spread across four continents, we rely on the agility of to work together in bringing our vision to life."
A reliable extension at low-cost
“We have spaces for every project and to support our end users. We're trying to play around with chatbots to do more self-service through Google Chat, and it's been an extremely productive environment for us as we reorganize our team and establish more synergy with the business department.” - Hector Chavarria, Vice President of Business Technology at Appian
Appian began using Workspace a year into its operations, abandoning an expensive, accident-prone system that often slowed employees down. Before migrating, engineers, sales, marketing, and customer success specialists worked across a series of fractured systems. Redundant documentation, siloed departments, and broken communication tactics infringed on their capacity to be effective at their job. As such, Appian sought a cost-saving, centralized, and intuitive solution that didn’t require constant maintenance.
"We’re a 24-year-old company. We started off using the corporate communications technologies available at the time, but found them to be expensive and troublesome to maintain, crash prone, and full of limitations. When Google created an alternative with and corporate solutions for collaboration, we became one of its very early adopters," explains Beckley.
and replaced the need for additional phones and phone lines. While Gmail provided zero-inboxers respite from endless message management. Workspace reduces business expenses by unifying critical functions onto one central platform. It enables open lines of communication with stakeholders so the Appian technology team can provide them with ongoing support and incident resolution, a framework that reduces response times and ensures business continuity.
Office fundamentals like email, teleconferencing, and product development now operate on the web, allowing staff to connect and contribute to projects regardless of where they are. Workspace tools, Chat and Meet chief among them, enhance the culture at Appian. It’s a social hub where employees connect over shared interests, collaborate on projects, and experiment with automation.
Establishing synergy between teams with zero-friction communication
Chat facilitates instant collaboration and a feeling of closeness among Appian staff, as experienced by Chief People Officer Susan Charnaux. Employees use the product to celebrate birthdays and bond over shared interests, from sports and current events to pastimes like Dungeons & Dragons.
From a human resources perspective, Charnaux champions Workspace as a catalyst for remote collaboration. By managing functions related to recruiting and onboarding across , , Chat, and Meet, employees remain updated and supported.
"We interview in person where we can," said Charnaux. "However, when we are training remotely, for example, in Chennai or Mexico City, it's all done through Google Meet."
Vice President of Business Technology Hector Chavarria uses Chat to communicate with other business teams at Appian. Its rapid response mechanism and interconnectivity with the Appian platform help eliminate double work, especially for projects that involve multiple teams or departments. On every business day in 2022, 4,500 spaces were actively used (with 400 new spaces created per day) and 3,000 Google Meet meetings were held.
"We have spaces for every project and to support our end users. We're trying to play around with chatbots to do more self-service through Google Chat, and it's been an extremely productive environment for us as we reorganize our team and establish more synergy with the business department."
Appian employees converge onto dedicated spaces where conversations and queries about a particular project flow for optimum synchronization. Beyond its practical uses, programmers at Appian deploy bots within Chat to connect with customers or automate internal requests for information. A point-of-contact application called POC bot directs customer requests for assistance to the Appian personnel best equipped to address that need, eliminating long wait times and sprawling communication. Additionally, bots created to perform specific functions allow stakeholders to do self-service on resolving issues and check the status of their requests.
Expanding values, goals, and practices
“We have an opportunity to bring this vision of end-to-end automation not just to the largest enterprises but to every company in the world. We rely on things like Google Workspace to help us bring our culture to all these new markets.” - Michael Beckley, a founder, and CTO at Appian
Appian develops applications that automate critical business processes, inspiring pathways to greater productivity and innovation for its employees, customers, and end users. The platform's success has generated a greater demand for process automation in new and burgeoning industries.
"We have an opportunity to bring this vision of end-to-end automation not just to the largest enterprises but to every company in the world," said Beckley. "We rely on things like Google Workspace to help us bring our culture to all these new markets."