It’s now been a couple of months since we undertook a major transformation and aligned Persistent Systems to focus on four major growth areas; Digital, Services, IBM and Accelerite. I’m already seeing the results of that focus in our Digital business and it’s very exciting. We talk about disruption by design and what we mean by that is disruption shouldn’t be passive. In fact, our customers aren’t being disrupted, together we’re actually making that disruption happen. That is most evident in Digital. And what really counts is speed. People say speed kills, but in the case of digital, speed thrills, and we’re seeing that with one of our key platform partners, Appian.
I was at the Appian World conference earlier this month and it was, in a word, amazing. The first thing that hit me was the fact that Appian is moving from being a business process management software platform, to a low-code customized application building engine. That leads to speed to digital experiences and this ties in beautifully to our philosophy of digital transformation, which is to build the best experiences possible and lead with that. This truly symbiotic relationship between Appian and Persistent is resonating strongly with our customers.
At the conference, Appian’s CEO Matt Calkins talked about the importance of starting with data, and of course that is what we are talking about. But data just for its own sake is worthless… If you don’t use the data, if you don’t generate actionable insights you’re basically being a data hoarder. The good news is the data is already there, so now you just have to use the right data, use it right, use it right now. I had the chance to present with one of our customers, Josh Seeman, of Janus Capital Group. Josh discussed the creation of case management using Appian in partnership with Persistent. He walked through the “how” of using Appian and Persistent for the creation and approval of marketing materials at Janus and how teamwork led to improved efficiency, process controls, and implementation of business metrics. Ending the session with a look at how innovation is driving future processes at his firm, Josh launched a conversation with Alexa (also know as Amazon Echo) that fed him real-time, interactive data about what was happening within his business.
Appian is one of our key platform partners, in fact we’ve dedicated an Appian Center of Excellence in our Columbus, OH Development Center to our joint development. Last year we conducted our first joint / partner / customer Hackathon with Appian and it was a tremendous success. And our relationship grows stronger seemingly every day, which is why it’s such an honor and validation for Appian to name us Regional Partner of the Year, Americas! And if that wasn’t enough, at the conference, Appian awarded us best use of Mobile in the Appian App Market category, for our Franchise Management Suite (FMS), a comprehensive solution for franchisors to manage the complete franchisee lifecycle, from new project creation to rollout, including site evaluation, approvals, contracts, stores and operations handover. You can read more about these recognitions in our press release.
Interest in Appian is speeding along! At Appian World we met with some of the Big 5 consulting companies as well. They clearly know how to assess business problems and build/manage business processes, and we know how to build software… and that’s a really exciting opportunity for us, them and Appian. They understand the why, we understand the how! And our customers are excited; at our customer event, the energy was palpable. As always, the conversations between our customers was the best part of the event… We talked with a major bank at the show and a week later we signed a significant deal. Yes, speed thrills!
We’ve got a great team, great customers and great partners. We are doing great things in Digital here at Persistent and we want you to be a part of it! If you have the need for speed, I’d love to talk to you about what we can do for you, so please feel free to drop me an email at info@persistent.com.
