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.

The demand for new software has exploded. According to IDC, over 500 million digital applications and services will be developed and deployed by 2023—the same number of apps that have been developed over the last 40 years. Unfortunately, the number of new developers who can help build those applications has not exploded.

The new normal in the next decade will be very different than the bygone era. COVID has impacted the world in a way seen only as recently as a century ago. It was different then and it is different now. Businesses are finding new ways to reach customers, supply chains are inventing new ways to operate, industries are innovating all-around to remain relevant in the new normal. Customer behavior is also changing and digital has found a new acceptance with evolving technology.

In grade school, Joe Kennedy taught himself how to code video games on his home computer. Today, Kennedy is a Partner and Technology Consulting Leader with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In the video call leading up to this week’s Digital Masters interview, Kennedy looked remarkably dapper in a navy blue blazer, dress shirt and slacks and a handlebar mustache curled to perfection.

But low-code automation can help. Amid the pandemic, banks are under enormous pressure to comply with stricter regulations and keep up with growing demand for new lines of credit. Here’s Appian Financial Services Industry Lead in Europe, Herbert Schild, on how low-code automation can help at a critical time. What are the challenges with issuing rapid stimulus loans?

This is the story of how Appian helped organizations worldwide get thousands of people back to work during the worst global pandemic in over a century, safely and legally. The Appian Workforce Safety Solution COVID-19 threw people worldwide into what seemed like a black hole of chaos. As infection rates rapidly grew, and related concerns grew even faster, communities struggled to respond.

Last week, insurance industry expert Rob Galbraith introduced us to “The 7 Fatal Flaws of Insurance." This week, Galbraith weighs in on low-code automation as a competitive advantage in the $5 trillion insurance industry. “For a $5 trillion industry as mature as insurance," says Galbraith, “technology that can help solve any one of the seven fatal flaws would make a pretty good business. There's a lot of room for improvement.”

Onboarding institutional clients is one of a financial services institution’s most critical functions, with direct implications for client experience, servicing, and relationships, that all significantly impact profits. What’s at stake during the onboarding process? Client loyalty, experience, referrals, and profitability. How many touch points across departments—front office, operations, risk, legal, credit, compliance, tax—can potentially elongate the onboarding process?

Over a few short months in 2020, COVID-19 accelerated what so many CEOs and CTOs have struggled to do for the past decade: It forced organizations to be agile and adjust quickly to change. Oil and gas companies in particular had to react quickly to get back to onsite work while protecting their workers’ safety. Russell Stewart, host of the Oil and Gas HSE Podcast, recently sat down with some experts from Appian who specialize in our Workforce Safety solution and in the oil and gas industry.

The global COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the challenges with the structures and features of global supply chains, and has highlighted the shortcomings within many organisations' own internal working environments and business processes. Organisations across every industry are being forced to evaluate their business operations from multiple perspectives and look for ways to make their businesses more resilient to both unpredictable environments and financial stresses.

Few people can understand the difference between theory and practice more clearly than a chess Grandmaster. Our little 64-square laboratory has space for centuries of ideas. With more moves than atoms in the solar system, my ancient boardgame has limitless complexity for the human mind—and was even enough to stump the world’s fastest computers for decades.

With the onslaught of hyperautomation, it’s easy to assume insurance is stodgy and boring. But don’t be fooled. Yes, the industry has its flaws—some of them fatal. But over the next decade, technology will revolutionize insurance more than it has in the past three decades combined.