The move to digital technologies has been taking place at a meteoric pace. Many businesses are forced into a position, where they must either deploy new solutions they may not be ready for or risk falling behind the competition. In their efforts to rapidly improve customer experience, enhance internal processes, capitalize on market opportunities, or optimize other operational processes, they often end up taking a more makeshift approach to digital transformation.

Given the array of ongoing challenges businesses face, including those posed by hybrid work and COVID-19, business automation is more important than ever. In large organizations, many business units have long been using robotic process automation (RPA) to automate simple manual tasks such as copying and pasting data. While RPA can address local needs quickly and easily, it can’t scale to deliver the complete end-to-end automation, also called hyperautomation, that modern companies need.

Cloud-to-cloud migration can be an expensive, cumbersome, and overwhelming process with no guarantee of success. Yet, moving data from cloud to cloud is becoming more and more common in the public sector as operations are being migrated to the cloud more completely. Factors like complexities in environments, sheer volume of historical data, and application nuances can greatly impact the success or failure of a cloud migration effort.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is a framework used by businesses, investors, and consumers to determine how conscious an entity is with respect to those three concepts. Consumer awareness paired with an increase in government regulation have shifted businesses’ priorities. For many large corporations, ESG now tops the list. Today’s consumers want to know where their products and services come from and that the companies behind them operate with ESG factors in mind.

When we talk about technology, we should try to do it in the simplest possible terms. But while we hear many CEOs and other tech executives preach this advice, it’s rarely followed—and the workflow software space is no exception. Popular workflow lingo like hyperautomation, digital process automation, and intelligent automation all mean essentially the same thing: to digitize processes for efficiency, consistency, and compliance.

While the title to this post is clearly playful, when it comes to customer success it’s all business. Our rapid growth has always been a function of our customers’ happiness. Regardless if it’s a new release or a service engagement, our internal focus revolves around a few key themes.

Ever since the pandemic hit, supply chain issues have abounded. Retailers bore the brunt of the news coverage, as shelves went barren for a host of reasons—not least demand shifts, panic buying, container shortages, and geopolitical concerns. These supply chain issues are estimated to have caused revenue losses of 5%–20% for some retailers. Often, once loyal customers switch brands or retailers rather than waiting months for products to come back in stock.

To remain competitive, insurers need to look for ways to modernize the underwriting process. However, too often disconnected systems and siloed data get in the way, resulting in inefficiencies and a poor customer experience. We recently had the chance to sit down with Kathleen Ellis, SVP of International Solutions at CNA, during Digital Insurance’s annual conference to discuss how to accelerate connected underwriting on a global scale and their success with their CNA ComPassTM solution.

In our previous blog posts, we’ve covered the core components, orchestration capabilities and automated analysis and ChatOps features in our in-house Security Orchestration, Automation & Response (SOAR) application. In this final blog post, we will briefly cover one of the system’s automated response capabilities that allow it to take action and respond to alerts without human intervention, and close out the blog series with two important lessons learned from implementing SOAR at Appian.

Not to get all gloomy about it, but the pandemic accelerated the largest declines in college enrollment in more than 50 years and slammed colleges and universities with $24 billion in COVID-related debt. In other words, COVID was a wake up call for higher education.