2024 Appian Innovation Award Winners Demonstrate Significant Business Results with Next-Gen AI Process Automation

The judging panel included Pavel Zamudio, Chief Customer Officer at Appian; Neil Ward-Dutton, VP of AI, Automation and Analytics at IDC Europe; and Juan Carlos Crespo Zaragoza, Deputy General Manager and Executive VP at Inetum, a global IT services company. By leveraging data fabric and AI technology, these winners have shown the art of the possible with next-generation process orchestration.

Winners in North America

• The Carlyle Group: Carlyle utilized the Appian Platform to streamline enterprise accounting, achieving a notable decrease in manual processes through automation and integration with legacy systems across areas, including accounting, compliance, tax, legal, and other corporate functions. This effort significantly enhanced operational efficiency and enterprise-wide process transparency. Additionally, Carlyle experienced a marked reduction in the time needed for call and distribution processing, along with quicker financial reporting and real-time accounting.
  
  
• Oscar Health: Oscar Health, a leading healthcare technology company, Oscar Health, reorients healthcare around consumers through its full technology stack. In 2023, the company successfully migrated multiple processes to Appian to further improve member and provider experiences, and drive affordability. Oscar integrated Appian's Data Fabric capability into multiple internal systems and applications. The integration improved claim processing and provider contracting workflows. The result: Oscar's claim processing team now handles ~6,500 new claim holds and inquiries per day in Appian, and after just 6 months, have processed over 750,000 requests – decreasing handle time by as much as 30%. The provider contracting team also leverages Appian AI for intelligent document processing to reduce human errors and enhance process efficiency within the provider contracting process. The AI capability integration directly improved the contracting experience of bringing more healthcare providers in-network within member plans.

Winners in the US Public Sector

• The US Army: The agency needed to modernize its outdated legacy contract writing system. Building from the successful implementation at US Air Force, the Army deployed its new application to 400 users across a dozen states and locations outside of the continental US in just 23 weeks. The Army has subsequently issued 123 contract awards through the system with total obligations of $41 million and has plans to expand application use to 2,800 users. Ultimately, the long-term vision is to enroll around 10,000 Army contracting professionals to use the system across 300 sites.  

Winners in Europe and the Middle East

• NatWest Group: The UK's largest business bank faced challenges in navigating multiple layers of internal governance processes and approvals. Previously, a policy change could take up to three to four weeks to complete. Time from idea to value could take three to four months to go through all the change and risk assessment requirements. The NatWest team successfully condensed change and risk governance cycle time by automating 46% of data in their governance processes, halving over 800 triage questions, and streamlining multiple assessments. As an example, product governance time dropped from 4.5 days to less than 20 minutes, marking a key milestone in their ultimate goal of reducing cycle time from 73 days to 73 minutes.
  
  
• Comune di Milano: The Municipality of Milan uses Appian to automate and digitize key processes to transform the citizen experience and innovate service delivery for more  1.3 million inhabitants in its jurisdiction. Developed in less than two months, the parking and disability pass request and delivery process compressed from three weeks to 13 hours, delivering an improved experience and speedy service to its citizens. Starting with just one digital application, Milan now enables its citizens to initiate 23 types of requests online for residential services, welfare and health support, building and land permits, procurement, ticket management, and more. In addition to improving the citizen experience, the Appian Platform integrates with 90 existing systems to automate and simplify back-office operations for municipality workers.
  
  
• Leroy Merlin: The third-largest global home improvement retailer has a vast presence spanning 13 countries and a workforce of approximately 100,000 employees. Leroy Merlin has been expanding its operations digitally while facing new challenges due to increasing e-commerce and in-store orders. Burdened by a lengthy manual refund and returns process due to data silos and slow approvals, Leroy Merlin sought a more efficient solution. By choosing Appian and utilizing its automation capabilities, the refund and returns process, which once took 10–12 days, now takes about 1.5 to 2 days, significantly reducing backlog and enhancing customer satisfaction. Notably, the implementation resulted in a 90% automation of manual tasks, a 20% increase in Net Promoter Score, a 55% improvement in refund processing efficiency, and a 15% enhancement in order preparation efficiency and quality, showcasing Leroy Merlin's commitment to innovation and customer-centricity.

Winners in Asia-Pacific

• RMBL: A leading first mortgage investment company in Australia with more than $2 billion of funds under management selected Appian for its transformation journey. RMBL successfully developed online portfolio management portals for investors and borrowers on the Appian Platform. Besides process automation and data fabric, RMBL also deployed Appian AI Skills to sort and classify legacy portfolio documents, gaining efficiency for AI-driven document management. The initial rollout saw a 42% adoption rate and only 6% of users sought assistance in the inaugural week. RMBL also noted a 23% reduction in client inquiries related to investment and tax reports, which saves the company about 35 hours per week for the front-line team, allowing them to  elevate their service offerings and spend more time proactively engaging with their clients.
  
  
• The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in New South Wales (NSW), Australia: The ODPP prosecutes serious offenses under NSW laws with 950 staff members. They were looking to replace an outdated, on-premise bespoke matter management system with a new web-based solution to handle approximately 16,000 matters every year. Built on the Appian Platform, the new solution provided improved access and performance from remote court locations, a simplified UI, and enhanced process automation to reduce manual paper-based processes. The Appian Platform is at the center of the ODPP Digital Ways of Working Strategy, focused on improving automation and information access. It supports an agile development approach for rapid system changes along with the development of new digital tools, and improved data analytics capabilities. Changes that used to take 4 to 6 months to implement can now be delivered within weeks enabling the ODPP to quickly respond to changes in legislation and court processes.

About Appian

Appian is a software company that automates business processes. The Appian AI Process Platform includes everything you need to design, automate, and optimize even the most complex processes, from start to finish. The world's most innovative organizations trust Appian to improve their workflows, unify data, and optimize operations—resulting in better growth and superior customer experiences. For more information, visit appian.com. [Nasdaq: APPN]

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