Appian Announces the Winners of the Appian World 2018 Online Hackathon

RESTON, Va., May 10, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) congratulates the winners of the Appian World 2018 Hackathon. Participants were tasked with leveraging the Appian Platform to showcase the effectiveness of low-code development. Hundreds of registrations were narrowed down to three winners by an all-star panel of judges including Apple co-founder and Silicon Valley icon Steve Wozniak, Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst John Rymer, and DevOps.com Editor-in-Chief Alan Shimel.

The judges based their decisions on the creativity and originality of the idea underlying the application, how well that idea was executed by the developer, and the beneficial impact  of the solution. The submissions, covering a variety of industries and use cases, all exemplified the power and simplicity of building enterprise applications on the Appian platform.

The 2018 winners are:

• First Place: Brad Cauzza of Clayton Holdings  
  The application, called "FRED," streamlines an organization's front-desk procedures. FRED automates the office front desk by collecting visitor information, notifies employees of a visitor's arrival, and retains visitor information for quicker sign-in on subsequent visits.  In addition, it automates receiving and distribution of packages with intelligent barcode scanning from mobile devices and integration into leading postal and shipping service providers.In the judges' view, the application represented the highest level of practicality and completeness, while demonstrating use of Appian's advanced integrations and mobile capabilities.

• Second Place: Sunny Goyal of ITG  
  The next-generation customer relationship management (CRM) application leverages Appian in conjunction with Amazon's DeepLens to identify, recognize and categorize customers to create context-driven customer service resulting in increased customer satisfaction. In addition to DeepLens integration, the application is distinct in its use of artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition, and advanced cognitive services. 

• Third Place: Kartik Viswanath from Cognizant  
  Cognizant's solution for Digital Contact Centers built on the Appian uses zero-code integration, advanced AI, cognitive services and robotic process automation (RPA) with omni-channel customer interactions over telephone, email, mobile and web interfaces. The solution provides a comprehensive digital experience to customer contact centers and AI insights into customer behavior based on spending patterns, demographics and sentiment analysis.
  

Prizes included cash ($5,000, $3,000, and $2,000, respectively), plus free passes to the Appian World 2019 conference in San Diego, California, May 13-15. In addition, the winners will receive promotion of their application on the Appian.com site, in the online Appian Community, and in the Appian AppMarket.

Malcolm Ross, Vice President of Product Marketing at Appian, said, "Appian's mission is to make it simple to build great software. We invited anyone - Appian customer, partner or not - to turn a great idea into a great enterprise application using a free instance of our cloud platform. The results exceeded our expectations, and we heartily congratulate the creativity and ingenuity of our three winners."

About Appian
Appian provides a leading low-code software development platform that enables organizations to rapidly develop powerful and unique applications. The applications created on Appian's platform help companies drive digital transformation and competitive differentiation. For more information, visit www.appian.com.

For Information Contact:
Nicole Greggs
Director of Media Relations
+1 703-260-7868
nicole.greggs@appian.com