Posted Date: 8/8/2011
Claims Management Firm Chooses Appian for Mobile Development
Crawford & Company, an independent provider of claims management solutions, has purchased the Appian Business Process Management (BPM) Suite, a technology platform that will radically alter the way the company develops software applications.
"The Appian BPM Suite, with its mobile and social capabilities, is truly an enabler that will change the way we work with our business partners and ultimately how we service our clients," says Brian Flynn, Crawford's global CIO. "Initially, we will use it to drive operational efficiencies, but ultimately we will use it to help us develop new services and solutions."
Appian was first introduced to Crawford during development efforts for repairNet, the Company's managed repair service in the U.K. "We decided to acquire Appian for global deployment after reviewing the success of the repairNet project," Flynn adds.
BPM helps information technology and business users jointly build applications that effectively integrate people, process and information. With effective BPM, an organization can manage and improve processes that involve human interaction, multiple applications and complex rules and work flows.
The Appian BPM Suite increases efficiency by:
- Using a business rules engine to automate processes
- Enabling better collaboration among employees and clients by using a familiar and intuitive social media "feed" interface
- Modifying and updating legacy applications
- Replacing aging modules, and
- Rapidly deploying innovative solutions to mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
Appian is a leader in mobile, cloud and social BPM. The Appian BPM Suite can be accessed on all major mobile devices and through a Web browser. The company offers multiple deployment options, including on-premise and cloud, with seamless migration between the environments.
"Appian delivers a new, faster, more flexible way to create and extend enterprise applications, and our mobile and social BPM leadership increases the number of people who can directly interact with key organizational processes," said Matthew Calkins, president and CEO of Appian. "We are excited to help Crawford build an enterprise-wide BPM program based on our initial project success together."
In the past three years, Crawford has developed a global systems roadmap that unifies BPM, applications and data into a standard global enterprise portal. In conjunction with that plan, the Company has increased investments in advanced technology to help feed the growing appetite among insurers and self-insured businesses for data that helps them manage risks and reduce costs.
Significant technology advances include Crawford's revolutionary Command Center, designed to further improve service to clients by providing up-to-the-minute information on claims status and key performance indicators.
The company also has implemented RiskTech, a new claims system, and Dmitri(SM), a new risk information management system, for its workers compensation clients, and added new functionality to the Crawford Claims Management System (CMS). In addition, it also released a global, cloud-based Enterprise 2.0 social networking program branded "Crawford Innovates," which allows employees to brainstorm solutions to issues.
For its innovative use of information technology throughout its global operations, Crawford has been named to the InformationWeek 500 for the last two years.