By Jason Adolf, industry vice president, global public sector, Appian
Federal agencies face growing pressure to modernize outdated IT systems to meet evolving mission demands, improve service delivery and strengthen cybersecurity.
But modernization must go beyond one-time upgrades. To avoid simply replacing old legacy systems with new ones destined for obsolescence, agencies need flexible, future-ready architectures that can adapt over time.
This means adopting cloud-native technology and modular, low-code platforms that provide the agility to adapt to change. But more than that, agencies need a way to ensure applications continually optimize and improve, so they never become the next legacy application.
Continuously Optimize Operations
The solution is process intelligence, a capability that visualizes processes to find inefficiencies and recommends action to fix them, boosting productivity and saving resources. It uses AI in the process to identify opportunities for improvement and automate routine tasks that keep agencies from achieving their efficiency objectives.
With complete process visibility, organizations can identify and target bottlenecks inhibiting their ability to deliver services quickly. They can uncover where their technology and processes might violate government compliance mandates and proactively rectify these issues to avoid errors, fraud and compliance violations.
Process intelligence actively collects, analyzes and monitors operational data. Users can explore data in real time, assemble reports and use a conversational AI copilot to unlock new insights that make data analysis faster and more accessible.
Three Pillars of Process Intelligence
Process intelligence starts with process mining, which uses event data from different systems to model an agency’s process. With low-code data prep via data fabric—an architecture that combines information from disparate systems into a single view—the model is fed real-time data and is continually monitored.
Out-of-the-box discovery provides a guided experience for process analysis—with no-code dashboards, KPI monitoring and intelligent recommendations for next steps.
Then, agencies can take direct action on insights with Appian’s process orchestration and automation capabilities.
Process mining, guided analysis, and process automation are essential process intelligence components. Each plays its own critical role in process improvement, even as they work together to improve workflow efficiency and reduce costs:
Process mining analyzes business processes and identifies bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Appian Process HQ uses real-time data to visualize process operations and identify patterns and anomalies that humans might miss.
Guided analysis provides real-time insights into data and processes. Powerful monitoring and alerting capabilities allow agencies to uncover defects & errors in mission critical applications. And AI-assisted analysis helps agencies quickly address challenges like bottlenecks and delays, process conformance issues and rework.
Finally, process orchestration and automation automates efficiency-killing manual tasks like data entry or sorting through forms to reduce manual labor costs and human error. Process automation also enhances worker productivity by relieving them of time-consuming tasks so they can pursue value-added activities.
Process Intelligence Is Essential for Meeting Today’s Mission
Process intelligence isn’t just a technological upgrade—it’s a strategic transformation. It empowers organizations to move faster, work smarter and innovate more effectively.
Process intelligence fits the U.S. government’s mandate to streamline processes because it gives agencies a deep understanding of their workflows to target inefficiencies. It offers a practical, forward-looking path to modernization that does not require a multi-year plan or resource investment. And it allows agencies to demonstrate the value of new investments for process efficiency from the start. By combining process orchestration, AI and data integration, agencies gain the tools and insights they need to improve operations, adapt to change and meet their mission more efficiently.