Appian’s Matt Beran on Providing Government with IT Systems that ‘Evolve and Expand over Time’

In the defense and intel worlds, technology modernization is a pressing challenge.

The U.S. and its allied partners “are trying to modernize and transform really old IT systems — systems that date back decades, if not generations,” said Matt Beran. In an ever-changing IT environment, they need not just updated solutions, but “systems that are going to be able to evolve and expand over time.”

As the industry leader for global defense and intelligence at Appian Corp., Beran is helping to meet that need. At Appian, “we provide a powerful low-code platform that delivers applications to accomplish your most complex and challenging mission requirements,” he said.

Appian delivers a combination of process orchestration, process automation, and process intelligence. And for military and defense organizations, “we help them with driving process improvement — through automation, optimization and intelligence,” he said.

This approach helps to answer that call for future-proof IT investments.

“We partner with our agencies to provide long-term solutions. Appian as a platform is ever evolving and ever expanding. It constantly improves with time,” Beran said.

With an approach based on low-code solutions and agile methodologies, Appian can speed delivery of these modernized capabilities.

“We can get from start to finish very rapidly on projects,” he said. Rather than the years-long efforts that characterized government IT efforts in the past, “we work very hard to get that timeline down to months, or potentially, even just weeks.”

Appian has deep roots in the defense world, having helped to build, as one of its very first projects, the Army’s Knowledge Online system 25 years ago.

“We’re very committed to the military mission, to the DoD, to the intelligence community and also to supporting the defense work of our allies and partners,” Beran said.

The company is looking to build on that foundation as it seeks growth opportunities.

“We now have over 300 government agencies around the world that we work with, and we are continuing to expand on that work,” Beran said. “That’s a big opportunity.” As of last year, for example, the company has a presence in all 15 U.S. cabinet-level agencies, and Appian is looking to deepen those engagements.

At the same time, the company is working “to expand our presence in all of the other agencies, the ones that we have not yet worked with,” Beran said. “And we also are expanding our state and local government work, and expanding into academia. There are large opportunities throughout the U.S. public sector.”

Appian also is looking abroad, growing its public-sector work with partner and ally nations.

“We have had a number of engagements in Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand,” Beran said. “We are expanding our work with those governments at the national level, and also at the state and local level, depending on the country and how they have their government organized.”

Amid all this work, Beran said the biggest challenge lies in ensuring impeccable execution.

“The thing that keeps me up at night is making sure we solve the problems for the people that we are working with,” he said. “When we partner with someone, it is a commitment. We are dedicated to delivering mission-critical success — every single time.”

To ensure Appian upholds that commitment, “we make sure that there are open lines of communication,” he said. That means “getting frequent updates on the status of our solutions, what work is being done, where we might be able to improve, where we might be able to expand.”

All this unfolds amid “a genuine spirit of collaboration — between our customers and Appian, and potentially our partners and the others involved in delivering and supporting and sustaining those solutions,” he said. Communication and collaboration “are the things that keep success on track.”

This work is personal for Beran, who joined Appian in 2023 after retiring as a U.S. Navy captain following 28 years in surface warfare and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

During his last few years in uniform, Beran led IT efforts for the Navy JAG Corps’ global legal practice. In that role, he worked with Appian to build the Sea Services’ military justice case management solution.

“One of the best things I did across almost three decades of service was to lead the effort to build and deploy the military justice case management system for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard,” he said. “The coolest thing about my job is that I get to bring Appian to all of the other people across the DOD, the IC and our partners and allies.”

His present role gives him “the chance to expand upon that work in a number of different use cases and across many different organizations within the public sector,” he said. “It’s very, very rewarding to keep working on all these different challenges across the DOD, with a company I’ve come to love.”