With over 25 years of experience leading transformation across the public and private sectors, Gregg Aldana engages in direct dialogue with more than 200 CIOs and business leaders globally each year. This gives him a front-row seat and a unique perspective into emerging trends and to what’s working, what’s holding organisations back, and what’s coming next in intelligent enterprise digital transformation.
Meet Gregg Aldana
As VP and Head of Global Solutions Consulting at Appian, Aldana is pioneering SC 2.0, a reimagining of solutions consulting as an impactful, strategic storytelling and business advisory profession.
But Aldana’s biggest bet may be on the power of AI in process, a philosophy anchored in Appian’s Think-Act-Learn paradigm, and delivered through its unique and market leading business orchestration and automation technology platform.
Aldana’s regular briefings are always eye-opening, and something he believes more people in leadership positions should undertake. “When I first came to Appian a little under a year ago, one of the first things that came up was the need to spend time with customers,” says Aldana. “If you really want to learn what’s driving and going on in the industry, you’re not going to find out from just reading analyst reports or looking online. You’ve got to go out and physically meet with and talk to people that are leading these changes. Meeting with 200+ CIOs and CTOs a year gives you a front seat to reality.”
“I can tell you that every tech and business leader is exhausted by this Frankenstein architecture they’re seeing out there. They’ve invested millions in great tools, but it’s all siloed and disconnected. They’ve got these business objectives that they want to achieve, and they want to modernise and streamline, but reaching digital coherence is the challenge. They’re done buying tools and getting false or over-promises from vendors with great products in a particular business silo. They want to buy real outcomes from platforms with a proven track record of cross departmental enterprise success. That is why I joined Appian.”
The SC 2.0 Effect
Appian is using SC 2.0 to drive and communicate those business outcomes to customers globally. The shift from showcasing technology functions to business value and business outcomes is something Aldana has spearheaded in his time at Appian over the past year. On joining the team, he quickly noticed that Appian was focused on having solutions consultants focus on the features of the platform. It was immediately apparent that everyone within the company knew the tech inside and out – but features don’t help customers understand how to close the transformation gap. Stories do.
“So, one of the pillars within SC 2.0 is a shift to becoming true business value outcome engineers,” Aldana explains. “We’re not just selling software or demoing features or products – we’re solving business pain points. We’re really enabling companies to reimagine the way they orchestrate their processes. So whether it’s getting an autistic child access to treatment sooner, or helping a public safety agency reduce the amount of risk they build into their contract signings, the focus is on the outcomes. I made a name for myself in the industry at my last software company by becoming a storyteller and leading with these truly compelling business outcomes. So when I got to Appian, I asked, ‘where are all the great stories?’.”
“We’ve really taken storytelling to heart and to the next level with SC 2.0 at Appian”
Gregg Aldana, VP, Head of Global Solutions Consulting, Appian
Through this storytelling, customers are able to better navigate that shift from a feature-focus to truly understand the business outcome-led results that are possible with the Appian platform.