Company: APPN
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001441683-25-000017
Chunk: 21

Company: APPIAN CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 21
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 ability to integrate with other technology infrastructures; deployment flexibility; robustness of professional services and customer support; price and total cost of ownership; strength of platform security and adherence to industry standards and certifications; strength of sales and marketing efforts; and brand awareness and reputation. If we fail to compete effectively with respect to any of these competitive factors, we may fail to attract new customers or lose or fail to renew existing customers, which would cause our operating results to suffer.

Our main competitors fall into four categories: (1) providers of custom software and customer software solutions that address, or are developed to address, some of the use cases that can be addressed by applications developed on our platform; (2) providers of low-code development platforms; and (3) providers of one or more automation technologies, including BPM, case management, process mining, and RPA and (4) potential customers using their own internal technology departments to develop, build, and modify their own proprietary systems.

Some of our actual and potential competitors have advantages over us such as longer operating histories, more established relationships with current or potential customers and commercial partners, significantly greater financial, technical, marketing, or other resources, stronger brand recognition, larger intellectual property portfolios, and broader global distribution and presence. Such competitors may make their solutions available at a low cost or no cost basis in order to enhance their overall relationships with current or potential customers. Our competitors may also be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, or customer requirements, including with respect to AI. With the introduction of AI and new market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future. In addition, some of our larger competitors have substantially broader offerings and can bundle competing products with other software offerings. As a result, customers may choose a bundled offering from our competitors, even if individual products have more limited functionality than our platform. These larger competitors are also often in a better position to withstand any significant reduction in capital spending and will therefore not be as susceptible to economic downturns.

Our recent corporate growth may not be indicative of our future growth and, if we continue to grow, we may not be able to manage our growth effectively.

We have focused on scaling our operations and headcount to ensure they remain in line with our growth plan and the size of our customer base, which we have significantly increased over the last several years. While we have expanded our operations and headcount in prior periods, such measures are not indicative of our future growth, and are subject to