Nintex Xchange 2018
Earlier this year Nintex hosted Xchange 2018, the company’s third annual customer and partner conference. More than 500 business leaders and IT professionals converged on the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California, to network and learn about AI, best practices and Nintex’s workflow solutions. The event featured keynotes and presentations from Nintex’s (now former) CEO John Burton, CTO Alain Gentilhomme, CMO Matt Fleckenstein, Senior VP of Technology Strategy Ryan Duguid, Salesforce VP for Strategic Research Peter Coffee, and Box Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel. Attendees could also attend more than 40 breakout sessions or meet one-on-one with representatives from Nintex.
John BurtonIn his opening keynote address, CEO John Burton announced that he would be stepping down from his position as the Thoma Bravo acquisition became official. Burton told the crowd that the company’s current CFO, Eric Johnson (a frequent contributor to this publication), would take the reins.
Throughout the show, Nintex hosted a variety of breakout sessions. Attendees could follow six tracks: Customer/Partner Success Stories; Product Deep Dives and Governance; Extensibility of the Nintex Platform; Intelligent Process Automation; Migration, Change Management and Governance; and Uses Cases, Scenarios, and Industry Examples. There simply wasn’t enough time to see them all!
Meanwhile, in the Nintex Labs, attendees had the opportunity to meet with technical evangelists, product managers and support staff. Customers could also schedule appointments with consultants who would go over existing workflows and offer suggestions to help customers improve.
What we saw
On the first day of the show, I watched Nintex’s Luke Bongiorno and Lachlan Ainley give their presentation titled “Optimizing your Workflows: Getting the Most Out of Your Process Automation Strategies.” The session was focused on how Nintex Hawkeye could help businesses analyze, manage and optimize their workflows.
Ainsley noted that, while we have benefited greatly from the digitization and automation of business processes, we still have some challenges in quantifying exactly how these efforts are affecting the business. But once we have the insights into how our workflows are performing we can begin to optimize them, and multiply the benefits of automation.
The duo took turns demonstrating how Hawkeye provides businesses with insights into their workflows (who participates in workflows and how long it takes for processes to be completed, for example), plus measure services levels and see the outcomes of each process — if it was approved, rejected, or stalled. Hawkeye users could then use this detailed view of their business processes to make the necessary adjustments in real time, so they can remain productive. (Learn more about Hawkeye and other parts of the Nintex Platform in this conversation with Ryan Duguid).
Later, I was off to see Intellinet’s Andrew Glasser, who took us on a deep dive into Nintex Mobile and Mobile App Studio. The former, he explained, is the standard Nintex mobile app that can be downloaded for free, while the latter enables businesses to design and deploy their own versions of the mobile app.
During the talk, Glasser demonstrated some of the Nintex mobile app’s features, including a slick way to create forms. He also demonstrated how the technology can be applied in the real world — in this case, an incident-reporting scenario that he acted out using members from the audience.
In this example “Wendy” needed to fill out an incident report after backing her forklift into Glasser (don’t worry, no one was actually hurt in this demonstration). She filled in the fields and was able to attach an image using the device’s camera. Glasser then showed us this process from the perspective of the manager, who received an email and was able to take action right away (in this case, approve a work order).
Next, Glasser turned his attention towards the Nintex App Studio, and showed attendees some neat ways you can customize the app with custom branding, add forms, and review options. He also demonstrated how easy it was to deploy applications, assign credentials, and distribute apps with mobile device management platforms.
One of my favorite thought leaders, Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com, getting a big idea out there, with Box’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel and Nintex’s CTO Alain Gentilhomme hanging on his every word.I walked away from Nintex Xchange 2018 excited about what the future of automation will bring. But you don’t even need to ponder the future to be amazed. Right now, Nintex’s platform delivers end-to-end business process automation across an entire organization, and you don’t even need to write any code. And with data and workflow analytics tools, businesses can fine tune their business processes into one harmonious flow of information. Good stuff.
is president and senior analyst for BPO Media, which publishes The Imaging Channel and Workflow magazines. As a market analyst and industry consultant, Ames has worked for prominent consulting firms including KPMG and has more than 15 years experience in the imaging industry covering technology and business sectors. Ames has lived and worked in the United States, Southeast Asia and Europe and enjoys being a part of a global industry and community.
