How Hitachi Leverages Appian for Process-Led Innovation

/ Appian World 2025, Application Development, Enterprise Software
How Hitachi Leverages Appian for Process-Led Innovation

Hitachi, a global leader in infrastructure, energy, and mobility, is undergoing a strategic transformation to accelerate growth and deliver sustainable solutions for the modern world. At the heart of this effort is Bala Krishnapillai, CIO of Hitachi Americas, who brings both architectural and AI expertise to his executive role. In a recent conversation at Appian World 2025, Krishnapillai shared how Hitachi is leveraging Appian to complement its broader enterprise modernization efforts with a sharp focus on speed, governance, and business-aligned technology delivery.

Hitachi’s approach focuses on data-centric process enablement, built on a foundation of trust, upskilling, and tightly integrated partnerships. Appian’s low-code platform plays a key role, but not as the center of the transformation, rather as a flexible, secure enabler of business-driven innovation.

A Business-First Approach to Technology Adoption

For Hitachi, technology is the enabler, not the strategy. The company’s core mission is to deliver transformative, sustainable solutions to customers, and that starts by aligning IT capabilities to business objectives. At Hitachi, every new technology initiative is grounded in:

  • Customer co-creation: building repeatable, scalable solutions in partnership with clients;
  • Business leadership: where strategy precedes architecture; and
  • IT enablement: creating platforms that help the business deliver faster without building software products in-house.

Krishnapillai emphasized that time to market was a critical driver in choosing Appian. Rather than investing in traditional application development cycles, Hitachi needed a tool to create workflows quickly, adapt to messy data environments, and empower teams without expanding IT headcount.

Why this matters

For many organizations, speed and trust are more valuable than custom code. Appian offers a way to launch process-driven solutions that reduce overhead and bring the business into the development loop without sacrificing governance.

From Messy Data to Process-Led Clarity

Hitachi’s teams work in complex environments with siloed and often messy data. Appian’s strength, according to Krishnapillai, lies in its ability to:

  • Overlay orchestration onto these fragmented data environments;
  • Enable rapid deployment of workflows and policies; and
  • Operate with minimal IT intervention and strong security posture.

Rather than centralizing everything into a monolithic data warehouse, Hitachi uses Appian as a process orchestration layer to keep data where it is, while streamlining the interactions and actions around it. This allows for defined architectures that blend data orchestration with process flows, all while reducing duplicative effort.

While the Appian praise was high during the conversation, Krishnapillai wasn’t shy about admitting where Appian can’t be used. Because of this, Hitachi is building a broader data strategy to fill gaps Appian isn’t designed to solve. Even so, Appian remains a key component of a composable, scalable digital foundation.

Upskilling for Sustainable Innovation

A notable element of Hitachi’s approach is its investment in employee empowerment. Rather than hiring external talent to support Appian deployments, the company leveraged its global mobility and upskill programs to train internal engineers to use the platform.

This supports Hitachi’s broader belief that employees are long-term assets, and that removing fear around AI and automation starts with training and transparency. HR and IT are aligned in this effort, creating cross-functional programs to reduce resistance and increase buy-in.

The outcome is a self-service environment where business and technical teams collaborate to build workflows quickly and without the heavy burden of traditional software delivery or the risks of shadow IT.

The Role of the Partner Ecosystem

Hitachi views Appian not just as a vendor, but as a trusted ally in their digital transformation journey. Krishnapillai highlighted that the strength of the relationship lies in Appian’s transparency and realistic roadmapping.

Appian’s alliance strategy isn’t about overselling but rather about helping partners make informed decisions based on what’s possible today and what’s coming soon. This has enabled Hitachi to create a repeatable framework for solution development, knowing where Appian fits, and where it doesn’t.

Why this matters

In large organizations, strategic trust in vendor relationships is a competitive advantage. When a partner is upfront about limitations and focused on roadmap alignment, it reduces risk and accelerates delivery.

Pragmatic Transformation at Scale

With a mature foundation in DevOps, SecOps, and AIOps, Hitachi is well positioned to scale its transformation initiatives. But the company is careful not to let hype derail strategic focus. Through its incubation lab, emerging technologies are vetted, tested, and validated before entering production environments. New tools must fit into business-led strategies, not the other way around.

Appian is one piece of this puzzle, helping Hitachi meet three key goals:

  1. Accelerate application delivery without increasing IT overhead,
  2. Enable governed, process-driven workflows around distributed data, and
  3. Build repeatable solutions that can scale across regions and regulatory environments.

Final Thought

In a world of constant innovation, what matters most is whether technology can deliver trusted outcomes. For Hitachi, Appian offers a practical path forward: fast where it counts, secure where it matters, and built on a foundation of real-world partnership.

Author

  • Bringing more than a decade of varying experience crossing multiple sectors such as legal, financial, and tech, Sam Weston is an accomplished professional that excels in ensuring success across various industries. Currently, Sam serves as an Industry Analyst at Efficiently Connected where she collaborates closely in the areas of application modernization, DevOps, storage, and infrastructure. With a keen eye for research, Sam produces valuable insights and custom content to support strategic initiatives and enhance market understanding. Rooted in the fields of tech, law, finance operations and marketing, Sam provides a unique viewpoint to her position, fostering innovation and delivering impactful solutions within the industry. Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems and Business Analytics from Colorado State University and is passionate about leveraging her diverse skill set to drive growth and empower clients to succeed.

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