​Appian has unveiled three new apps intended to help organisations better weather the storm created by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The three apps, COVID-19 Response, Paycheck Protection Program and Workforce Safety & Readiness, were all built and released over the course of the fast two months and address different aspects of the challenges businesses are facing right now.

Speaking at the opening day keynote of the company’s now virtual annual conference, CEO Matt Caulkins said COVID-19 Response, which was launched in March, “is about responding to [the disease] and tracking the health of an employer’s workforce”.

“Everything about this application is free – the software is free, the intellectual property is free, the installation, the web hosting, the support and services, everything is completely free,” said Calkins, adding that it quickly became the most popular launch in the history of the company.

“It was taken up really well by our customer base, we had 500 downloads in the first few days, and then soon it was over 1,000,” he said.

Paycheck Protection Program, launched in April, focuses on helping banks process one the US government’s key financial responses to the coronavirus pandemic: small business loans.

“My favourite thing about this application is the way it showcases the power of automation. It uses artificial intelligence to read loan applications and then it uses robotic process automation to upload them to a government portal and it uses people to manage compliance,” said Calkins.

“This is the North Star of automation, it’s the combination of human workers and digital workers in the same workflow. It’s exactly what the automation industry is aiming for.”

Finally, Workforce Safety & Readiness helps organisations prepare for the reopening of their offices as the pandemic starts to subside.

“The purpose of the application is to get your employees back to work safely, carefully, and cautiously and we do that by considering more information than we would have if you just told people to come back if they met CDC (Centres for Disease Control) guidelines,” explained Calkins. 

“Instead, we’re going to take a lot of things into account – how many workers should really be in each facility in your organisation and which workers should they be on day one? And on day 10? And on day 50?” he continued.

“We’re going to take into account a lot of additional factors in the name of safety, such as how many people live in their household and how old are those people? Who do they come to work in the same office with, to be sure that we don’t have them both come in on the same day? Can their job be done at a distance effectively?

“All this information is stored in a HIPAA-certified cloud and it’s exceptionally easy to use. Users log in every morning  on any device to update their health, answer a few questions  and then they’re told whether they should come to work today and what days they should plan to come to work.”

All three apps are available immediately.