Welcome to the Appian Corporation second quarter 2019 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Stacy Mortensen, Investor Relations for Appian Corporation. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today to review Appian's second quarter financial results. With me on the call today are Matt Calkins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Lynch, Chief Financial Officer. After prepared remarks, we will open up the call to a question-and-answer session. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under federal securities laws and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to our financial results, trends, and guidance for the third quarter and full year 2019, the benefit of our platform, industry, and market trends, our go-to-marketing growth strategy, our market opportunity, and our ability to expand our leadership position, our ability to maintain and upsell existing customers, and our ability to acquire new customers.
The words anticipate, continue, estimate, expect, intends, will, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements or similar indications of future expectations. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be reflected upon as representing our views as of any other subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our 2018 10-K filing and our other periodic filings with the SEC. These documents and the earning call presentation are available in the investor relations section of our website at www.appian.com. Additionally, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call.
Please refer to the tables in our earnings release in the investor relations portions of our website for a reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Matt Calkins. Matt?
Thanks, Stacy, and thank you all for joining us today. In the second quarter of 2019, Appian subscription revenue grew 41% year-over-year to $38.0 million, and our non-GAAP operating loss was $6.6 million. Our subscription revenue retention remains strong at 117% as of June 30, 2019. These results exceeded our guidance. In the second quarter, we held Appian World, our primary user conference. My theme for the conference was that low-code has arrived, and I believe the attention we received bore that out. 75% more reporters attended this year than last. They published 68 articles about us globally, including multiple articles in Forbes and Computerworld. Appian is a leader in the low-code market, and we believe our platform is the fastest way to turn ideas into applications. We demonstrate our speed with the Appian Guarantee.
To remind you, the Guarantee is our assurance that we can finish a customer's first application in just eight weeks for $150,000, and that anyone technical can learn Appian in two weeks. The Appian Guarantee is not just for small projects. In fact, our Guarantee-related software deals were on average larger than other software deals in Q2. Guarantee projects are no less critical or complex than others. For example, we won a deal at the Canadian brokerage division of a top 10 global asset management firm. They became a new customer by buying a seven-figure software deal and the Appian Guarantee. They'll use Appian to build a customer onboarding application for their 3,000 brokers, aiming to reduce new client enrollment from six months to two weeks.
They chose us over other vendors because they believe our platform is the only one that can completely automate their complex process within their short timeline. We also won a deal at a top 5 bank in the Netherlands for a global know your customer application this quarter. They became a new Appian customer by purchasing almost $1 million of licenses to integrate the bank's existing systems for 3 internal groups, including their compliance team, their customer account teams, and their executive managers. The customer had attempted to build this application with an existing provider, but the unsuccessful project was abandoned after 1 year. We proved our speed over 3 competitors by building a proof of concept in just 4 days. We will deliver this project under the Appian Guarantee. The idea behind the Appian Guarantee is not new. We've been fast and impactful all along.
An IDC study, just to clarify that, an IDC study conducted this quarter found that Appian customers break even on their investment in only seven months, and they attain a 509% ROI over five years. These quick returns are key to fast expansion within our customer base. For example, one of the top five global insurance brokers selected Appian to modernize their global reinsurance claims management process in Q1. Our competitor had estimated 6,000 person-hours and up to a year to deliver this solution. The customer chose us because of the Appian Guarantee. They were pleased with their eight-week deployment, and they returned in Q2 to buy over half a million dollars of additional Appian licenses, increasing their annual spend by 50%. This purchase will deliver a license compliance application for their contractors and a commission tracking system.
Another fast expansion was with the top 5 clearing bank in the U.K. that became an Appian customer just 8 months ago. Based on successful deployments in their business banking division, they tripled their annual Appian spend with a $seven-figure license deal this quarter. They will deploy these licenses to build a payment screening and sanctions application for their retail and business banking divisions. They'll use Appian to resolve suspicious trade and transaction activities. A second example of a large financial services expansion was with a top 5 global asset management firm, which made a $seven-figure license purchase in the second quarter. Since becoming a customer about a year ago, they've deployed Appian in their customer service, operations, investment management, and retail investment groups. This quarter, their CIO chose Appian to replace a legacy system that runs a variety of back-office applications.
We won this project because our platform is fast to deploy, fast to change, and supports mobile capabilities without extra development effort. Top 5 crude oil refinery operator in the United States currently uses Appian to manage refinery turnarounds. This application was launched in just six weeks and has saved the customer millions of dollars in refinery turnaround efficiency. This quarter, this refinery operator purchased half a million dollars of Appian software to move their product launch process off spreadsheets and email. Soon, they'll manage the ideation, specification, approval, testing, and certification of new projects in Appian. Partners made a strong impact on our business this quarter. They brought us 67% of our new logo deals, and these deals closed more than a third faster than the new logo deals we sold without partner assistance.
For example, a partner referred us into a U.S. subsidiary of a top five Japanese bank and helped us gain them as a new customer. The subsidiary purchased a half million dollars of Appian licenses to automate 500 approval processes. When an employee seeks approval for personal time off, securities contracts, or their daily profit and loss statements, they will do it on Appian. Our competitor estimated that it would take five developers and 15 weeks to complete this application. We finished our proof of concept in four days, so the customer expects to complete the project now with just one house developer in only six weeks on Appian. Another partner helped us win a Fortune 500 financial services institution as a new logo this quarter. They purchased over a half a million dollars of Appian software to build a lending application.
They'll use Appian to unify data from six legacy systems and automate the complex process for their wealth management and commercial lending groups. We plan to deliver their first project under the Appian Guarantee. Partners were also instrumental in expansions, including a deal with one of the largest buyers of secondary market mortgages in the United States. We won a seven-figure deal to build an operations command center, which will unify 15 work streams for 800 users. Before Appian, processes were highly manual due to their siloed systems. We won this deal over two competitors because of the superior proof of concept delivered by our partners. A partner helped us win another large expansion with a Fortune 500 hospitality and cruise operator this quarter. Two partner practitioners built a proof of concept for a capital planning application to replace the company's email and spreadsheet-driven process.
The POC, proof of concept, was so complete that the customer made only a few tweaks before deploying it. This purchase is worth more than three-quarters of a million dollars and quadruples their annual Appian investment. Now that low-code as a platform is established, pre-built solutions are the next logical step for building applications even more quickly. We've been a platform company since our inception, so our solutions approach is distinctive. First, every Appian solution is built on our platform using only our objects and our institutions, so these solutions are fully standardized, upgradable, and compatible. That's the first difference. The second one is we will go beyond compatibility. Our solutions will be proactively collaborative with each other. They'll have common data definitions, shared reports, built-in calls that talk to each other.
This out-of-the-box harmony is far from what you get with competitors' solutions, which are generally built as silos. For these two reasons, both of which are facilitated by our longstanding focus on the platform, our solutions approach is different and very likely superior to what is currently available. In Q2, we deployed a contact center for a Fortune 500 analytics company. Their 20,000 employees worldwide needed help from their human resources team to resolve employment matters such as policy, procedure questions, benefits enrollment, and time-off requests. This customer wanted to enhance their employee experience and bring their outsourced service center in-house. Our solution simplifies contact center deployments by packaging the necessary integrations and Appian objects to give contact centers a head start. Our team of just three practitioners configured the Intelligent Contact Center to this customer's unique needs and deployed it in only eight weeks.
This timeframe is significantly faster than the 9 to 18 months that it takes to deploy contact centers with other providers. This quarter, we launched a new solution called Robotic Workforce Manager, which is being received with a great deal of enthusiasm. Robotic process automation, you've heard of it, has been popular. Many companies are running droves of RPA bots on automated tasks. There are two problems with these implementations. First, there are too many bots, and it isn't easy to make them work efficiently together. Second, the bots cannot handle exceptions. Only humans can do that today. Our solution manages these bots and coordinates their work with that of a human team to optimize for both automated throughput and human exception handling. You can see why it seems like it might be popular. We also have partners in on the act, building their solutions on the Appian platform.
KPMG, for example, released a solution to help customers move off LIBOR by scanning contracts for LIBOR references and using artificial intelligence to recommend replacement language. Here's another one. PwC's healthcare provider engagement solution manages the complex interactions between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers. These partner solutions are just the beginning. Since our last call, we've relocated into a new headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Appian has been emerging as one of the premier technology companies in the Washington, D.C. region. You may remember that we were chosen as the best place to work last year by The Washington Post. This location allows us to look the part. We're in a central location. We have a block of contiguous floors. Our name is on the building, and we did it while lowering our per square foot rent.
Now, with that said, I'd like to turn the call to Mark Lynch, our CFO, for a deeper discussion of our financials. Mark?
Thanks, Matt. I'll review the financial highlights of the quarter and full year, and then we'll provide details on our Q3 and full year 2019 guidance. Subscription revenue was $38 million, an increase of 41% year-over-year and above the top end of our guidance. Our total subscription, software, and support revenue was $39.3 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year. As a reminder, Q2 2018 software revenue included a $4.4 million perpetual deal with U.S. Air Force. We no longer offer perpetual licenses on our price list, and it's rare for us to execute a perpetual transaction. Professional services revenue was $27.7 million, up slightly from $26.8 million in the prior year period, and up from $24.7 million in the prior quarter. Partners continue to be a larger part of our ecosystem and are increasingly helping us sell more software.
Total revenue in the second quarter was $66.9 million, up 12% year-over-year, and above our guidance. Our subscription revenue retention rate as of June 30 was 117%, within the 110%-120% range that we target on a quarterly basis. We continue to be pleased with our customers' expanded use of our platform. Our international operations contributed 31% of total revenue for Q2, compared with 28% in the prior year period. This reflects the strong growth we're experiencing both domestically and internationally. As I noted last quarter, since we are an emerging growth company, we've elected to delay the adoption of ASC 606, which means that we won't have to adopt it until we publish our 2019 10-K. When we do adopt, we will do so on a modified retrospective basis. Under 606, revenue recognition on cloud subscriptions will remain materially unchanged.
The more business in the cloud, the less of an impact ASC 606 will have on our reported revenue. Our cloud subscription revenue for the first half of 2019 was about 67% of total subscription revenue, an improvement from approximately 61% for the same period last year. Now I'll turn to our profitability metrics. For the second quarter, our non-GAAP gross profit margin was 66%, compared to 64% in the same period last year and 53% in the prior quarter. Subscription, software, and support non-GAAP gross profit margin was 90% in the second quarter, compared to 92% in the second quarter of 2018. Our non-GAAP professional services gross profit margin was 32% in the second quarter, compared to 31% in the second quarter of 2018. Total non-GAAP operating expenses were $50.9 million, an increase of 14% from $44.7 million in the year ago period.
Non-GAAP loss from operations was $6.6 million in the second quarter, ahead of our guidance and compared to a Non-GAAP loss from operations of $6.1 million in the year ago period. As you know, foreign exchange gains and losses can fluctuate. During the quarter, we had $100,000 of foreign exchange gains, compared to $2.7 million of foreign exchange losses in Q2 2018. Our guidance does not consider any additional potential impact to financial and other income and expense associated with foreign exchange gains or losses, as we don't estimate movements in foreign currency exchange rates. Non-GAAP net loss was $6.6 million for the second quarter of 2019, or a loss of $0.10 per basic and diluted share, compared to Non-GAAP net loss of $8.8 million, or a loss of $0.14 per basic and diluted share for the second quarter of 2018.
This is based on 64.8 million and 61.4 million basic and diluted shares outstanding for the second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2018, respectively. Turning to our balance sheet. As of June 30, 2019, we had cash and cash equivalents of $81.1 million, compared with $75.4 million as of March 31, 2019. For the second quarter, cash provided by operations was $16.1 million. Our cash flow provided by operations also included the reimbursement of $12.5 million in tenant improvement allowances. Excluding that, our cash from operations was still positive. As of June 30, 2019, all of the tenant improvement allowance has been received from the landlord. In addition, we had $10.5 million of out-of-pocket capital expenditures related to our new headquarters. As a quick reminder, under GAAP, when we receive the tenant improvement reimbursements, they'll be recorded as a source of cash in operating activities.
Whereas the capital expenditures are recorded as cash used in investing activities. Upon completion of our headquarters build-out, we still expect to spend approximately $20 million above the tenant improvement allowance, of which approximately $5 million will be financed for the purchase of furniture and equipment. Bottom line, based on what we have incurred through June 30, 2019, our remaining net out-of-pocket expenditures related to our headquarters should not exceed $5 million. Total deferred revenue was $112.2 million for the second quarter. With respect to our billing terms, the majority of our customers are invoiced on an annual upfront basis. However, we also have some large customers that are billed quarterly and others that are billed monthly. We continue to remind investors that changes in our deferred revenue are generally not indicative of the momentum in the business. Now let me turn to guidance.
For the full year 2019, we're raising our subscription and total revenue guidance. Subscription revenue is now expected to be in the range of $153 million and $154 million, representing year-over-year growth between 32% and 33%. Total revenue is now expected to be in the range of $260.5 million and $262.5 million. We now expect non-GAAP loss from operations to be in the range of $35 million and $33 million, and non-GAAP net loss per share between $0.55 and $0.51. This assumes 65 million basic and diluted common shares outstanding. For the third quarter of 2019, subscription revenue is expected to be in the range of $38.8 million and $39 million, representing year-over-year growth between 32% and 33%. Total revenue is expected to be in the range of $65 million and $65.5 million.
Non-GAAP loss from operations is expected to be in the range of $10 million and $9.5 million, with a non-GAAP net loss per share between $0.16 and $0.15. This assumes 65 million basic and diluted common shares outstanding. With that, let's turn it over to questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Sanjit Singh with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thank you for taking the question, and congrats on the very strong cloud subscription revenue results this quarter. Matt, maybe I wanted to talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the customer base. If we look at your largest customers, whether it's your top 25 or however you want to frame it, how many applications do they ultimately start to run on the Appian platform? As you sort of land on your biggest customers from that initial application, what are your largest customers, how many applications are they running on average?
Great. I appreciate this question because it speaks directly to a strategic point that's important to the way we want to expand inside of our customer base. The intention here is not to sell one application, and it's not a typical land and expand either, where you sell a little one, then it turns into a big one. Our intention is to begin with one application, which will have a certain marginal cost of adoption, and then create a technology and a provision such that every further application has a lower marginal cost of adoption.
The point here is that they should be able to get more benefit with each successive application at the same time as they actually pay less in terms of the cost of the software, but also the difficulty of, say, setting it up or adapting people to it or acclimatizing a new interface or all this. The cost should continue to go down. This was brought up during my comments when I spoke about solutions and how we're kind of forcibly making them proactively compatible. Not just nominally compatible, really proactively, like they're woven together, and if you've got one solution, then by all means, you should get the next one because they share a language and reports and so on. Our intention explicitly is. I mean, this is what you have to do.
If you're going to start in platforms and you're going to go towards solutions or toward applications, as the case may be, you have to leverage that platform advantage, and I think this is how you do it, by reducing the marginal cost, the net cost of adoption of each successive application. Our top customers do this in spades. They have, not just a couple, but dozens of applications. 30, 50, right? 100, in some cases, applications. These are centrally administered. They're probably upgraded all together. They might be sharing some definitions. They're certainly sharing single interfaces. They're sharing logons, right? A user might use one logon to log into an environment that includes 40 applications. This is the kind of synergies that underlie our value proposition. Our platform-led value proposition features this kind of a synergy.
We're really focused on it, and thank you for a question that highlighted that.
Great. In terms of the pre-built app strategy that you guys are beginning to roll out, can you give us a sense of how you guys decide which pre-built apps to release, what sort of vertical market to target, and any sort of early signs of adoption or traction, whether it's the Contact Center Application, which you highlighted this quarter, but what do you see as the most promising opportunities with the pre-built application strategy? Thank you.
Great. Okay, our solutions universe is going to include some solutions that we select and some which our partners select. With regards to the partners, they will be making their own selections. We don't divvy up the opportunities in any way to them, though we might notify them if another partner were already working on the same thing. With regards to the solutions that we create, we're looking for things where we've already established that it works. Not so much that our software can function in that task, because we could be confident of that in the abstract without having done it.
If a customer has spent their money on Appian for a certain purpose, and this has happened, let's say, 5 or 10 times already, then we can conclude not merely that our software is suitable for that application, but that other people's software leaves something to be desired. Why do they turn to us, right? Why out of all the possibilities did they come to us and ask for something custom? It could be because the thing they're asking for is an exceptionally unique need from company to company. It could be because it's not very well served by existing providers. Either way, I prefer to follow
Evidence. I don't want to get too lofty about our thinking here. We do a lot of applications more than once, and we know which ones those are, and we know which industries are the hungriest for what we're doing. I think it's going to be fairly simple for us to follow the lead that's right in front of our face for the first few solutions and even series of solutions.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks, guys. Congrats on the quarter. This is Mohit Gogia on for Raimo. Just staying on the topic in terms of the pre-built solutions, I was just wondering as to, you have been out with the contact center solution for more than a year now. Just wondering if you can share with us some perspectives as to what has worked really well. Based on the customer feedback, adoption, land and expand motion. In regards to that product, what has worked well, and what are some of the lessons that you'll probably take as you sort of come out with more of these pre-built solutions moving forward?
Yes. If you don't mind me dodging your question to some degree, I want to say that I think we're still in a relatively experimental information-gathering stage with regards to the format of solutions, both how we build them, how we price them, how we sell them, and I don't yet have conclusions to draw from our early experience. We are using different pricing strategies. The Intelligent Contact Center, we've largely not priced that separately. We've just bundled the features in as differentiated features. But take the Robotic Workforce Manager solution, that is getting a separate price, different from just buying Appian. We're learning, and we're just going to pay close attention and watch as the first few solutions meet the market, and then adjust accordingly.
Understood. A question for Mark. If I look at your professional, so obviously there was a reset in professional services expectations last quarter, just based on the traction you were seeing building up the partner network. I'm just wondering, the numbers this quarter, has it changed your view in terms of the expectations for professional services, or do you think you stand where you were at the end of Q1? Thank you.
I would follow what we talked about in Q1. Our margins this quarter improved a little bit, but largely because of some work that was done in Q1 that the revenue got recognized in Q2. From a modeling perspective, I would basically use the modeling that you guys rolled out for the rest of the year in Q1. As well as the expectations. Obviously, in the total revenue, you can back into what we think PS will do for the year. I just follow our guidance.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kurtz with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions and great quarter here. As you think about your direct sales organization and the investments that you've made over the last six months, how do you feel about the yield rate per rep and kind of the improvements in the cohort groups over that period? How are you seeing that trend inside the larger accounts in the commercial space versus the federal space? Just any direction and context around the investments you're getting and kind of the ROI from that team and how that's driving the growth here.
Well, I'm not going to be able to speak to the contrast between commercial and federal, because the test of federal really is Q3. I think that it would just be speaking out of turn to try to draw any conclusions about the relative efficiency of the sales force. I will say that I believe that we're achieving a higher degree of efficiency. I think that we've tightened our ship a little bit, and we've got slightly better output on a per rep basis. I see some of that statistically in terms of fulfillment and how long it takes a rep to get on the board. I'm seeing some good indicators. It's certainly been an area of focus, I can tell you, and we prioritize that very high in the changeover in sales leadership recently. I believe it's moving in the right direction.
Okay. Just looking at the back half guidance for the remainder of the fiscal year, when you think about large deals and the impact in what you assume in Q3 and Q4, are there any things that we should be paying attention to as far as timing of deals between quarters and what that can mean for billings or any other context would be helpful?
I think from billings perspective, billings is not a great metric for us because of the fact that, one, we're lucky, but two, basically the duration of invoicing is all over the map. Some customers are quarterly, some are annual, some are monthly. We generally point to looking at the subs revenue growth rate as a better leading indicator for how we're doing. Having said that, for the back half of the year right now, what we see in the pipeline looks healthy. We're feeling pretty good about it.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Merwin with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Okay. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I just wanted to ask about the partnership with UiPath. I think it's pretty interesting, kind of the convergence we're seeing between RPA and low-code. Maybe could you just talk a bit about technologically how that's going to work? From a financial perspective, is there any sort of joint go-to-market here, and how do we sort of think about the benefits of this partnership phasing in over time, whether it be through customers or revenue per customer. Just curious how we should think about that. Thanks.
That's right. Okay. This is just getting going, and I think that partly a partnership has to prove itself on the ground. I think the degree to which we're approaching customers together or that sort of thing, is going to have to be earned. We'll see how much value we're creating together. Our first partner in the Workforce Manager solution is Blue Prism, and UiPath is the second. I can tell you more about the Blue Prism partnership than I can tell you about UiPath. I can say that the sharing of knowledge and the co-pursuit of customers and the sense that we're building value together has been impressive, and I think it's given us a good opportunity to show that we've got value, and then we'll see how that turns out in the next few quarters.
Okay, great. Just as it relates to the geographic mix, it looks like domestic had been trending well ahead of international in terms of just you and your growth and that flip this past quarter. Is that one time-ish? Just curious if you saw any divergence in trends by geography that caused that change. Thanks.
Not really. I think both geographies are growing nicely. You're going to have some lumpiness with PS surging or not surging in different areas, so that'll give you a little bit of a misleading indication. Right now, both areas are growing nicely.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Derrick Wood with Cowen and Company. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks. It's Andrew Sherman on for Derrick. Maybe one for Matt. Could you just talk about, it looked like the government revenue was down slightly year-over-year. Could you talk about that performance in the quarter if anything was pushed into second half? Could you talk about the impact from your new security features on your government business and when we should expect that to show up in the numbers?
I'm excited about those security features, and I think it's going to make us very competitive and differentiated for some large and sensitive government contracts. You didn't see that in Q2 yet, but I'm excited about it. As for the decline year-over-year in government revenue, I do want you to note that we had that perpetual deal in the preceding Q2, the Air Force deal for $4.4 million. We don't do perpetual. Had that been a subscription deal, the ratio would look somewhat different. Other than that, I wouldn't say that there's much of an indicator there really. The proof of federal isn't in Q2 anyway.
Okay, thanks. Part of the partner influence on deals was up from last quarter. Could you maybe call out a few drivers of that? For your bigger customers, $1 million plus ARR, what does that number look like?
All right. I do not have disclosed The customers greater than $1 million ARR, we disclose that on an annual basis. We don't do it on a quarterly basis. What was the other part of the question?
Thanks. Yeah, just the drivers of the uptick in partner involvement, and should we expect that number to stay pretty consistent throughout the year or continue to increase?
I don't believe that the current partner output is anomalous. That isn't a prediction. It's just a statement about where we are today. I think that that's the kind of way we're working with our partners, and that's the teamwork that they're showing to us. I believe partner enthusiasm is something that has to be worked on for a long time. It always seems to be just around the corner, and we've taken years to build it up, and it's exciting to see the momentum really happening. I think what you see is what we are right now.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star 1 at this time. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Lemus with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks, guys, for taking the question. Just a follow-up on the last one, that percentage of new logos influenced by partners has continued to tick up. I guess, the way I think about long term, what's the right mix of deals that are partner influenced versus you guys going direct? Is it more so just a function of larger deals with larger customers, typically a company with a partner?
Yeah. I think it's an extremely good sign when partners source a lot of our new logos. This is really what we want partners for. Truly, we want them for two things. We want them for their reach into boardrooms and influence and people with problems that could be solved with our low-code technology. Number two, we want them for all the practitioners they can bring to bear that they've already hired, that they need only train, that could expand the workforce of deployment professionals who can bring Appian to the masses. Those are the two things that we want out of partners. When you see a statistic that shows us getting them, then I'm delighted with that progress. I'm sure that the partners are delighted also, perhaps in the opposite order between those two factors.
I think it's just an indication that the strategy is working. I'm happy with that. Whenever you prioritize a percentage going in one direction or another, you're really implicitly saying we hope that the other part of the pie falls. I don't mean to be saying that, and that's why I'm reluctant to say I'm cheering on a percentage. I'm really not. I'm just cheering on an absolute count of partner-sourced new logos, and the more that goes, the better. Of course, that's not what we're reporting here. Still, it's a good sign to see a lot of partner-sourced new logos.
Great. That's really good cover, Matt. On the per app pricing methodology, any sort of progress or update on how that's being adopted or feedback?
It's steady on with that pricing methodology. It's working well for us. We're sticking with it. We do a lot of our pricing under that framework today, and I'm glad that we do.
Great. Thanks for taking the question.
Yep.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bhavan Suri with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Let me echo Matt. Congrats. Nice job there. I'm going to go back to partners, Matt, for a second.
Hello?
Does it feel like these practices?
Bhavan, I can't hear you.
Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Okay, hold on, Bhavan. I can hear you now, but I missed a bunch of it. Would you please begin the question?
Sorry. Yeah. For some reason, my phone's cutting out here. We've had some issues on our end. Anyway, partners, they're dramatically growing. They're seeing it from customers from a bottoms-up perspective. I guess when you look at the partners you're talking to, does it feel like these practices are getting more mature? Not from a headcount perspective, but from a quality perspective, meaning onboarding and time to productivity. Is that improving across this partner channel? Where do you think you are for that? Thanks.
This is a great way to measure partners. You're right, we shouldn't just count the heads. We do have a headcount, and for a while we tracked it, and after a while, I kind of concluded that at least the number of nominally happy and educated partner staff was no longer a very valid indicator of the degree of success of their programs. Instead, we look at the other things like you're talking about, like the time to productivity. One of my favorite indicators lately is the quality of their solutions. Not merely the volume of them, but how good are those solutions, and have they sold them, and are customers using them successfully? That's a great indication of seriousness, because they've got to develop the capacity. They have to have the will and the confidence to work with Appian.
They're making an investment for the future, and then they have to get it through their own sales channel and convince somebody to buy it. That, I suppose, would be the most complete test of partner maturity. There's a number of ways we can measure it, and I believe that really on all of them, we're advancing.
I guess if I was to push back a little bit, and you're welcome to dodge my question, but what inning do you think we are with these partners? Because you've got a lot of numbers at your user con-.
Oh, yeah. You're cutting out again. I could just start answering the question based on what I think you're asking. Which inning are we with regards to the relationship with the partners and the maturation levels that they will go through? I feel like I've been asked this question before, and I said some really early inning, like the third or something. Yeah, I think I'm going to leave it around there. I think we're early in the game. There's a lot of upside in the relationship between Appian and its partners, and so this isn't the end of the game. This is the end of the beginning, right? We're just getting started, and we've achieved something, but there's more left to achieve than has been achieved.
Got it. Got a quick RFP question for you as a follow-up. As low-code becomes more obvious, I'd love to understand how the RFP process works. How are those initial conversations with customers changing? I guess, when you look at an RFP, are you seeing RFPs? Do you run into IT dev teams unwilling to give up control? Do you think we're past that point? The conversation has shifted to more of a show me the power of the platform. I guess I'm trying to understand, when things get really mature, you see RFPs coming out and the questions are standard. How are you seeing that? Has that happened, or are we still pretty early on that?
Okay. Well, certainly our implicit eternal competitor is build-it-yourself, and so there is some competition there, even at the same time, by the way, that we empower those same developers to be far more efficient, right? We don't need to compete with them. We could be their partner, but sometimes we do compete with internal development, platformless development. Yeah, that'll be there forever. We do see RFPs that specify low-code. Yes, we do. We do see RFPs that specify the virtues that we can bring to bear, and there are more of them, and I feel like it's becoming more mainstream. The value proposition that we're offering is something that is being asked for more frequently. Yes, that's definitely there, but it doesn't mean that developers don't do custom developments anymore.
It just means that more organizations have decided that they'd prefer a more efficient way, a more uniform way, a more flexible way, and in the end, a more powerful way to create unique software.
Got it. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Congrats. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Bhavan.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Calkins for any final comments.
Sure. I want to thank you all for your interest in Appian and your time on the call this evening. It's a pleasure to share our quarter with you. Thanks.
Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.