Nintex hosted their annual Partner and Customer Conference in New Orleans from Feb 13-15, 2017. We were looking forward to this show not only because its our first opportunity to attend since signing up as a Nintex partner, but also having worked for an ISV that does not have an annual conference, we were eager to see how Nintex would execute. We know these events are not easy to pull off; it is difficult to coordinate sponsorships, speakers, and entertainment options to provide a valuable experience for attendees that is not only exciting but educational. We found this event to be a home run, jam packed with useful sessions but also with exciting keynotes and Tier 1 speakers. Here are our Top 5 takeaways from the event:
1. Nintex is on a roll. We know that there has been some change within the organization over the last few years, with private equity moving in and their original founders moving on or taking board positions rather than maintaining active control. Rather than seeing a pause or decline in product enhancements, we are seeing an explosion. Just in the last year, we have seen Nintex for Office365, Nintex for SharePoint 2016, Nintex Workflow Cloud, Hawkeye, App Studio, and much more. As a new partner these actions create opportunities for us to educate customers, build new custom applications, and take a lead amongst partners on showcasing the new technology.
2. Project Zinc. Clearly Nintex is moving in the direction of an independent workflow product rather than solely a SharePoint ISV. As we have deployed the Nintex Workflow Cloud we have appreciated the consistency of a drag & drop workflow canvas and the connectors to cloud providers such as Salesforce.com, Box, and Docusign. If there was one thing missing, it was a consistency in Forms capabilities between the SharePoint Forms solution and the NWC. Well, fear not, because robust forms, even better than the SharePoint version, are on their way. We were able to witness not only validation of Forms in NWC but a responsive template that makes designing Forms as easy for even the least technical user. If you want to see this in action, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us and we’ll make sure you are included in the beta trials. More information can be found here.
3. Xchange Marketplace will be a revenue engine for developers. Business processes are often not unique to a single organization. A leave request process can be pretty standard, if not with minor tweaks from one organization to the next. Xchange allows for customers, partners, and developers to package intellectual property as deployable apps and customers can trial these products in a standalone cloud environment or their own tenant, then transact directly with the publisher to acquire a full version license. Soon ecommerce will be added to the platform and you can earn money while you sleep!
4. You can build your own Xtensions to NWC. As demonstrated by Hyperfish in a keynote and again in a full session, it is possible to create your own extensions to the Nintex Workflow Cloud that can execute actions by third party products. This capability really drives Nintex’s objectives to become a middleware provider, so they are putting their money where their mouth is, now its up to the 3rd party ISV and developers to pony up and start building those extensions.
5. Easily build and deploy enterprise mobile apps. This one may have the greatest long term impacts on our business as a partner. Increasingly we find customers who’ve introduced new technologies to their users, yet the mobile experience is poor and does not extend across multiple products. Nintex App Studio allows you to easily use the forms and workflows you’ve built to connect internal systems and run your business, but puts them in the palm of your hand. This allows your field workers, leadership teams, and employees on the go, to quickly and easily interact with your back office systems, execute workflows, or make approvals, without having to sit down, connect to the web, and log into a system to take action. We hosted a webinar on this topic last year and will also be hosting several executive briefings in 2017, starting with Des Moines, IA, information can be found here.
All in all, we found the show to be very motivating, and you couldn’t pick a better location than New Orleans. The warm weather, amazing food, and great music could have enticed attendees away from the show but with some many new things happening in the Nintex partner world, it was tough to get away.