Item: Pega Platform
Rating: 8
Author: John Silva, MBA

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Pega Platform to create a unified decision hub to centralize all marketing decisions to trigger all campaigns and channel interactions. We are also currently replacing our legacy CRM with Pega CRM. Our goal is to eliminate silos to provide a unified customer engagement platform so our business interacts with customers in a relevant and contextualized fashion.

Pros and Cons

Adaptive analytics - Pega platform allows you to feed data from all your interactions into their interaction history so it learns from past behavior and it starts predicting the best course of action.
Pega BPM - Business process management engine allows you to specify various business rules on a WYSIWYG way so you can visually understand all the process flow.
Pega provides a robust list of use cases on their website where you can learn how other companies implemented the platform and the pitfalls they overcame. Very helpful to also attend their user conference, PegaWorld.

Pega is a very robust platform but it requires lots of technical help to set it up. It would be helpful if Pega created business templates with best practices to follow, based on all their industry experience.
Pega academy is a great resource but only available for clients. I wish this resource was available for those on the evaluation phase so they can learn more about what next-best-action marketing is.
Pega is a low-code platform which doesn't excite most of the developers as they normally love to develop in new and exciting languages. I wish Pega helped facilitate the transition for developers to low code platform. It's a culture change not always easy to accomplish.

Return on Investment

Cost reduction in campaigns - We don't send everything to everyone anymore. We are way more targeted which helps save money on advertising costs.
More visibility on what's working and what's not, giving us better analytics.
We are starting to create a data-driven culture when it comes to the decision process for marketing campaigns.

Alternatives Considered

Marketo, HubSpot and Infusionsoft by Keap

Pega was by far the best one on leveraging AI and BPM to drive 1-1 personalization. Pega Next-Best-Action capabilities were definitely what made us choose them among the competition. Moreover, Pega has a robust community of users that made us feel we were making the right decision. If you look at their website you'll see all the companies using Pega (Verizon, Ford, GM, Sprint, American Express, etc).

Support Rating

Pega is a great platform but you must be careful to choose an implementation partner that works well with your company culture. Our first implementation partner was not a good fit and we struggled through the first round of deployment until we find two other partners (one for Marketing and another for CRM) who truly understood and worked well with our company.

Key Insights

Do you think Pega Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Pega Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Pega Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Pega Platform go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Pega Platform again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM), Workfront, Campaign Monitor

Likelihood to Recommend

Pega may be very helpful if your company wants to move beyond just marketing automation and into integrating marketing with all internal processes. In our company we see marketing as more than just branding and advertising, but really as a way to facilitate great customer experiences. Pega works well if you share this vision. If you're only looking for a platform to run your advertising and campaigns than Pega may be too much for you.

Great Robust Platform to Implement 1-on-1 Marketing

Overall Satisfaction with Pega Platform