Pega Platform Reviews

The solution offers business process modeling when it comes to processing your models or maybe your workflows. 

Every company will have a process where it goes from case initiation to different stages based on the business need or business requirement. Pega helps get processes routed to different or next stages depending on the business rules and based on where it needs to be routed. 

Out of the box, Pega provides processes where the assignment will be picked based on some criteria or many other attributes. It's purely based on your business needs. It ensures the process is routed through the correct criteria from start to end and helps manage the entire flow, the process, and everything.

The solution offers many use cases. 

The case management is great. 

Pega provides a lot of advanced smart shapes wherein you can just create a case for using the smart case itself. You can integrate or maybe add any integration points you need there. 

A lot of Pega is out-of-the-box. You can use it as is or configure it in just one click.

The UI part needs improvement. 

Some integrations can make it unstable. They need to strengthen the integration aspect and make the process more seamless. 

It would be nice if Pega provided suggestions while users were on it. It already gives you some warnings, however, in relation to specific rules, it would be ideal if Pega could provide suggestions to help users make improvements here or there.

I've used the solution in almost every project I've worked on. 

We have hundreds of people using the solution in our company. 

The scalability is good in general. I would rate the ability to scale eight out of ten. 

Technical support has been good overall. 

Positive

I worked on a Vis ID tool and a BPM tool. It was for a short span of time. Pega was far better than that.

While it is not too complex to set up, you do need to understand the solution and know the rules. 

We have people in place just to set up the pipeline and everything. The Pega team has to work with the system team to set up everything and maybe one or two people are involved over there. From the core setup perspective, it's the role of a developer who has to do it. There's typically a lead and two or three developers that handle the setup and validate things once deployed. 

We did have some help from Pega during the initial implementation. Mostly, we handled the setup in-house. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using the solution. 

The pricing is quite good in general. I'd rate it nine out of ten in terms of affordability.

We've deployed the solution both on-premises and on the cloud.

It's a pretty good tool. If you're using it as an adjusted rules engine, Pega gives you the flexibility to integrate with different applications seamlessly. You can give the responses back as well. It has scalability. It makes it easy to maintain rules and you can delegate things seamlessly from Pega when you're doing that. 

I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

It's built on the base core product.

Pega provides a lot of out-of-the-box capabilities in terms of rules. You need not write anything. If there is anything that's specific to your company's need, then you'll go ahead and do a "save as" and work on those activities. That said, PegaRULES already provides most of the out-of-the-box activity for sending emails, sending correspondences, or most of the items that you do on general web applications.

Pega helps speed up and create rules around sending in correspondence as transmittal things, for example, PDFs, et cetera Pega gave us a lot of out-of-the-box rules we could just apply. It already converts from bytes to streams and PDFs to any other format, and it generates and gives reports to users. You need not worry about what Pega does inside, the back end. Everything is handled and you just benefit from the work it does behind the scenes. 

The rules Pega provides for almost all the areas are great. Pega provides a lot of flexibility or out-of-the-box rules. You do not need to write your own code. It's a low-code solution which makes it very easy to use. 

The setup process is pretty simple. 

It's not too expensive.

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale.

Technical support is helpful. 

The UI needs improvement. 

Some integrations can be a bit complex during implementation. 

Other than that, we have not come across any missing features. It's been very good across the board. 

I've been using the solution for nine years now. 

The stability is decent. It's reliable. I'd rate it eight out of ten overall. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is good. I'd rate it eight out of ten overall. 

Technical support has been quite good overall. We are happy with the level of support we receive.

Positive

We previously used a VPN tool before. This solution is far better. 

The solution is fairly straightforward to set up. It's not overly complex. That said, some of the integration is a little complex. Apart from that, everything looks good.

It doesn't take too many people to deploy the solution. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using the product. 

The pricing is very reasonable. I'd rate it none out of ten in terms of affordability. It's not overly expensive. 

We have the solution deployed both on-premises and on the cloud. 

If anyone is checking out Pega or maybe trying to use the tool, I would say just go ahead and do it. It's a pretty good tool in the market, and users can easily deploy it to try it out.

I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

The solution is used in banking, telecoms, and in insurance.

In certain circumstances, it can be fairly straightforward to execute and deploy new modifications.

The usability of the solution for developers is sometimes difficult to work with because instead of fixing the existing bugs in the previous version, there is always a rush to push out a new version leaving the bugs in the old versions unresolved. I would like the bugs to be fixed before moving on to a new version.

Upgrading versions is a challenge and expensive. PegaRULES should try to spend more time on developing the newest versions in such a way the upgrade could be easier, or in a way that clients don't need to upgrade every year to a new version or every couple of years in order to plan expenses and complicated upgrades.

The UI needs reworking. PegaRULES has added new features to the UI, but I'm not sure it's the right direction.

I have been using the solution for over ten years.                                                                                        

I give the stability a five out of ten. The solution is not the most stable solution available.

I rate the scalability of the solution a five out of ten, taking into account the requirements, user base, licensing, and hardware constraints that could potentially limit scalability.

The technical support is responsive, but sometimes negotiation is necessary to get the materials needed to address simple bugs. When working on a complex project sometimes patches can be found and the response is usually helpful. Often they'll come back with a fix and point to where the problem lies, however, there have been occasions where upgrading to the next version is the only solution, regardless of whether it is feasible for the client or even possible.

Neutral

The initial setup is challenging. I give the initial setup a three out of ten.

Some clients work with older versions and eventually choose to upgrade, which can take anywhere from five to ten years. This upgrade process is very expensive; although I haven't been on the sales team responsible for the pricing, I know it costs millions of dollars.

I give the price a five out of ten.

I give the solution a five out of ten.

We have around 20 people using the solution in our organization.

PegaRULES approach is unique; its own hierarchy and structure of applications are distinct from most other similar tools; which are more object-oriented and adhere to traditional methods.

We are using Pega BPM for all the major domains, insurance, banking, FMCG, and telecom.

The most valuable features of Pega BPM are low code, no code, functionality, and easy development.

Pega BPM can improve product management, case management, omnichannel, CDH, and the customer data hub. All the major domains can improve. Additionally, more AI functionality and proper integrations with Pega RPA would be helpful.

I have been using Pega BPM for approximately four years.

I rate the stability of Pega BPM a nine out of ten.

We have approximately 2,000 users using this solution.

I rate the scalability of Pega BPM a nine out of ten.

I have contacted the support from Pega BPM.

I rate Pega BPM an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have previously used OutSystems.

Both OutSystems and Pega BPM are Java-based applications with similar implementation methods. However, Pega BPM has a more integrated digital transformation solution and includes tools for RPA, while OutSystems does not have a specific focus on RPA. Pega BPM has more solutions geared toward digital transformations.

The initial setup of Pega BPM can be complex if the implementer does not have Java knowledge.

The price of Pega BPM is in the middle range compared to other solutions.

I rate the price of Pega BPM a five out of ten.

We have 30 people for the maintenance of the solution.

I rate Pega BPM n eight out of ten.

Pega BPM is a business process management tool, and a use case for it is case management. There's a problem statement; for example, for bank support, where you need to work on customer onboarding, you'll find customer details verified by a bank authority. Once the detail is verified, the customer will be onboarded. Pega BPM will handle the three steps or stages. You have to create a case where onboarding will be one stage, verification another stage, and then customer registration as another stage, and Pega BPM takes care of the stages or process model.

Pega BPM is very user-friendly, and business people won't have to do a lot of configurations on it. The Pega team also came up with App Studio.

With every release of Pega BPM, new features and modifications emerge, enabling business people to do many things, which helps improve the organization.

The most valuable feature of Pega BPM is step-by-step voice guidance that converts your problem statement into different diagrams and then implements the process.

Pega BPM is a technology, not merely a tool, so it has different industry frameworks. It's customized for various industries, such as financial, insurance, healthcare, etc.

Other valuable features of Pega BPM include AI, decisioning, and robotics. It also has a more intuitive UI. Clients weren't as happy with the UI in the past, but that has now improved.

I also like that Pega BPM has a UI that can be integrated with JavaScript-based, such as React or Vue.

An area for improvement in Pega BPM is security. It's secure, but it still has a lot of vulnerabilities, though Pega takes care of security through upgrades and different patch versions released from time to time.

Pega BPM is robust, but it still needs some improvement performance-wise.

I've been using Pega BPM for twelve years.

There shouldn't be any issues with Pega BPM stability-wise as it's the number one BPM tool in the market, and it's been in the market for forty years. It's pretty stable, though when there's a new version released, sometimes, there's an issue, and the Pega BPM team quickly resolves that.

Pega BPM is scalable. You have horizontal and vertical scalability. One type of scalability is just adding servers. Pega BPM is Java-based and runs on JMS, so you can add different servers. You can add other nodes, or in one node, you can have different JMS, so in this way, you can increase the processing power easily.

Another way to scale is classifying nodes, so based on the job, you can run the nodes and also run the different functionalities of Pega BPM, which is another process for scaling it up.

Scaling Pega BPM isn't challenging because it's running on the cloud, so you can always add and subtract nodes as needed. If your Pega BPM is on-premise, you can scale it horizontally or vertically. It supports both horizontal and vertical expansions.

I've contacted the Pega BPM technical support team many times because of issues I found in the tool that only the Pega core team can handle. I create a service request, then a person from the Pega BPM technical support team will be assigned to the case, then I'll work with that person.

It's normal in a day to experience an issue, need modification, or get help from Pega support. The support process is pretty streamlined. You have to go to the Pega website, create a service request, and immediately someone will be assigned to your ticket, and he will get in touch with you. Quickly, you can get into a call with support and talk to him, so technical support isn't an issue.

My  Pega BPM technical support rating is seven out of ten because you don't get to talk to an expert on the first call. If your issue isn't resolved in the first call, then that's the only time you'll get an expert. Otherwise, Pega's support is good.

Neutral

Pega BPM is the number one tool in the market, so the only reason a client switches over to another BPM tool, such as Appian and IBM, is purely because of finances and nothing else. Functionality-wise and feature-wise, other BPM solutions aren't at the same level, not even close to Pega BPM.

In my fifteen or sixteen years in the software industry, I've never seen a client move to another solution because Pega BPM isn't a good tool. Clients always switch from Pega BPM to another tool because of the cost.

Pega BPM is easy to set up, particularly its cloud version, because Pega will help you do all the setup. Pega also provides a JAR file that you can import to your database, and then once the connection is established, you can start using Pega BPM, so the setup is easy.

Infrastructure setup is different when you do it on-premises. Setting up Pega BPM on the cloud is easier.

There's ROI from Pega BPM because it expedites time to market. You can also complete your work based on a Java tool faster when you use Pega BPM within three months, for example, rather than one year.

Businesses get ROI from Pega BPM, which is why many financial institutions use it, for example, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo; you name it.

The costing model for Pega BPM is different. One is a license that you can pay yearly. Another licensing model for Pega BPM is based on the number of cases you create in production in a year. Costing based on use cases is also available for Pega BPM. I don't have information on its exact pricing or costs, though.

I handle different projects that use Pega BPM. Some use version 8.5, while others use 8.7. I also have some using version 8.8 of Pega BPM.

Pega BPM is deployed differently for different projects. Some on the public cloud and Pega Cloud on AWS. Some deployed Pega BPM on-premises, while others deployed the solution on a private cloud. All three versions of infrastructure can be used for Pega BPM.

My organization is a pure Pega organization, so out of one thousand people, at least six hundred people within my organization work on Pega BPM, but my organization is a service organization with different clients. It's an elite partner of Pega, and only ten elite Pega partners exist worldwide.

My rating for Pega BPM is eight out of ten.

Application development is very rapid. A lot of code gets reused while building the applications, which is something we highly appreciate. 

People are also very happy with the robotic process automation and the dashboards. They are very good.

Its implementation in the public sector was a bit complex. 

In terms of features, I have not come across any limitations in the last four or five years. I'm on the sales side. I work with customers, and my role involves reading a customer's mind and providing the best solution so that all pain areas are addressed. Pega has got very good features and tools. I didn't come across any limitation where a customer wanted something, and we were not able to provide that. Generally, whatever a customer demands, we are able to meet that demand. 

We have been using Pega since 2017 or 2018. It has been about four or five years.

Its stability is good.

I have not come across any scalability issues. The government customer has perpetual licenses. We are very populous in nature, and people come from the web as well from the mobile. They are able to process all those requests. I've not come across any issues.

Their support has been excellent because the person who heads the Pega practice is very senior. He was the sixth employee of Pega in the UK. He has an excellent relationship with the CEO, Mark Allison. Mark has been to our development centers because we have been expanding in the last three or four years. Our focus is banks. So, he has been visiting us. 

As an organization also, there has been tremendous support from Pega. We are a small but growing organization. We are not very big, but we are competing with the big brothers in the industry who have been there for over decades.

The finance part that people were doing was not too difficult. It was straightforward. However, when we implemented it in the public sector, it was a bit complex because of the disparities in the data structures and the maturity of the customer. They had different ERPs. So, it was a bit tough, but they appreciated it. We are a Commonwealth country. So, whatever works in India would work in any Commonwealth country. We have an education department here, and there are two categories: higher education and technical education. Based on merit and a lot of other parameters, such as caste, people have to be given subsidies, grants, and aid, which change with the political system. A new leader can announce that he wants to give laptops to all standard 12 students who have scored 90% marks. So, all such rules can be built very quickly. The SLA is for about five working days. We have to complete a new request in five working days. Most of the customers here want parallel development. Normally, we have six to eight teams working. Generally, we give a new Pega solution in about 100 days. After a solution is rolled out, we have a separate team with about 10 people, and they cater to 10 and 15 customers.

There is a team that looks into its cost. When it comes to licenses, we don't get involved with selling the licenses. We insist that Pega sells the licenses directly to the customer. This is the model we work with. We make money only through our implementation.

The licensing is on a yearly basis. Because of our special relationship, all the training certifications are free of cost. All our employees can do Pega certifications at zero cost. It is all on Pega.

We have a small team based out of London, UK. We have Pega and Appian. We don't have anything else. It is a very small team, and we only cater to financial institutions. We are trying to acquire a few Pega customers in the Middle East from the UK.

I am based out of India, Bangalore, and in India, Pega is just coming in. There are not many installations in the government as well as enterprise sectors. There is a private sector bank that is trying to move to BPM. They have not yet made a decision about what they want to procure, but they have been talking to Appian and Pega teams.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. We have had a beautiful experience with them.

Our customers range from banking to insurance to telco. In banking, customers use Pega for marketing, sales management, and onboarding processes as in loan onboarding or customer onboarding. They also use it for customer service, for example, when a customer calls up the bank to handle a payment inquiry or a problem. Pega also handles collections. We also deal with many of the operational processes inside the banks. 

In insurance, we work with Pega on property, casualty, and health. In insurance, we have built underwriting systems, and systems to manage attack claims, as well as the sales and customer management service part.

When it comes to telcos, it's primarily in the marketing area. Besides that, we have customers in the government sector. So, in government sectors, it is primarily to automate many of the citizen services, as well as to automate many other online operations.

Pega has traditionally been very good in inclusion automation, which primarily deals with case management, and following the automation along any other processes.

Pega has a capability called the Pega series, which is a customer lesson hub. With it, you can offer or create a business conversation with the customer. For example, if a customer comes onto a bank's website and they're searching for a loan, we have to present the right offer to the customer in milliseconds. With Pega, you can quickly understand the customer and therefore be able to present the right, most personalized offer to them.

Many customers use Pega for customer service also. It's quite useful for that.

It is stable.

We find the product to be scalable. 

Customers expect more out-of-the-box solutions. Right now, Pega is a platform on which you can build anything; as a platform, it's very powerful. However, what customers also expect is a quick turnaround. That is one area where they can improve. If they could create more business-friendly, customer-friendly solutions in the areas where customers traditionally use Pega, that would be helpful. That way, the same solution can solve similar problems for other customers, and it is more plug-and-play.

They are building in process mining. They acquired a technology company in Brazil, so they're bringing process mining over into the product. Process mining will help the customers to do continuous business implementations since they will find challenges to help adjust processes. That is one thing that we're looking forward to. 

We've been a Pega partner for seven years. 

From a stability point of view, Pega is increasingly used in markets like Southeast Asia, where the volumes are very high. From that perspective, it's able to handle large volumes. Also, as a modern SaaS technology, it is compliant with all the standards which are required. It is very compliant and very stable.

When it comes to using software in a low-volume market and a few of the other smaller markets, scalability is not much of a factor. When it comes to implementation in countries in Southeast Asia like Vietnam or Indonesia, then the volumes are very high, and we have seen Pega stand up to those challenges. It is scalable.

Technical support on Pega has improved in recent days with the advent of the cloud. If there is any kind of improvements that are required, Pega manages that.

For anything where any of the customers require advanced support from Pega, the support team is always available. They have specialized teams now to basically provide the exact support that is needed. Earlier, it used to be one team. Now, most specialized teams are available on Pega to provide the required support based on the need.

The initial setup is very straightforward, although if it is a customer who is new, they might find it challenging. If they involve the right system integrator, then along with the right system integrator, I don't see a challenge there.

Pega is also available on the cloud as well as on-prem. It is one of the few types of software which is available both on-prem and on the cloud. With the cloud solution, starting up is pretty easy. A successful setup is basically a combination of using the right partner and going onto the cloud to reduce the initial friction to onboard Pega.

From a staff point of view, for a standard application, it requires 10 to 12 resources, and they would involve people who are lead architects and developers.

It would require business analysts or someone who can work with the business to understand and visualize the solution.

It requires one engagement lead to work with the customer and manage the entire project and one or two clusters. With a team of 10 people, we have seen we can deliver end-to-end applications on Pega quite easily.

When it comes to maintenance on production, it requires a team of either two or three based on the size of the application.

We have witnessed an ROI. 

It varies based on the business case of the customer. For traditional operational processes where either the operation process is not automated - or even if is - it can create time-saving scenarios. 

In the scenarios where Pega is used in the market capabilities where it's more for offer generation or to upsell and cross-sell to the customers, we have seen an uptick in the revenue as Pega did show a conversion-based increase in outcomes.

When it comes to other scenarios, like based on the business context, if it is a customer's service application, that's where we have seen Pega help improve the average call handling. It has the capability of RPA. Therefore, during the call with the customer, if you have to fit information from other systems and quickly provide all the information in a very short time in front of the call center representative. It has helped reduce the average call handling time and the number of FTS required to manage customer service.

Therefore, it has had an impact on customer satisfaction, as well as reducing the overall cost related to servicing customers.

We are one of the largest Pega partners.

They have a primary product: case management, clean automation, and customer engagement. Various customers will be in various versions of Pega, and we deal with all versions.

If customers require an enterprise-wide implementation, they should be aware that there are requirements that are specific to the various lines of business. If they require such complexity to be addressed in a very specialized way, Pega can work well.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

It is just for business rules. An example would be that you want to apply for a credit card limit, and if the credit limit amount is less than a certain value, we won't necessarily do a real-time check. We do basically auto adjudication. So, the rules can be used as part of the flow.

They're pretty easy to create, and they're pretty easy to deploy. 

In theory, business rules tend to be something that business users can use. What I mean by that is that I don't know whether it always works out that well because the problem in banking specifically is that you need auditing and you need some kind of control. So, even if you're doing rules, there has to be an approval process. You can do all that in Pega, but it is not exactly everything that the vendor says it is. I've spent some hands-on time with the platform, and you can do those things, and it is all low code, but is it as easy as they make it sound? No. That's my two cents. For example, if I want to do something, there is no way to switch from low code. I just want to do a simple If-Then-Else rule, but I have to go through their low-code tool and do dragging and dropping. I'm a development person, and in my opinion, even some business users could do this easier. There is no way to go back and forth to an editor where I can just type in an If-Then-Else rule, which would be much faster than drawing in their low-code editor. They don't support that. They lead you too much. It depends on your level of expertise, but in some cases, it is just not that easy to use.

I don't like their whole deployment pipeline. It is very closed in nature. You have to use their pipeline to push things out to production. It is a turnkey solution, and I'm not a big fan of that. That was one of the things that we liked better about Salesforce. With Salesforce, we could use our own deployment tools or we could use a third-party deployment tool. Pega is a pretty closed system. It is closed in the sense that the deployment pipeline and some of the things that you do go through their tool. They don't integrate with GitHub, Azure DevOps, and so forth, which are really effective for versioning. I just don't like that.

It works, and it is effective.

At a previous organization, there were a couple of thousand users executing PegaRULES, and there were 30 to 50 users creating and modifying rules.

They're decent. A big organization or a big bank is going to want to pay for the premium tech support. If you don't, then you got to be willing to wait. They're no different than any other enterprise solution. Their support, as an example, is better than MuleSoft because we had rather big challenges with MuleSoft support, but Pega was better.

We also have an IBM rules management solution, and we also have Appian, but the situation is that we're having challenges getting the productivity out of them.

I've also used FICO Blaze rules, but that was not here. It was at a previous job.

It took a while to onboard.

They're very cagey in giving out prices, and it is very difficult to find out the real price any organization is going to get. It is almost never their list price, if you can find it, and there are a lot of factors that go into the whole pricing. 

Their SaaS deployment model, which was the way we were going at a previous organization, had some benefits over Salesforce, but the concern was the price they were going to charge depending on the number of rules or something like that. We were afraid that the cost was going to blow us out of the water. We didn't choose it. We went with Salesforce.

Pega can be effective, but it is not trivial to get it set up, get it deployed, and get people to know it. That's not unlike some of the other big enterprise solutions. Even for Salesforce, as an example, you're going to need to staff appropriately. Pega isn't one of those solutions that you can basically put in an ecosystem and expect three or four people to roll out successfully. I just don't think that's the case. You're going to have a challenge finding people who already know it.

When we were doing the RFQ, there were some other organizations we talked to, and they were very successful, but now, they had quite a large installation base. I know at one of the organizations when they installed Pega, and this was circa 2018, they had a lot of road bumps. They had to get Pega consultants in. Maybe they had SI in because I was indirectly working with it with consumer lending, and it was one of the many factors that they were late and over budget for delivery. That's the challenge with these big platforms. For a simple point-click solution, they can be quick to get going, but most organizations, especially banks, don't have something simple. You've to integrate with a bunch of APIs. You have to do testing, and you got to do the deployment, etc. So, you need to create a center of excellence, and I hate that term, at least to get started until you get some organizational-wide talent.

In terms of maintenance, if you've got it on-premise, you're going to need two or three admins to work with your infrastructure team to stay on top, but it isn't something they're going to do full-time all the time. SaaS offering has a lot of advantages because it gets you out of that whole deployment perspective. To most companies, I would recommend seriously looking at the SaaS version and not getting involved with on-premise.

I'd rate it a seven out of ten.