The workflows are the most valuable features, particularly for us, because we were attempting to automate processes by utilizing workflows to provide a hands-off comparison between the bot and the human.
Also, the out-of-the-box reporting, visibility, and dashboards are extremely useful.
There was a lot of room for improvement on the RPA front because the product was still in its journey for more than one year. The product was still in its early stages of development. We spoke with the Pega team and provided our feedback.
On the BPM front, I believe it is pretty standard and an industry leader.
We have experienced a few technical challenges, particularly triggering the workflow through file drops and accessing files. Those difficulties are more of a cloud versus on-premises issue because everything was on the cloud, and they were unable to retrieve files from on-premises folders. As a result, we had to resort to workarounds.
I believe they could work on more integration of their RPA and BPM so that it becomes seamless for anyone, and then it becomes easier for a human versus machine interaction using the same BPM. They said at the time that it's on their roadmap and should be coming soon if it hasn't already. But those are the things that, in my opinion, would make a better BPM, where it would function as an enterprise orchestration layer, collaborating with humans and bots in the same way and delivering the business process.
We completed a couple of BPM projects using Pega BPM.
I have been working with Pega BPM on and off for the last two years, and I have completed two BPM implementations in the last three.
It's a scalable product. There are no challenges with the scalability of Pega BPM.
Technical support was good. Especially for us, their product team was with us, as was their support team, and all of these workarounds were only possible with their assistance.
I worked on Newgen BPM two years ago.
We work mostly with BPM but we did a PoC on RPA. The RPA was unable to work.
The initial setup is simple because it is in the cloud. We haven't spent much time setting it up, it was up and running for a few weeks.
In terms of business flows, our implementations were not overly complex. We were able to launch it in an Agile mode, and we were able to deliver, in two or three sprints spanning four months. Every four to five weeks, we were able to release small flows to enable certain business functionality.
Pricing is a little on the high side. One of the challenges where a certain lower level of cases was unable to justify the cost. If your process is not that complex, and it is very simple, then the implementation timeline is obviously short, but licensing becomes a little costly, and it sometimes does not cross the business use case.
The benefits you receive are not worth the price.
They should have a solid foundation of business processes in place before embarking on this journey. If the case is small or the process is not complex, they should use a smaller and simpler BPMS. The primary reason is the cost. However, if they are considering it at the enterprise level or for a more complicated process, Pega is, in my opinion, the best option.
I would rate Pega BPM an eight out of ten.