Pega addresses accelerating business complexity

As this year’s virtual edition of PegaWorld iNspire kicks off, the CRM and BPM platform released a report on challenges created by the “complex intersection of technology and the modern workforce” arising from digital transformation.

In a press briefing before PegaWorld, CEO Alan Trefler described this complexity as “wrenching.” He identified three major business shifts that are generating complexity, against the socio-political backdrop of an “unforgiving and sometimes cruel environment.”

1. A move from reacting to customer behavior to proactively anticipating customer needs.
2. A broad adoption of “as-a-Service” business models.
3. The adoption of platform architectures that will operate across business silos.

The report’s main findings. The main takeaway is that almost three-quarters of workers are experiencing heightened complexity in their roles as customer demands increase. The complexity manifests as a feeling of being overloaded with information, systems, processes and new technologies. Among specific challenges were:

• Managing information (reported by 90%).
• Coping with internal processes and bureaucracy (89%).
• Managing projects, teams and people (88%).
• Keeping pace with change (87%).
• Managing scarce resources (86%).

A minority, but a substantial one (35%), thought that hybrid working arrangements added to complexity, while over 60% felt their company could not attract staff with the necessary tech skills.

The “Workforce Trends Report 2022” was based on a survey of 4,000 employees in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

PegaWorld iNspire announcements. During the virtual event, Pega will announce an acquisition and a strategic partnership with Google.

• Pega has acquired Everflow, a Brazilian process mining software company. Process mining detects and fixes inefficiencies in business processes. These capabilities will integrate with Pega’s AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation solutions allowing problems to be detected and addressed across the enterprise.
• Reflecting its cloud choice approach, Pega will announce a strategic partnership with Google Cloud, making Pega cloud applications available on Google Cloud as a fully hosted offering. Beginning with Pega Platform in the Americas, Pega applications will become available on Google Cloud over the next 18 to 24 months.

Why we care. The complexity of the contemporary work environment is something every one of us is experiencing. It is ironic, as Trefler noted in his briefing, that technologies aimed at making work easier are proliferating at a rate that can overwhelm us. A further irony is that Pega’s approach to resolving that complexity can itself seem complex.

It’s not necessarily so in practice, as part of Pega’s offering is that its software is low code. Process mining, workflow automation, and decisioning by AI may seem futuristic. But if it makes the route from nine to five a little easier to navigate, maybe it’s worth it.

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About The Author

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.