Published on the 16/09/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Business software supplier Pegasystems is riding the coattails of market demand for analytics, making its customer decision hub an integral part of its software suite rather than an optional bolt on…
Previously available as a standalone option Pegasystems has decided to offer its business analytics service as a package deal with its salesforce automation, marketing and CRM solutions.Luke McCormack, Pegasystems’ APAC VP , was coy about the cost of the portmanteau solution, but eventually acknowledged it would lead to some price rises for the applications software, but stressed the added value that would be available to users.
He offered the example of call centre deployments. “The decision hub will detect patterns, in a telco it may detect the risk of churn” and then produce a plan of action to allow a call centre operator to offer special deals or a discount to help keep a customer.
Demand for software to support business process management is on the rise according to Gartner which in June forecast a 4.4 percent increase in demand, taking the global market to $US2.7 billion.
The analyst pointed to the emergence of what it refers to as intelligent business process management solutions from the likes of Pegasystems, Appian, IBM, Oracle and Tibco.
Pegasystems also believes that its integrated decision hub will allow it to compete more effectively in certain categories – for example pitting it harder against Salesforce in CRM. Unlike Salesforce however, which is only available as a cloud solution, Pegasystems can be used on premise or as Software as a Service in which case it is served up from an instance of the Amazon Web Services cloud.
McCormack acknowledged that implementing solutions which used the decision hub wasn’t a case of shrinkwrap deployment, saying that it might typically take 3-6 months to build up the body of data and algorithms needed to provide decision support for business processes, though noted that the company had experience in a series of industry verticals that could help speed the process. He said that a large financial institution in Australia was currently deploying the system, and expected to go live in four months.
Pegasystems has about 35 customers in Australia – mainly at the large enterprise end of the market – including ANZ, Study Group, ME Bank, Transport NSW and AIG. McCormack said that he hoped the integration of the decision hub would help Pegasystems make inroads with some smaller enterprises as well.
