Pega Platform Reviews

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.

The solution is basically a quoting application. When insurance brokers or internal users have to call or do insurance quotes for commercial insurance, we use Pega. The insurance we cover is for outdoor coverage and for a casualty to property, as well as casualty insurance.

The solution's case management is its most valuable aspect. 

It's basically an open architecture based software, which means the main aim of the software is to provide a low-code application development environment. It has several authoring tools on the UI flow and makes sure that you can put in a lot of gadgets and create the screen very quickly using those gadgets.

Right now, it has a pretty good feature set. It has case management and BPM workflow as well as robotic automation. It has decisioning. It has chat and virtual assistant support, and we just implement it on the cloud, therefore it's a pretty robust feature set.

They use something called a unique model-based architecture. During development, where the database and the UI, everything comes from one single piece of architecture. Due to that sometimes the enterprise architecture teams do not like it due to the fact that it forces them to use just one piece of architecture. If these could be more modularized, then it can be easily deployable in different kinds of scenarios in organizations, it would be much better.

However, they are kind of tightly coupled and it's difficult to separate everything out. Still, I would say it is an improvement to consider for the future. Id they could decouple the various components so that it gives flexibility to enterprise architects to deploy what is most needed as part of their enterprise architecture strategy, rather than getting kind of, looking at the only way the product handles, it would be a stronger product.

They are currently spending some time on improving the product with respect to machine learning, especially related to robotic automation. They probably could be a little more adept on that area would help.

It's very difficult to change many things unless somebody puts in the time to figure everything out. However, Pega could learn from all the customer service calls they get and categorize them in order to do an automatic form-based or customer service based response. If they could set it up to everything automatically, then that would save a lot of time and headaches for companies and help them troubleshoot and work through issues faster.

We've been using the solution for almost ten years. We haven't used in the last 12 months too much, however.

We have found a few issues on the solution and we work closely with technical support to help fix them. While it is largely stable, we do find we need to keep up with problems and work closely with Pega directly to address and fix them when they arise.

In terms of scalability, provided you throw hardware at it and you do a proper production implementation approach and alignment strategy, it's scalable. 

You can go up to 2000 to 3000 users pretty easily. It's just that you need to throw a lot of hardware at it and make sure that you manage and create the web servers required. You need to create various pieces such as database servers and things like that, to make sure that you get the performance you need for those 2000, 3000 users.

The solution is being used continuously. I'm not sure about the increase in the usage, but at least it's serving the purpose as needed for the brokers.

It's a complex piece of software. For that reason, we did find some issues and I was kind of instrumental in working with Pega on their global support model. We had weekly calls to review. They have a process to track issues that are unique. Sometimes it's handled by their support network, and sometimes the issue is taken up to be dealt with by working on the next version. For us, triage calls are made every week.

The initial setup is never straightforward. It's always complex. Organizations deploying the solution will need a Pega admin and experts. It's not like anybody can just walk in and install it onto a PC. It needs a lot more performance concentrations and much more integration considerations. Therefore, it's a little complex.

In terms of deployment times, on-premise, it takes a little more time, and I would say it would take maybe about a month. However, now, cloud implementations are pretty quick and go much faster.

In terms of maintenance, we do need someone from the company to help us manage the solution.

We did solicit outside assistance for the implementation. We actually used both the Pega professional services in the beginning for a short time and then a subsequent implementation was done by an integrator.

There are multiple models. They have enterprise licenses for each server, for the product version. If you're doing it on-premise they also have per user basis on their cloud. 

It depends on what your specific need is. Those vary from customer to customer, depending on the number of users and the volume of business and things like that. There's no, set price, or a specific quote and everybody just follows it. It's more they work out the enterprise licensing agreements or per user basis with respect to each client.

I joined the company when those decisions were already made. I wasn't part of that decision. However, in a lot of places where I've consulted as a digital transformation consultant, we did definitely compare Pega with competition such as Appian and other BPM, and even Salesforce and other workflow systems as well.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with Pega.

Pega BPM is definitely one of the topmost BPM packages out there. It hits all the right notes for a containerized implementation. The only thing you need to be careful is that you definitely need experts to help you along the way, in both the design and the requirements capture. They have an excellent requirements capture tool as well. However, if somebody needs to be trained on that, you need the help of experts, both on the software architecture as well as business architecture as well as the Pega admin. Eventually, these kinds of positions will either require a company to staff up or they will need to work with a system integrator. 

Most of the companies work with system integrators due to the fact that Pega professional services are definitely very expensive. Organizations will work with a company life Cognizant or Accenture or others to really help them out along the way.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We have integrated a tool with Pega. It is used for project management. We use it for customer process management, insurance, and licenses.

The frameworks are built over the core Pega platform. All the codes are already built. A user can directly use the framework according to their needs. All the corresponding data models and processes already built in the framework can be reused with our custom layer. The tool reduces our costs. It is faster to implement.

The solution has everything. It is model-driven. It generates its own code. It has a rules engine. Previously, Pega had its own UI. Now, we have Constellation DX API. It helps us have any user interface we need, like Angular or React. API helps create work objects in the workflow.

The licensing cost is very high.

I have been using the solution since 2004.

As long as we have a license, we get support. The support is good. We must have a contract with the vendor.

Positive

The administrators deployed the tool in my organization. It took one to two hours. It doesn’t take much time to deploy tools in the cloud.

There are different licensing models.

We integrate the solution with different business tools. The integration is very straightforward. We have custom wizards to take care of the integration. If everything is set right, integration does not take much time. I recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use the solution basically to run any custom process that the client wants to have, or needs to run their business on. For example, the approval process or any kind of business process that can be run using the Pega Platform.

It's low code. That is very useful. A business value architect will have zero coding to do, and he can create a business flow on top of that. The technical developer can handle further things. 

Apart from that, the kind of APIs that they support is also very nice. It also has a lot of APIs out of the box. It can directly connect to Fitbit, it can directly connect to Google Maps, et cetera. That API exposure is also a good thing. They are very easy and very reliable to use, the APIs.

The setup was simple. 

It's a stable solution.

The solution has very helpful technical support.

It can scale pretty well.

A few things I would like them to improve include, first of all, that they don't have any open-source learning platform. To learn Pega, you need to be a partner. If someone just wants to learn Pega for the sake of learning, they won't be able to do so as they don't give access to that.

I would like to have an integrated process mining capability inside Pega. It will be like an entire digital transformation thing then. You don't need two or three sources. Similar to Signavio. Signavio runs BPM, it does modeling, and it is having process mining as well. In Pega, we have modeling, we have RPA, and we have BPM, however, we don't have process mining right now.

I've been using the solution for three years.

It's quite stable. This means we haven't encountered any issues. And even if there are issues, their support is very responsive.

The product is quite scalable as it's a low-code platform. 

The solution adjusts well to different devices. They have this adaptation that if you open it on a tablet, then the screen will adjust accordingly. If you open it on a PC, the screen adjusts it accordingly in Pega. Android as well.

There are more than 25,000 people on the solution.

We've worked with technical support in the past. Whenever there's downtime or whenever something is not working, we need to get in touch with the Pega technical team.

Neutral

I'm also aware of Appian. Even if Pega says that it's a low-code platform, when I compare it to Appian, Appian is more low code when compared to Pega.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. 

You need to pay for licensing. It was quite expensive. I'd rate it four and a half out of five in terms of how expensive it is. 

My organization is a service provider for Pega. We're implementation partners. If we use it completely depends on what the client wants and needs.

If you are using it for the first time, you probably should have a consulted implementation partner as well. That said, it is easy to use. It shouldn't be a problem. It's very flexible.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We generally don't encounter any issues as far as Pega is concerned. Whenever there's an issue, there's a quick resolution. 

In the Middle East, ministries such as the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Municipalities, are using Pega Platform as a front-end application for their citizens.

Pega Platform is excellent for enterprise-level solutions with integrations to entire systems, including case management, service orchestration, CRM, decision-making capabilities, digital process automation, and AI-driven functionalities. It allows for a unified platform with features like case management, BPM, service orchestration, low-code development, digital process automation, CRM, and decision-making, all integrated into a single platform.

In the Middle East and Africa region, Pega was not very strong from the user experience standpoint. To address this, Pega introduced Constellation, which allows a user to build a more engaging visual experience.

I have been working with Pega Platform for over a decade now.

From the platform standpoint, I haven't contacted Pega for support unless it is a product issue or a new feature issue. I never needed support from the platform standpoint, but if additional features are required, we have regular meetings with the product team for feedback.

Positive

Top banks in the world, such as the government's HMRC in the UK, see the return on investment with Pega Platform as they use it at an enterprise level.

I work with Camunda for pro-code projects and OutSystems for other requirements. Camunda is a good BPM engine, but it does not provide comprehensive features like Pega. For simple case management, alternatives like APN and Camunda were mentioned.

If you're looking for a solution at the enterprise level with comprehensive features, then Pega is suitable. However, if you only need a simple HR system or a small case management application, other tools might be more cost-effective. Pega Platform is comparable to SAP in terms of its dominance in digital process automation and business process management.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our company is the service provider for Pega BPM; we act as the IACs for three products from Pega. We recommend a product to our company's customers based on the requirement and their budget. 

If a customer is looking for a platform at the enterprise level, which comprises customer service, case management, BPM, and mobile features, our company recommends Pega BPM to them. 

When customers look for standalone applications, not at the enterprise level but a quick local platform they want to build some applications with, such as a leave management system or an attendance system, then we recommend other solutions than Pega. 

When an enterprise-level platform is required, which is Pro Code, our company recommends Comodo. If someone is looking for a case management platform to perform the BPM and native operations using native mobile apps but not the front-end processes, this is where our company will always recommend Comodo.  

The UI cannot be customized in the solution. 

I have been using Pega BPM for ten years. 

Our company is an Elite partner of Pega; there are only six to seven Elite partners of the vendor, which include TCS, Infosys, and Accenture. Thus, our company has a strong relationship with Pega, and we receive a response within an hour from the tech support team when an issue occurs. Our company's CEO was the technical director of Pega for fourteen years. 

For small and medium-scale requirements, the solution can be deployed within a week. But for large organizations the deployment time would vary depending on the requirement volume. The largest systems in Saudi Arabia are running on Pega. The solutions from the vendor handle the process of commercial registration, compliance metrics, investment management, citi management and integrations with IoT solutions. 

Pega is usually not recommended for developing small-scale applications; rather, Comodo or OutSystems can be used. Pega CRM is one of the most robust applications in the market, offering a private cloud, unlike Salesforce.

Some customers in the Middle Eastern countries, India, and other APAC countries don't want the cloud to be hosted outside their native countries. Vendors like Salesforce don't have a cloud server available in the Middle Eastern countries. Pega now offers integrated customer service, 360° customer view, and additional services as per customer needs. 

For one of our customers for Pega, their revenue escalated from 300 million a year to 600 million Saudi riyal in a quarter. There are multiple Pega licensing models, including outcome- and revenue-based licensing models. Financial institutions usually prefer Pega's revenue licensing model. 

For instance, a loan-based financial institute will have to pay X amount as the cost once they can cater one billion loans. As a thumb rule for price calculation, if you are availing a limited number of licenses for a small entity, it's going to cost you a dollar for each case or end-to-end workflow. 

From creating a Pega account to purchasing the solution, all the processes in between, including the KYC and customer role management process, are considered a single case. If there is a huge volume requirement of ten million cases in India, the same price will come down to 50 cents per case; with negotiation, it might also come down to 33 cents a case. 

Pega BPM and other solutions from the vendor are all low-code solutions. Especially in the Middle East and African markets, our company has noticed that they are more focused on front-end development; therefore, often, a customized UI is required, which cannot be implemented with Pega due to low code functionality and standard principles defined in the platform. But Pega BPM offers an integrated case flow and customer service, which contributes to the vendor becoming a world leader. 

There are AI-driven business process management features being incorporated in the solution. For instance, if you mention the vendor about your plan to develop a loan application, they build the entire case flow for you and make the application available within an extremely short span, after which the connectors and APIs need to be set up and integrated. Pega BPM is a highly advanced solution. 

At our company, we also evaluate if a customer actually needs Pega solutions before recommending it. For instance, if Pega is considered the Ferrari of the industry and the customer is willing to drive at a speed of 10 to 20 Km/h, then it's not worth the cost. For basic requirements, a customer can choose Comodo when only the BPM layer and custom UI are needed to build native mobile apps, while the workflow remains on Comodo. 

Pega is the leader in business process management solutions. Pega creates market trends across the globe. If you check Forrester or Gartner reports, Pega has always been rated as the top BPM solution provider. Other competitor companies learn from Pega and implement improvements in their products. Pega is not considered a front-end portal platform. The limitations of Pega are quite logical. The product owner of Pega mentioned that to build a low-code rapid development platform, it is mandatory to provide templates.

For example, in MS Word, you can use the numerous templates or start from a blank template. The templates in Pega are pre-defined; they cannot be customized; when starting from scratch in a solution, it won't be considered as a low-code solution. Pega needs to find a way to implement low code even with a blank template. Pega is working on a new product line called Constellation in which the aforementioned issue will probably get resolved. 

I would overall rate Pega BPM an eight out of ten. There are still some challenges with the front-end aspect of the solution, but the product is best when it comes to business processes and customer service management. 

The European and American customers of our company are more keen on the process flow rather than the application appearance at the front-end. But for customers who are focused on the front-end more than what's underneath the Pega product, it becomes very difficult to make them understand the value of Pega. I expect the vendor to implement improvements on the front-end. 

This solution is useful for business process management if you have any banking solutions or need to manage a process. Maybe a very simple example could be a loan approval process where you need to upload your documents and have them be verified by users. In other words, you have a methodical process in place that encompasses reviews. It can be anything, it might be an order that you have placed on Amazon which needs to go through another. Anything that involves a methodical process is a good fit for Pega as a product.

What I found the most valuable is the case management and the UI design capabilities. We have the ability to do any kind of integration on Pega, which is really beneficial. 

I think there is room for improvement in the low code/ no code environment that they're promoting now. That needs to be aligned a little bit more. I still feel that it is not that friendly for a person who has no experience with Pega to just go in and try to create something. It is a little bit difficult to comprehend, which can be a challenge for the developers who manage the solution because they will have a hard time getting people to use it. For example, if several business users start developing an application at the same time, bottlenecks can happen and the developer will have to go in and kill the conflict in the rules that they have created. That could be better streamlined, which means there is room for improvement there.

I have been using this solution since 2010.

I would rate the stability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate their support a five, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. There are lags in their responses.

Neutral

My impression is that the initial setup process has to be followed via documentation. It's becoming a little bit less complicated, but it is still not easy for an inexperienced user to kickstart and deploy. The deployment an hour and a half at most. It can be deployed by one person. 

I would rate this process a six, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

The pricing is a bit costly. Although it is a little bit costlier than all other tools on the market, it is more consistent. It also shortens the time to go live by quite a bit.

As far as maintaining this solution goes, how extensive it is will depend on whether or not you will be maintaining just Pega. It allows you to delegate many of the business rules to business users where they themselves can actually go and configure their rules and modify them. A user can have their own dedicated set of rules that they can go and configure. 

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Our use case for Pega BPM is BFS process management. Earlier, we were facing some challenges such as using the end numbers of applications, but now we are careful. Decision-making took too much time in the past, but now that can be done within a few hours or a few days. For example, when managing a claim, that used to take almost five days to a week. Now, that would only take two to three hours in terms of resolving issues. The processes are much faster now in Pega BPM, in particular, almost ten times faster.

The most important features of Pega BPM are case management and claims management, and soon they'll also be offering claims processing.

I also love Pega BPM in terms of performance. It's also one of the very few user-friendly solutions in the market. It may take some time to learn Pega BPM, but once you get a proper handle on it, tracking and managing processes become very easy anytime, anywhere.

Pega BPM also has very good documentation you can use to learn the solution. Pega has a community portal that has complete information and explanations, and if you're facing a challenge, you can post your challenge on the community portal and get a resolution at the same time.

Currently, there isn't any feature I want to be added in the next release of Pega BPM because Pega always adds new features that my team welcomes and looks forward to learning.

One area for improvement in the solution is the long learning curve, but after that, you'll find Pega BPM easy to use.

I've been using Pega BPM for almost four years now.

Pega BPM is a stable solution.

Pega BPM is a solution that's easy to scale.

I haven't contacted the Pega BPM technical support team yet, but when an issue arises, and I would need to contact the team, hopefully, there would be a good response and availability from them.

Pega BPM is my first BPM solution, so I have no experience with other similar solutions.

Setting up Pega BPM was very easy for the team. Deploying the solution is so much faster and takes up a lesser amount of time than other solutions. For example, if a competitor takes a month to completely deploy, Pega BPM deployment will be completed within two weeks, or almost half a month.

I would rate the setup for Pega BPM four out of five.

We implemented Pega BPM in-house through our BPM team.

In terms of the pricing for Pega BPM, other solutions may be cheaper, but it doesn't matter if Pega BPM has a higher price tag because what's important is that it's the best solution, and that is what people look for.

If I would rate the pricing for the solution, I'd give it three out of five.

You have to pay extra for additional features in Pega BPM.

The business process management solution my team uses is Pega BPM, particularly the older version 7. My team is planning to onboard the new version of the solution, version 8, soon.

Maintaining Pega BPM is sometimes expensive, but it's manageable. It takes money to maintain the solution, but it's a good product based on the service it provides to customers. Pricing doesn't matter because what matters to any client is that the solution should be very good and should provide accurate results. This is the main reason people go with Pega BPM.

My company has a team dedicated to maintaining the solution.

Five to six people currently use Pega BPM within the company.

For now, I don't have any suggestions for people looking into implementing Pega BPM because for sure those people have research teams that do the research and implement the solution according to market research. They know exactly what type of solution is needed based on research.

I would recommend Pega BPM to new users of BPM solutions or local platforms, but research is still required before implementing the solution.

My rating for Pega BPM is nine out of ten.

My company is a partner of Pega BPM with clients it provides services to. My company also provides implementation support to clients.