Pega Unveils Plans for the Autonomous Enterprise at PegaWorld iNspire
With ChatGPT and other iterations of artificial intelligence sweeping over businesses, Pegasystems is doubling down on both generative and analytical AI, company founder and CEO Alan Trefler said today during his keynote that opened the Pegaworld iNspire 2023 user conference in Las Vegas.
Facebook reached 1 million users in 10 months, Instagram in 11 weeks, and ChatGPT in five days, according to Trefler. "We need to embrace this and make a change in the fundamental way we work. Our brand promise has never seemed more vital.
"Technology has changed a lot. It's clear to us that we are at an evolutionary moment. There are enormous opportunities and risks," he continued.
Not surprising, then, generative AI is at the heart of the latest iteration of Pega Infinity, the company's flagship software suite empowering organizations with AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation capabilities. Pega GenAI will provide a set of 20 new generative AI-powered boosters across Pega Infinity '23 to make it easier, faster, and more powerful to use. Pega GenAI will also offer a secure, plug-and-play architecture for low-code development of AI prompts, the ability to infuse generative AI into workflows, and the freedom to swap in different large language models.
Pega uses what Trefler called a layer cake approach, with AI-powered decisioning, workflow automation, and case management baked in.
The low-code architecture enables users to innovate at scale, according to Trefler. The goal is to build the "autonomous enterprise that will help you to change the game. We are using AI and introducing generative AI."
These technologies will result in the destruction of 80 percent of low-code solutions, though Trefler doesn't see a negative impact for Pega. "We are uniquely positioned. The layer cake organizes the pieces of your system that allow you to add, build, and change that is different from other approaches."
The key is to use generative AI not to build code, but rather business rules, according to Trefler. "It can radically improve the way people run their business. You need the control and the right architecture to make it work."
As Pega works with customers to further maximize what they can do with AI, "it will be an awesome year," Trefler concluded.
But AI is not the only area of innovation for Pega. In addition to new generative AI-powered boosters, Pega Infinity '23 will also include updates to Pega Platform, Pega Customer Decision Hub, and Pega Customer Service. Highlights include the following:
- A reuse library in App Studio to help developers discover and share reusable components to accelerate projects.
- A redesigned interface for Pega Constellation, the company's design system, to help users scale application designs with the latest built-in design components, templates, and patterns.
- Enhanced accessibility compliance with a focus on Web Content Accessibility Guides (WCAG) 2.1.
- Process AI case categorizations, with AI to predict the class and category of a particular case, categorize data to implement data classification categories, and route and assign work to the proper individuals.
- One-Time Actions, which will rapidly create new messages for specific audiences to address a distinct and immediate need, such as an emergency notification.
- Enhanced Persona Management, to automatically create customer personas for more efficient testing and validation of next-best-action strategies.
- Strategy optimization and higher decisioning accuracy, with Conversion Modeling to better determine a customer's propensity to take a specific action, such as making a purchase or finishing an onboarding journey.
- An enhanced capability for testing and deploying machine learning models.
- Feature Finder, which will allow clients to configure Pega to turn customer data into actionable insights by continuously scanning data to identify new predictors as they arise.
- Integrated Identity Management capabilities to merge customer profiles and behavioral data across channels to create relevant, holistic one-to-one engagement.
- The latest Pega Constellation APIs to integrate Pega workflows and knowledge articles into portals or mobile apps built in any modern design system.
- Agent productivity components to improve effectiveness and reduce new agent onboarding time with features like a simulated digital customer that will help agents roleplay with automatic performance feedback; automated summarization of customer interactions; and a revamped agent desktop.
- Pega Process Fabric connectors, allowing users to prioritize and manage work across the enterprise with connectors that integrate Pega Customer Service with Pega Process Fabric to unify discoverability and prioritization of work. Customer service agents will also be able to view and action work from any Pega application.
"Achieving maximum productivity while delivering incredible customer experiences has been a long-coveted goal of organizations as well as a promise of many technology solutions, but many still aren't practically applying AI and automation in a way that gets the job done," said Kerim Akgonul, chief product officer of Pega. "Pega Infinity '23 is providing enterprises with integrated AI, automation, and low-code technologies across the entire suite of solutions to help organizations reach a level of self-optimization that results in better experiences for employees and customers."
Akgonul, in his remarks before the conference's 4,000 attendees, noted that much has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.. Chief among them was digital transformation, which he said helps drive operational efficiencies across the enterprise, and ChatGPT.
Akgonul and a couple of other Pega executives demonstrated how the technology could be used to create a loan offer in Turkish by someone who doesn't speak the language. Automated solutions helped pull in all of the necessary data and put it in the right forms. ChatGPT translated all of the details (name, type of loan, etc.) from English into Turkish.
"All of these capabilities are baked in the technology," Akgonul said, adding that Pega Process Mining, introduced last month, analyzes processes, such as loan approvals to find and notify companies of bottlenecks in the system. So as AI gets added to other solutions, Pega Process Mining can find out where a process is getting stuck.
The technology has other uses as well, with financial services customers using it to help find suspicious activity.
The software suite's new features are designed to help organizations become autonomous enterprises, according to Akgonul. Pegasystems defines the autonomous enterprise as one that comprehensively applies AI and automation to engagement, servicing, and operations across the organization.
In new research released at the conference, Pega found that more than half (58 percent) of businesses expect to be autonomous enterprises within 10 years, while 15 percent say they are at that stage now, and 36 percent expect to reach that level within five years. Additionally, 73 percent said they already plan to become autonomous, with 96 percent expecting to be there within a decade.
According to Pegasystems, one the leading drivers of this new age of self-optimizing technology is a growing understanding of issues caused by old, inefficient ways to solve one-off problems.>
Though many companies have invested in quick-fix technologies, such a strategy doesn't work, said Don Schuerman, Pega's chief technology officer. "In a new world that moves at the speed of AI, manual work, static decisioning, and Band-Aid solutions are holding back the legacy enterprises of today. The successful organizations of tomorrow will be autonomous enterprises that operationalize agility and focus, bringing people together to deliver hyper-personalized engagement, hyper-efficient operations, and seamless customer experiences. As the speed of change increases, a self-optimizing autonomous business will be able to deliver the best-in-class experiences customers and employees demand."
He added: "The age of autonomous is not only coming, in many respects, it's already here. Applying AI and automation to decisioning, operations, and servicing across the organization will create a major change in the mindset of how organizations operate and drive the rise of the autonomous enterprise in the coming years."