Upgraded Pegasystems Channel Program Emphasizes Partner Skills, Drops Sales Volume Requirements

Partner competencies and specializes, combined with “delivery excellence” and customer bookings and references, are the benchmarks by which Pegasystem partners will be assessed under the Pega Partner program framework.

Pegasystems is launching an update of its channel program today, putting more emphasis on partner skills and success, offering more vertical industry specializations, and eliminating sales volume entirely as a metric for determining program tier designations and partner benefits.

Pegasystems, which offers a low-code platform for workflow automation and business process automation, is also expanding its Pega Marketplace where partners exhibit connectors and accelerator solutions built on the Pegasystems platform.

The new elements of the revamped Pega Partners program are effective Jan. 1, 2024, providing partners with time to adjust their business practices and operations to meet the new requirements. The program builds on the Pega Partners program the company debuted in May 2021.

[Related: Workflow Automation, Digital Transformation Workflow Automation, Digital Transformation Driving Opportunities For Pegasystems Partners Driving Opportunities For Pegasystems Partners ]

The enhanced Pega Partners program, being unveiled today at the PegaWorld iNspire tech event in Las Vegas, is designed to support and reward partners for developing their skills and capabilities that, in turn, improve customer outcomes.

Pegasystems, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., works with more than 300 partners including global systems integrators, influencers, government-focused VARs, managed service providers, cloud hyperscalers and technology vendors. Many partners build solutions, “accelerators” (pre-built solution starters), and add-ons using the Pegasystems platform.

Most partners follow a co-sell sales motion with Pegasystems, said Judy Buchholz, senior vice president of the Pegasystems global partner ecosystem, in an interview with CRN. And between 85 and 90 percent of services provided to customers around the company’s platform are developed by partners, she said.

“The ecosystem is the predominant service provider to the client,” Buchholz (pictured) said. “The majority of the time – more than the majority – it is a partner that is working with our account teams and with the clients to bring that value. That’s what we look at and measure. We rely heavily on our ecosystem to have the skills and capabilities to deliver [Pegasystem] projects successfully.”

Pegasystems launched the Pega Partners program in 2021, moving away from the more traditional “metals” tier structure and putting more emphasis on partner skills and specializations, including taking a scorecard approach that rated partners on selling influence.

Today the Pega Partners program offers specializations in manufacturing, transportation and government. That is being expanded to included specializations in the financial services, insurance, communications and media industries, along with a newly combined healthcare and life sciences specialization.

The program will also include a new specialization in process mining – capturing event and transaction data and using it to analyze business processes. The company already offers specializations in such practices as business automation and RPA, customer service and one-to-one customer engagement.

With the updated program Pegasystems will also offer expanded partner benefits including free online training.

But a significant change is the elimination of sales volume altogether as a way of assessing partner success. “The sales metric is really looking in the rearview mirror,” said Jamie Mendez, Pegasystems vice president of ecosystem transformation and programs, in the interview with CRN.

“The opportunity with Pega and the platform isn’t the first, initial sell. It is the client relationship over time. The real test and challenge and opportunity for our partners is in how they drive their skills forward. It is a huge opportunity for these partners,” Mendez said.

Pega will even evaluate the performance of its own partner managers based on the growth of the channel partners’ business, she said.

“Your last delivery is your first step in your next opportunity,” Buccholz said of the company’s tagline to its partners.

Pegasystems’ “partner-centric approach” has always been a differentiator for partners like Maantic, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of digital transformation, CRM and business automation services, said Shirsendu Sengupta, global head of digital process automation at Maantic.

Many digital transformation and business automation projects fail because the customer hired a service provider without the right expertise, Sengupta said in an interview with CRN. Pegasystems’ emphasis on partner expertise and competencies ensures that customers are paired with partners with the right skills.

Maantic has partnered with Pegasystems since 2009 and holds specializations in manufacturing, healthcare, insurance and banking. The expanded roster of specializations “is going to be very interesting and very fruitful for partners,” Sengupta said.

Starting Jan. 1, 2024, the framework used to evaluate partner performance will no longer include sales volume as a factor – and partners will no longer even be required to report sales numbers to the vendor, Mendez said.

While partner skills were part of the 2021 partner program overhaul, the latest changes elevate partner skills and competencies as part of partner exams. And requirements, including the currency of those skills. They also include business metrics such as bookings, service delivery and customer references – what Buchholz called “client success and delivery excellence.”

“The Pega Partners program has played a significant role in enabling our organization to address our customers’ most pressing business challenges and navigate their digital challenges successfully,” said Mahesh Agrawal, founder and CEO at Areteans, a business process management and Pegasystems partner based in Hyderabad, India, in a statement. “With the latest enhancements to the program, we eagerly anticipate witnessing the profound impact in the form of additional recognition of our capabilities and look forward to collaborating with Pega to enhance the overall value proposition for our joint customers.”

The expanded Pega Marketplace provides the company’s partners with a way to showcase their packaged service and solution offerings including accelerators and connectors to the Pegasystems platform. The marketplace already has more than 200 verified accelerators and connectors, according to the company.

The marketplace itself has been updated with a new structure and content, including expanded overviews and feature sets of the partner offerings, to improve the customer experience, according to the company. (The marketplace does not conduct sales transactions.)

At the PegaWorld iNspire event Pegasystems also unveiled Pega Infinity ’23, a new release of the company’s flagship software suite with new AI and automation capabilities. Last month the vendor debuted Pega GenAI, a set of 20 generative AI-powered boosters for Pega Infinity ’23.

Sengupta of Maantic said the new generative AI functionality will help both developers and clients more quickly build applications and solutions on the Pegasystems platform and put them into production.

Rick Whiting has been with CRN since 2006 and is currently a feature/special projects editor. Whiting manages a number of CRN’s signature annual editorial projects including Channel Chiefs, Partner Program Guide, Big Data 100, Emerging Vendors, Tech Innovators and Products of the Year. He also covers the Big Data beat for CRN. He can be reached at rwhiting@thechannelcompany.com.

Is There Now An Opportunity In Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ:PEGA)?

Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ:PEGA), might not be a large cap stock, but it saw a decent share price growth in the teens level on the NASDAQGS over the last few months. With many analysts covering the mid-cap stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stock’s share price. But what if there is still an opportunity to buy? Let’s take a look at Pegasystems’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if the opportunity still exists.

View our latest analysis for Pegasystems

Great news for investors – Pegasystems is still trading at a fairly cheap price. My valuation model shows that the intrinsic value for the stock is $68.00, which is above what the market is valuing the company at the moment. This indicates a potential opportunity to buy low. Although, there may be another chance to buy again in the future. This is because Pegasystems’s beta (a measure of share price volatility) is high, meaning its price movements will be exaggerated relative to the rest of the market. If the market is bearish, the company's shares will likely fall by more than the rest of the market, providing a prime buying opportunity.

earnings-and-revenue-growth

Future outlook is an important aspect when you’re looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Although value investors would argue that it’s the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. With profit expected to grow by 45% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for Pegasystems. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Are you a shareholder? Since PEGA is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to increase your holdings in the stock. With an optimistic outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as financial health to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Story continues

Are you a potential investor? If you’ve been keeping an eye on PEGA for a while, now might be the time to make a leap. Its prosperous future outlook isn’t fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means it’s not too late to buy PEGA. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to make a well-informed buy.

If you want to dive deeper into Pegasystems, you'd also look into what risks it is currently facing. For example - Pegasystems has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of.

If you are no longer interested in Pegasystems, you can use our free platform to see our list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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Pega Announces Pega GenAI to Infuse Generative AI Capabilities in Pega Infinity '23

Built on a future-ready architecture, new AI-powered capabilities boost developer productivity, marketing effectiveness, and more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pegasystems Inc. PEGA, the low-code platform provider empowering the world's leading enterprises to Build for Change®, today announced Pega GenAI™ – a set of 20 new generative AI-powered boosters to be integrated across Pega Infinity™ '23, the latest version of Pega's product suite built on its low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. It will be showcased next month at PegaWorld iNspire and available in Q3 2023. Pega GenAI will provide organizations with the architecture and integrated use cases to drive value from generative AI now and into the future.

For example, a bank looking to automate their loan processing operations would traditionally need to start by identifying, designing, and developing dozens of workflows from scratch. With Pega GenAI, they simply tell Pega they are building a "loan processing application," and Pega will automatically create the related workflows, data models, user interfaces, sample data, and more based on responses from generative AI models like those from OpenAI. Because the responses from generative AI are mapped directly into Pega's powerful model-driven architecture, low-code developers can easily configure and change these suggested starting points to rapidly deliver a completed application. Pega GenAI boosters like these will be infused throughout Pega Infinity, allowing users to accelerate their low-code application development, enhance customer service, and improve customer engagement.

A new API abstraction layer, called Connect Generative AI, will allow organizations to get immediate value from generative AI with a plug-and-play architecture that allows for low-code development of AI prompts. Rather than directly calling OpenAI, or other APIs directly from UIs or workflow steps, Pega uniquely provides an API abstraction layer so developers can easily swap out large language models running on both public and

private clouds and build reusable generative AI components that can be leveraged across applications. Connect Generative AI will be able to automatically replace personally identifiable information (PII) data with placeholders in generative AI prompts, helping organizations enforce their data protection policies and advancing secure use of public and private models.

Generative AI powered boosters in Pega Infinity '23 facilitate rapid development of innovative new capabilities and give low-code developers the power to infuse generative AI functionality into decision-making and workflow automation. As large language models, cloud services, and data privacy needs continue to evolve, this "AI choice" architecture allows Pega and its clients to continuously innovate new secure solutions. Pega will initially offer connectors to OpenAI's API and Microsoft Azure's OpenAI APIs and will be supplemented by additional downloadable connectors to other providers on Pega Marketplace.

The 20 new Pega GenAI boosters will help make Pega Infinity '23 even easier, faster, and more powerful to use, including:

Faster low-code application development in Pega Platform™

Enhanced customer engagement relevancy in Pega Customer Decision Hub™

Improved customer service in Pega Customer Service™

More productivity in Pega Sales Automation™

Faster bot creation with Robot Studio

Enhanced knowledge management libraries in Pega Knowledge 

Easier access to robust operational insights

Pega's approach to generative AI allows organizations to confidently deploy their AI models of choice in a responsible and governed way while minimizing risk. It incorporates auditing, rules-based governance, and workflow-managed human approval to advance safety, security, and reliability. Pega will allow for all AI-generated text to be reviewed, edited, and approved by authorized staff to mitigate the risk of inaccurate or biased text from being exposed to customers.

Pega GenAI builds on Pega's decades of experience in applying computer intelligence, including rules and data-driven AI, in responsible and effective ways. It complements the already powerful AI-powered decisioning engine in Pega's low-code platform, which brings together decision management, predictive and adaptive analytics, natural language processing, voice recognition, business rules, and a robust set of MLOps and testing capabilities for monitoring and governing AI models.

Full details on additional Pega Infinity '23 features will be showcased at PegaWorld iNspire, the annual Pega user conference, from June 11-13 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. For more information on the event and to register to attend, visit www.pegaworld.com

Quotes & Commentary 

"We've added a staggering number of powerful generative AI-powered boosters across Pega Infinity to help organizations quickly leverage the power of generative AI to work faster and more efficiently," said Kerim Akgonul, chief product officer, Pega. "Our clients will have the flexibility and security to power our generative AI features and build their own using their large language models of choice. The Pega GenAI boosters released in Pega Infinity '23 are just the start -- we plan to add new ones on a regular basis as we continue to evaluate new ways to responsibly and securely leverage generative AI and as new models come to market."

Supporting Resources 

About Pegasystems 

Pega provides a powerful low-code platform that empowers the world's leading enterprises to Build for Change. Clients use our AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation to solve their most pressing business challenges – from personalizing engagement to automating service to streamlining operations. Since 1983, we've built our scalable and flexible architecture to help enterprises meet today's customer demands while continuously transforming for tomorrow. For more information on Pegasystems PEGA, visit www.pega.com.  

Press Contact:  Sean Audet  Pegasystems  617.528.5230 sean.audet@pega.com  Twitter: @pega  

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 

SOURCE Pegasystems Inc.

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