Pega Decisioning Platform, also known as Pega Customer Decision Hub (CDH), is a unique platform that delivers customer-first business value and is a leader in Enterprise real-time interaction management.
What is CDH?
CDH is a platform where organizations implement NBA-based customer engagement solutions. The platform allows organizations to configure business outcomes in the form of actions, which translate to product offerings, retention strategies, and service offerings.
Next Best Action (NBA) is a design principle that derives the best possible outcome, balancing customer needs and business values.
Key Features of CDH
- Customer-Centric: CDH is built as a customer-centric platform, focusing on delivering personalized customer experiences.
- Real-time Interaction Management: CDH enables real-time interaction management, allowing organizations to respond to customer needs promptly.
- Enterprise Platform: CDH is an enterprise platform that handles large amounts of data and customer interactions.
CDH vs. Other Technologies
| Feature | CDH | Other Technologies |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Customer-Centric | Product-Centric |
| Scalability | Handles large amounts of data and customer interactions | Limited scalability |
| Complexity | Can handle complex use cases | Struggles with complex use cases |
*** Evolution of Decisioning Platforms****
- Initial Stage: Decisioning technology was initially known as CDM (Cian Decision Management) and consisted of separate tools for different functions.
- Pega’s Acquisition of Cordiant: Pega acquired Cordiant, integrating its technology into the Pega platform.
- DSM (Decision Strategy Manager): Pega released DSM as the first version of its decisioning platform.
- Pega Marketing: Pega introduced Pega Marketing, a more market-centric product that integrated decisioning and marketing capabilities.
- Customer Decision Hub (CDH): Pega evolved the platform into CDH, which is a more refined and customer-centric solution.
Pega’s Refinements
- Simplified Implementation: Pega has simplified the implementation process, making it easier for business users to use the platform.
- Automated Processes: Pega has automated many processes, removing the need for complex coding and low-level integration.
- Proposition Filter: Pega has introduced the Proposition Filter component, which simplifies the process of managing eligibility rules and related logic.
Benefits of CDH
- Rapid Deployment: CDH enables rapid deployment of customer journeys and actions.
- Simplified Processes: CDH simplifies business processes, making it easier for business users to use the platform.
- Accelerated Time-to-Market: CDH accelerates the time-to-market for new customer experiences and offers.## Misconceptions about CDH 🤔
CDH is a one-stop solution for all customer engagement issues
“CDH is not going to solve all your UI issues, it’s not going to solve all your data extraction issues. CDH is built as an independent solution, a backend analytics engine.”
CDH solves a specific problem, which is to provide a centralized decisioning engine for managing business outcomes and Rules of Engagement across all departments.
CDH is only for simple use cases
“Next Best Action Designer has simplified a lot of boilerplate code, and if someone technically is interested to look into, they can actually go and see the strategies that get autogenerated.”
Next Best Action Designer provides extension points that are sufficient for most complex use cases, making it a powerful tool for customer engagement.
Common Adoption Challenges
Lack of clear perspective on what CDH solves
- CDH is not a replacement for all customer engagement solutions
- It is a centralized decisioning engine for managing business outcomes and Rules of Engagement
Misconceptions about Next Best Action Designer
- It is not difficult to use
- It has simplified boilerplate code and provides extension points for complex use cases
Poor implementation and maintenance
- High cost of implementation and maintenance if not done correctly
- Need for a team to maintain and customize CDH
Mistakes to Avoid
Not being prepared to take ownership of CDH implementation
| Mistake | Description |
|---|---|
| Not prepared to take ownership | Clients need to be prepared to take ownership of CDH implementation and understand how to leverage its full potential |
| Lack of digital leaders | Digital leaders need to have a customer-centric approach and understand how to prioritize business value |
Shying away from complexities
| Mistake | Description |
|---|---|
| Going for quick wins only | Focusing only on quick wins may lead to missing out on leveraging the full potential of CDH |
| Lift and shift approach | Lift and shift approach may lead to missing out on leveraging the full potential of CDH |
Not balancing value outcome with technology advantage
| Mistake | Description |
|---|---|
| Not balancing value and technology | Need to balance value outcome with technology advantage to get the most out of CDH |
Note: The section titles are meant to be aesthetic and easy to digest, but the content is focused on conveying the information accurately and clearly.
System Integration and Data Heavy Implementation 🤖
System integration can be a costly mistake for companies. It assumes that integrating all data points and individual pockets of data will lead to a successful outcome. However, this approach can take a long time, often over a year, to realize the value.
Instead, it’s recommended to take a micro-Journey delivery approach, focusing on quick customer engagement and choosing the right values to start realizing business value.
Success Factors for Engagement Platforms 💼
To make any engagement successful, there are several critical success factors to consider:
- Strong Foundation: Having a strong technical team and educated leaders who are ready to participate in the delivery is essential.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): Leveraging AI models from the early stages can help achieve meaningful and relevant conversations with customers. It’s crucial to use the outcome of the model to influence business outcomes.
- Strategic Alignment: Having strategic alignment with the right partners and providing the right tools to teams can help mitigate the skills gap and ensure successful delivery.
The Importance of Customer Centric Tools 📈
If a company doesn’t adopt customer centric tools like CDH, they will likely experience:
- Slower growth
- Higher customer churn rates
- Difficulty in competing with organizations that use customer centric tools
On the other hand, customer centric tools can help:
- Improve customer retention
- Increase business value
- Enhance customer experiences
The Benefits of CDH 🚀
CDH excels in several areas, including:
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Efficiency | CDH has a powerful decisioning engine that can evaluate hundreds of rules and return a response in a very short period of time (around 2-270 milliseconds). |
| Complex Use Cases | CDH can handle complex use cases with multi-level decisioning and hundreds of data points. |
CDH’s strengths can be broadly categorized into two categories:
- Efficiency: CDH’s decisioning engine enables fast and efficient evaluation of rules and data points.
- Complex Use Cases: CDH can handle complex use cases with multiple levels of decisioning and large amounts of data.
By leveraging CDH’s capabilities, organizations can achieve significant business value and improve customer experiences.## Efficiency in CDH 📈
The evaluation completes in under four hours, which is extremely rare to see a tool achieve such a feat. This efficiency is channel-agnostic, meaning it can be executed in patch as well as enable real-time interactions happening at the same time.
Usability 📊
With large complex tools, there will always be some nuances here and there. However, those who have had experience from older ways of deployments and build and delivery of action solutions will definitely appreciate the features that Pega has provided.
For example, editing a data model can be done from within CDH and takes only a minute. This simplifies the usability and tools, contributing to the success factor.
Operations Manager: continuously being refined by Pega, it has reached a mature state where all simpler actions can be delivered from the ops manager directly.
Success Factor: one of the success factors most clients who have been using CDH from a long time have been chasing is the ability to deliver five actions in 15 days or one week. This has been achieved, and clients can now deliver to production in a week.
Business Simulation Feature 💡
CDH has a business simulation feature, known as Value Realization, which excels in its own form compared to other MCH tools.
Practitioner Preparation 📚
Gap in the Market
There is a gap in the market where people have bought Pega CDH, but there are technical architects available, and yet, there is a slowness in achieving success.
Multifaceted Approach
To address this gap, a multifaceted approach is taken, including:
- Advisory Services: working closely with business leaders to give direction and prioritize to get maximum utilization of the technology and bring out the optimal business value.
- Accelerators and Industry Blueprints: preparing pre-designed implementation for common use cases, which can be quickly deployed and pushed to production.
Training and Expertise
Experts are enabled to get access to common implementations and best practices, which are continuously polished. There is a continuous mentorship that goes on, both to the team and the client’s delivery team.
AI Decisioning Platform 🤖
Productionized AI Implementation
Pega’s decisioning technology has adopted artificial intelligence (AI) models a long time ago. They have productionized the AI implementation, which was a bigger challenge.
Adaptive Decisioning
Adaptive decisioning is a fixed algorithm model that caters to trend detection, whether it’s positive or negative. It immediately detects in production and can be leveraged for arbitration.
External Models
There is a facility to bring in external models, also in the form of PMML (Predictive Model Markup Language), which is the standard for machine learning models.
“Pega has improved and taken it a step further since the boom of geni.”
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Adaptive Decisioning | Fixed algorithm model that caters to trend detection |
| External Models | Facility to bring in external models in the form of PMML |
| Business Simulation | Value Realization, which excels in its own form compared to other MCH tools |
Quick Wins with JNA Model 🚀
The JNA model can greatly minimize manual effort and provide numerous options for fine-tuning treatments.
Benefits of J Model
The J model has a wealth of knowledge, having been trained on various sources and patterns from around the world. This enables CDH to directly benefit from J in the following ways:
- Preparing customer journeys
- Ideation and creating ideas for product retention or service-based actions
Caution Required
While the J model can greatly accelerate the ideation phase, some cautions are required to ensure its effective use.
Similarities to PGA Blueprint
The JNA model’s ability to solve collaboration issues between IT and business users is similar to the PGA blueprint in the PGA platform.
Creating Customer Journeys
The JNA model can create customer journeys from end to end, including all engagement strategies.
Customer Decisioning and Engagement Hub (CDH) 📈
CDH is a centralized brain that orchestrates billions of real-time interactions across channels, resulting in channel-agnostic customer experiences.
Key Features of CDH
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Centralized brain | Orchestrates real-time interactions across channels |
| Channel-agnostic | Delivers consistent customer experiences across channels |
| Real-time interactions | Enables billions of interactions across channels |
Importance of Customer Decisioning and Engagement
Customer decisioning and engagement is crucial in navigating digital complexities and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Revolutionizing Marketing Strategies
Pega CDH can revolutionize marketing strategies and enhance customer engagement.