Pegasystems

Early history

Alan Trefler founded Pegasystems in 1983 at the age of 28, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to founding the company, in the early 1980s Trefler had developed computer systems that could play chess. During the company's early years it focused on providing case management, namely for companies such as American Express. Trefler recollects that when he started Pegasystems, he wanted to create software that eased the heavy lifting that business people deal with, as well as software that understood how business-people wanted things to work, commenting "it turns out to be a fairly hard problem to solve." An article in Computerworld traces business rules engine to the early 1990s and to products from the likes of Pegasystems, Fair Isaac Corp and ILOG. As a private company, Pegasystems was "bootstrapped" initially, but did not take on outside investors. The company went public in 1996 with initial and secondary public offerings, and began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol PEGA. Raising several millions in funding in the process, going public freed the company from needing to pursue venture capital investments. Pegasystems entered a period of financial trouble in the late 1990s, following a dispute with its accountants, Ernst & Young. After restating their earnings, Pegasystems faced an investigation by the SEC, which was dropped in 2002.

Acquisitions

In March 2010, Pegasystems acquired the enterprise software company Chordiant for around $161.5 million. Although it had clients such as Citibank, Capital One, MetLife, Cigna, Wellpoint, T-Mobile, and Vodafone and was described as an "innovator" in "applying predictive analytics to customer interactions," Chordiant had struggled in the 2008 recession. The acquisition gave Pegasystems access to new markets such as telecommunications and healthcare, with Pegasystems integrating Chordiant and its customer relationship management (CRM) technology into its existing operations. In October 2013, Pegasystems acquired the mobile application developer Antenna Software for $27.7 million. Located in New Jersey, Antenna also had bases in Kraków and Bangalore.

In October 2013, Pegasystems was described as a "provider of business process management (BPM) and [CRM] solutions," and had its global development center in Hyderabad. Revenues for the company grew strongly when compared to the rest of the business process management market from 2005 until 2013, with license revenues rising 34% in 2013. After it released its recent financial results in November 2013, Pegasystems' stock rose 20%.

Recent history

In May 2014, Pegasystems acquired the the Bangalore-based MeshLabs, a text mining and analytics software startup. The Times of India reported that Pegasystems would integrate MeshLabs's text analytics software "to gather unstructured social media data and decode it into actionable business insights for its clients." The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Pegasystems acquired Firefly in June 2014, a co-browsing tool funded by First Round Capital. The startup from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the company's first move into the cobrowsing market. By the summer of 2014, Pegasystems remained headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with 2,700 employees.

By July 2014 the company was worth around USD $1 billion.

By early 2015, Pegasystems remained a publicly-traded company on the Nasdaq, with 3,000 employees, 30 offices, and "more than half a billion dollars in revenue."

There was a steady rise in the company's share price in 2015, with higher than expected revenues from the year prior.

Gartner mentioned Pega in April 2015, along with a similar award from Forrester Research the month prior.

Products and services

Pegasystems is involved in the customer engagement business.

As of 2013 Pega specialized in software for business process management (BPM) and customer relationship management (CRM), and was seen as offering more bespoke technology than competitors such as Oracle Corporation or SAP ERP. As of late 2013, Pega’s core software, PegaRULES Process Commander (PRPC), was related to BPM.

Fortune wrote in August 2015 that Pegasystems' CRM suite "correlates data from existing marketing, sales, and support systems. Whenever a call arrives, an agent is presented with an omnichannel view of the history so he or she receives a heads-up into what the call might be about. That in itself isn't so new, but the software also uses predictive analytics to suggest solutions proactively. In Sprint’s case, agents are presented with several different scenarios of how to handle a call."

In 2015, Pegasystems' CRM suite was listed as one of the top five largest in the CRM market by David Roe of CMSWire, alongside Salesforce.com, SAP CRM, Oracle CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Clients and notable projects

As of 2013, other clients included "largely Fortune 500 companies" such as ING, Lloyds Banking Group, BAA, and others.

By July 2014, PayPal, Cisco Systems, and Phillips were using Pegasystems’ CRM software, and BNY Mellon announced that year that the bank would be integrating Pega into its operations as part of an efficiency strategy.

In 2015 Sprint used Pegasystems to focus and rework its customer relations strategy. In June 9, 2015, it was reported that The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) had "chosen to implement customer decisioning software" developed by Pegasystems.

In 2015 Pegasystems disclosed that its clients included "six of the top 10 global communications companies, eight of the top 10 credit-card companies, and eight of the top 10 global banks." Among them were American Express, HSBC, United Health Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Cisco Systems.

Other recent clients include Heineken, the New Jersey Courts, Hanover Insurance Group, Cigna, MKB Brnadstof, Wüstenrot & Württembergische Gruppe, Trancelerate, and British Gas.