Telerx opts for Pega 7 because CRM specialisation really is important
- Summary:
- Health CRM services company Telerx is using the Pega platform because it couldn't get the same level of localisation with other cloud providers.
I spoke to Theresa Zataveski, Telerx's VP of Medical Solutions, at Pega's recent customer conference in Orlando, where she explained that it is consolidating a bunch of legacy platforms into Pega in order to provide its clients with one multi-tenant cloud solution. However, despite wanting to offer a single solution, Telerx also opted for Pega because it allows for a level of specialisation and localisation that Zataveski couldn't find with other providers.
She explained:
We were introduced to Pega about 4 years ago because we needed a platform that would allow us to do very specialised customer engagement - on the healthcare side there are very complex interactions, there are very serious diseases that we help provide support to.
We had some legacy CRM applications that we couldn't tailor very well to the business rules, we wanted to make sure that the engagement remains really compliant and follows a prescriptive and necessary workflow, to ensure we have captured all the data that we have to report back. We needed to make sure that we were providing the best care to a patient, no matter what environment that they might be in.
Zataveski said that Telerx had been using a host of different CRM applications until it was introduced to Pega, including a combination of Siebel, Salesforce and homegrown apps. And prior to deciding on Pega, it looked at th most popular CRM providers on the market, including Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft. However, it decided that Pega was the right choice, given that it allowed Telerx to have very robust audit trail capabilities and specialise by business rules. Zataveski said:
Zataveski said that specialisation doesn't come without its pain points, however. She explained that because regulations are changing so fast, this requires a constant process of specialisation. In addition, design decisions continuously have to be made, such as when to apply the customisation at the global foundation level, or at the local level.We started small with simple, low volume, but high touch, complex programmes and then learned from those implementations – Pega is a bit more complex to implement, you have to do the implementation right.
We have learned a bit over the years and we have embarked on a pretty significant Pega 7 upgrade that we are going live with now. That's brought together the base Pega 7 application, which is our core customer service platform, and then we are layering on a pharma vigilance application.
We've created one master foundation app that we will roll out across our entire business. Instead of rolling out client by client, which we had been doing, we will have one multi-tenant, full service application across all of our lines of business. Then we will just configure that thin sliver of customer functionality that we might need on top.
Our global foundation will allow anyone, anywhere, to interact with the cloud-based application. But the specialisation features will be able to act locally. If we are servicing customers in Europe or Asia, we will be able to implement whatever regulatory business rules we have to apply on top of our foundation. We saw that as the benefit of going down this route with Pega.
What we are trying to do is keep the base pure, use best practice there, and then if it's something at a client level, leave it at that level.
Part of the reason that Telerx is going from Pega 6 to Pega 7 is because of the enhanced UI. Zataveski said that Pega 6's UI was slightly too technical for its users, given that many of them will be healthcare focused and not come from a technical background. However, its specialisation also caused some problems during this upgrade and wasn't as easy as Pega might like to suggest.
To be honest we had significant pain upgrading. About half way through the upgrade project we wanted to take advantage of some of the new UI features available in Pega 7, so we did a further upgrade and it was painful. It set us back 2 months at least.
However, Pega 7 has also brought increased benefits. One of which is the speed of integration for new clients. Zataveski gave an example of a new global biotech company that initially came on board with one of its brands, which took 16 weeks to implement. However, since then, it has brought on 13 additional brands, each of which took 45 days.
Additional benefits include the new capabilities to monitor patients' progress once they have enrolled. For example, do patients drop out at a certain point? Do they think they don't need the supportive care? Telerx will have an idea of not only how long patients stay on a certain programme, but what type of messaging is working for that particular programme.
Finally, Zataveski is particularly excited about Pega Express, which is a new tool that allows users to easily
customise the application's CRM capabilities without developer support. Essentially, it means that Telerx can let business users make changes without the need to use IT's resources. Zataveski said:One of the things that helps us in the sales cycle is that we will be sitting with a customer and they'll be describing what they're trying to achieve; it will be incredibly powerful if we can digest that and come back a week later and show them that we are there already. We do that today, but we have to pull developers out of other things. I'm so excited about Pega Express! Let me at it.
Disclosure: Salesforce and Oracle are diginomica premier partners at time of writing.