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.

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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 assessments. And requirements, including the currency of those skills. They also include business metrics such as service delivery and customer references – what Buchholz called “client success and delivery excellence.”

Coforge, a global digital services and solutions provider based in Noida, India, is a long-time Pegasystems partner and has done hundreds of Pegasystems implementations. Madan Mohan, head of enterprise applications at Coforge, says Pegasystems “does a great job managing their partner ecosystem” and he called the Pega Partner program “one of the best in the industry.”

Mohan praised the changes Pegasystems is making in how it works with and evaluates its partners. He sees the focus on partner skills and service delivery as an emphasis on expanding the company’s presence within existing customers – an effort in which partners play a critical role – and leave the license sales and deal closings to internal sales people.

“They want to go deeper, deepen their customer relationships,” Mohan said. “They want to build the account scalability with partners. I think they’re being very smart about it.”

“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.