Pega World iNspire 2024 showcases GenAI Blueprint
Pegasystems aka Pega used its PegaWorld iNspire conference this year to showcase new enhancements and an improved user interface for Pega GenAI Blueprint – its app design-as-a-service tool designed to allow organisations to create mission-critical workflows.
These new features enable users to go from app idea to functional app design “exponentially faster” (says Pega) as a workflow design tool.
Pega GenAI Blueprint has generated fast adoption. Over 30,000 blueprints have been created with participation from nearly 500 organisations since going live in April this year.
By describing an app concept, Pega GenAI Blueprint uses generative AI to design the required components. Drawing from Pega’s industry experience and knowledge of operational enterprise data structures, the tool builds tailored workflows based on best practices for “nearly any”any scenario – from processing insurance claims, to handling credit card chargebacks, to managing patient care etc.
This, says Pega, helps optimise broken legacy processes by starting every conversation with a workflow designed for the digital future.
Deutsche Telekom calling
Appearing at the Pega World iNspire 2024 keynote this year to showcase work already carried out with Blueprint was Daniel Wenzel, senior vice president for design authorities at Deutsche Telekom.
Looking for acceleration in building apps for specific use cases, Wenzel said that with Pega Blueprint a business has the ability to express work processes and challenges in its own terms i.e. this means that all users are able to speak the same language. With so many processes to manage across its business, Wenzel explained that (for organisations such as his own) there was a challenge in terms of knowing where it would and could apply automation to (as he put it) “pull the plug on legacy systems” today. This becomes more challenging when we consider that some so-called low impact processes might be executed less than x100 times a year, so spending money on digital transformation on those parts of the business needs to be done carefully.
What does our AI future look like?
Don Schuerman, chief technology officer at Pega provided the audience with his usual brand of humorous intelligence. Reminding us that nothing ages so fast as today’s predictions for tomorrow’s technological future, Schuerman highlights moves today to digitise the stacks of paper that have been used to run so many enterprises in the past… and the processes which are now underway to help shed those legacy systems and move towards new digital tools.
“I believe that the AI future lies in the things that already make us great i.e. our heritage, our brands, our culture and our way of life… and, now, we can look at how AI with optimise, amplify and accelerate all of those aspects of our existence to make our world better,” said Schuerman. “The wonderful part about being on this journey is that we [as Pega] have not been on this trip alone – we have worked alongside customers to build platform-level technology innovations in this space.”
Always entertaining on stage, Schuerman showcased a use case featuring Pega Blueprint kiosk computer. Presented with Anu Shah, Pega’s director of specialist solutions, the pair worked through a fictional kiosk breakdown scenario with the ability to dial into an AI-driven maintenance support. The bot on show in this case guided the humans through a claim process and used a Large Language Model (LLM) – this time leaning on device reference numbers – to detect the device and offer a selection of maintenance engineers within 25 miles that might be available to fix the device in this case.
Back to Blueprint
Since its launch, Pega has iteratively added new features to Pega GenAI Blueprint and new capabilities include legacy transformation accelerators.
Organisations can import existing assets, content and knowledge into their Blueprint design and will now also be able to import legacy Business Process Modeling Notion (BPMN) models and additional legacy inputs such as process documentation, app screens and full blueprint designs via APIs.
Users can instantly preview what their user interface will look like across any channel – including web, mobile, customer service desktop and customer self-service via Pega’s DX API – at any stage of the design cycle with the ‘preview my app’ button. While Blueprint designs workflows to work independently of channel or screen, this new preview feature helps users envision the final app and accelerate the design process.
In data model generation: the tool now automatically generates data model fields behind each case type, with the ability to edit, manually add, and delete existing fields. There is also enhanced collaboration so that users can now invite people to collaborate directly on their blueprints, including the full ability to edit and add new components.
Software’s hyper-personalised future
Once the blueprint design is complete, it can be imported into Pega’s App Studio to turn it into a working enterprise-class application. App Studio accelerates the development process with an intuitive low-code approach that guides users and fosters collaboration across teams to deliver seamless user experiences in their workflows and applications.
Rounding out the show this year, the Computer Weekly Developer network sat down with Pega chief product officer Kerim Akgonul. Thinking about just how far technology like Pega Blueprint might push the envelope in terms of software application development, Akgonul explained how (in reference to a working example that was in part showcased on the keynote stage of the event itself) this new offering might be able to create a loan approval system for german lawyers working in the healthcare industry (and if that’s not ultra-niche for you, then we don’t know what is)… and so using a tool like Pega Blueprint to start creating the new era of what we might call hyper-personalised applications could define how software next evolves at a higher and wider level.
Don Schuerman, chief technology officer at Pega.
Daniel Wenzel, senior vice president for design authorities at Deutsche Telekom.
