Pega & Vodafone: Procurement’s Digital Transformation

With 6,000 global employees across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific, Pega has joined forces with Vodafone, a leading British technology communications company. We recently spoke to Joaquin Reixa, Pega’s Vice President & Managing Director, EMEA, to see what this partnership will hold. ‘This is a joint digital transformation journey’, he told us. ‘To accelerate Vodafone’s digitalisation, Pega is focused on leveraging our unique and complementary technology skill sets’. 

What Does Pega Do? 

Pega delivers innovative software that crushes business complexity. From maximising customer lifetime value to streamlining service to boosting efficiency, it helps the world’s leading organisations solve problems fast and transformation for tomorrow. Since its founding, the company has brought business and IT together with low-code, cloud-native technology, while its scalable architecture helps brands stay ahead of rapid change. Overall, the company’s solutions help save people time, so their clients’ employees and customers can get back to what matters most.

Here are some of the highly compelling findings that Forrester Consulting derived based on interviews with 20 Pega clients: 

• One-to-one customer engagement. 489% ROI, < 6 months payback
• Intelligent automation. 186–598% ROI, < 3–12 months payback
• Unrivalled customer service. 298% ROI, < 6 months payback

Pega’s simple yet sophisticated architecture enables clients to rapidly build, deploy, and automate their proprietary workflows. The company sets business processes apart from slow legacy systems, which allows companies like Vodafone to streamline their procurement operations rapidly and without major surgery in their system landscape. In short, Pega’s solutions are perfect for complex supply chains. 

As Joaquin Reixa put it: ‘Pega allows you to do your work without logging into six different systems. Now, events occur in 10 minutes instead of 10 days. And Vodafone has chosen to move fast and adapt itself to this new reality’.

Why Collaborate? 

Both Vodafone and Pega bring unique strengths to this new partnership. Overall, Pega will provide the digital foundation—its intelligent automation platform—and Vodafone will add specialised procurement knowledge. According to Reixa, this will allow Vodafone to offer a better experience to its customers and allow its procurement division, Vodafone Procurement Company (VPC), to automate  key operational processes, from supplier onboarding and risk management to the full array of purchasing journeys.

Furthermore, Vodafone will benefit from Pega’s unique ability to build common global processes  while maintaining regional complexity.  Fundamentally, Pega is built to manage the scale and multi-dimensional complexity present in their client’s businesses. Said Reixa: ‘You want to have a global common process, but couple it with the flavour of the local country and culture’. 

What Does the Future Hold? 

As clients and suppliers alike try to determine the answer, Pega and Vodafone will be one step ahead. Both know that businesses are struggling to manage newly remote workforces and operations worldwide. Therefore, the duo intends to lead the way forward—developing industry-leading procurement models, equipped with the global expertise to pull it off. 

Over the next 12 to 18 months, Vodafone and Pega will build a supply chain model that showcases automated risk evaluation, supplier onboarding, and supply chain management. This platform will not only transform Vodafone’s digital processes, but represent an industry-leading achievement. 

Overall, Vodafone and Pega’s partnership will drive agility, optimise supply chains, offer customers a personalised experience, and accelerate Vodafone’s operations. Reixa summed it up: ‘In these moments of chaos, companies must speed up their digital transformation. If you’re not prepared, you stand the risk of irrelevance. This is the time to pursue change’.