Proximus modernizes B2B installations with AI-powered design

The Business Issue

Here's a scenario familiar to many IT leaders: A business-critical application emerges from the front lines because teams need solutions faster than traditional IT can deliver. It works brilliantly for years, solving real problems and enabling daily operations. But over time, the challenge shifts from "Does it work?" to "How do we sustain and scale this?"

For Proximus, Belgium's largest telecommunications provider, this situation wasn't a hypothetical. Their B2B installation operations relied on a custom-built application called TOFU (Technical Order Follow Up) – created by a dispatcher who saw a gap and filled it with his own PHP expertise. It was exactly what the business needed at the time. But as with many shadow IT solutions, the path forward meant finding a way to modernize while preserving the business value it delivered.

The knowledge management challenge

TOFU had become deeply embedded in daily operations, handling exception management for Proximus's most complex B2B installations. But as the original developer moved on to new opportunities and business needs evolved, the organization faced a common dilemma: How do you modernize a business-critical tool when documentation is limited and the institutional knowledge is dispersed?

The situation went deeper than a single application. Proximus processes about 4,000 installations daily. B2B installations represent only 10% of that volume, but they're the most complex, requiring extensive exception handling for enterprise clients. Customer service representatives maintained dedicated one-on-one relationships with large enterprise clients, while dispatchers processed installation volumes without full visibility into whether they were handling B2C or B2B customers.

When appointments needed adjustment or exceptions arose, the process was manual and fragmented. Customer satisfaction suffered, and the legacy tool that had once solved these problems now needed to evolve – or be replaced entirely with something more sustainable.

The Solution

Rather than simply rebuilding their existing application, Proximus partnered with Pega to reimagine their entire B2B installation process – the complex work of setting up telecommunications services for enterprise clients, from configuring equipment to managing appointments and handling the inevitable exceptions that arise with large deployments. The transformation began with a Pega Catalyst™ workshop that brought together three critical perspectives: process business people, operational users who had built and used the original tool, and IT teams who would support the new solution.

The workshop followed a structured approach: morning sessions focused on aligning around the outcomes that they actually wanted to achieve – not just building a newer version of the existing tool – while afternoon sessions used Pega Blueprint to rapidly prototype their vision.

Within 15 minutes, Pega Blueprint™ generated a working application prototype that visualized their transformed process. It automatically generated data models, user interfaces, and workflow logic based on natural language descriptions from business users and dispatchers themselves. For Proximus, this capability proved invaluable – when you're replacing an undocumented application, having domain experts describe processes directly to an AI tool means you can capture institutional knowledge before it walks out the door.

The new solution, renamed COFU (Customer Order Follow Up), transformed their approach from reactive technical monitoring to proactive customer experience management. Instead of simply alerting when appointments were in danger, the system enables true collaboration between customer service and dispatching teams while providing comprehensive workload management and end-to-end orchestration.

Proximus chose to deploy COFU directly on Pega Cloud®, making it their first cloud-based Pega application. This wasn't just about solving the TOFU problem – it was about building organizational confidence in cloud-native development.

The Results

The impact was immediate:

• 15-minute prototype development using Pega Blueprint™, compared to traditional months-long requirements gathering.
• 360° visibility: COFU gives both dispatchers and customer service teams a shared view of every order, eliminating blind spots and enabling proactive coordination.
• Workload management: Intelligent prioritization based on SLAs ensures that exceptions are handled efficiently, without manual triage.
• End-to-end orchestration: Automation and AI streamline workflows, freeing up teams to focus on high-value tasks and customer relationships.
• Citizen empowerment: Operational users can now contribute to application design and refinement, without waiting for IT backlogs.

And because COFU is being built directly in Pega Cloud, it’s future-ready from day one. No more outdated versions, no more on-premises constraints, and no more fragile dependencies.

A foundation for enterprise-wide change

COFU isn't just solving a shadow IT problem. It's proving that Proximus can move to the cloud, build applications faster, and empower business users to shape their own solutions – all without waiting for lengthy IT backlogs or drowning in technical debt.

By starting with a high-impact use case, they’re building organizational confidence in cloud-native development, accelerating their departure from legacy systems, and creating a repeatable pattern for future modernization efforts. The legal and security frameworks that took months to establish? They're now in place for every application that follows.

Even the teams who once felt disconnected are now co-owners of the solution. They're not just using COFU – they're shaping it. And that shift in mindset might be the most transformative outcome of all.

Want to dive deeper into Proximus’s journey? Watch their PegaWorld session now.