PegaWorld 2025: Leveraging Pega’s Capabilities: Proximus’ Journey to Modernization

PegaWorld 2025: Leveraging Pegaʼs Capabilities – Proximusʼ Journey to Modernization

Okay.

So welcome, everyone.

Oh, sorry.

Welcome, everyone.

Uh, my name is Adam.

I'm the account executive for Proximus working at Pega.

So today, I'm actually here with Jaime from our one of the most valuable partners in the ecosystem.

So Infosys and one of my most valuable clients.

Kurt Van de Moortele from Proximus.

And we will be today discussing about, uh, the joint effort that we're putting in the last couple of years to really modernize the, uh, Pega applications that, uh, Proximus is using, basically.

So it's a joint effort.

That's why we also wanted to bring the joint story today, to you.

So that's it.

I will give the word to Jaime.

So Jaime, could you please introduce yourself a bit and also basically what Infosys is doing within Proximus? Yes, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Happy to be here.

Looking forward to sharing with you the best practices, or at least the learnings that we have, you know, done with with Proximus in modernizing their Pega applications.

Can we go to the next slide? So my name is Jaime Conejo Verheijden.

I'm a senior director within Infosys for the AI process Automation and integration practice.

Um, I'll not give a big introduction on Infosys.

I don't think it's needed, but let me just share a few highlights where we believe, uh, well, we are very proud of, obviously.

Um, so we are the largest, uh, Pega practice Pega partner globally.

And that's because we really invest in a couple of things, and that's people above.

All right.

We invest a lot in people in making sure that they are certified.

We also invest hugely in our, you know, innovative go to market solutions, which I will share a couple of information about that later.

Um, and as a result of that, both of those investments lead to a high value or a high appreciation.

Because if you can see also, 90% or 98% of our revenue is coming from repeated business.

Right.

Um, and, um, Proximus is one of our most valuable customers, and we are with them quite some time, I think more than five years now, or maybe even longer, I think.

And, um, we have six Pega applications, which, uh, court will, will elaborate.

Um, and and again, I'm looking forward to share some of the best practices and learnings that we have had.

So that's my introduction.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Jaime.

Me and Kurt.

Could you please introduce yourself also? Proximus.

And what Pega is doing within Proximus? Yeah.

So Proximus is, uh, the largest telco provider in Belgium, but next to being a telco provider within in Belgium, we also have now a global stack and international stack.

We did acquire a telesign root mobile in India, and we are doing quite a lot of cpaas and digital identity, uh, services, uh, let's say worldwide.

So we are a big player since a couple of years now on the international market.

Coming back to the residential market, um, we do apply a three brand strategy, uh, to, uh, have a wide range of customers. So our top notch, uh, mark is Proximus itself.

But to beat with the competition, the low brand, uh, market, we have different flavors.

So Mobile Vikings is a brand only used for, uh, uh, the mobile services.

And then we use Scarlett where, let's say, whatever services, everything is online.

But we have a very low pricing over there.

That's mainly for the assembly and the residential market.

Next to that, we also we have our Abu customers, which are more to the right side.

So the Proximus next we are delivering uh, ICT solutions for uh Abu customers, but that we are doing in the whole of Benelux.

So not only in Belgium but also in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, mainly coming back to Pega.

So we are using Pega in Proximus as an ordering system, which is the heart of all our sales activities.

Uh, so we do the translation of the sales, uh, introduced in another application into the Pega application.

Then we break it up to the individual components and we send it for provisioning.

And that we use as well for, uh, residential as, uh, Um.

Uh.

Abu customers? Yeah.

So that's a bit where we use Pega for in the whole of our, uh, landscape.

Next to that, I'm a triplet, so I have my tribe is called Quote-to-Provisioning Tribe Lead.

So whatever development is being done in Proximus from, uh, reference data over quoting, sales and production, ordering and provisioning is being done.

So we have not only Pega in the landscape of, uh, of my tribe, but also a lot of other softwares as well.

Thank you.

Curt.

Um, so just to also set the scene a bit for the rest of the presentation today, um, since we're amongst friends, I'll be very blunt. Um, so basically, we met with Curt three years ago, and in the first meeting in the first minute, the phrase he said is without changing.

I don't want to do any business with Pega anytime soon.

So it was very much nice to meet you, Kurt, too, but yeah.

Flash forward to three years later.

So this is basically the story of the three years, the joint efforts that we put.

It definitely wasn't an easy one because today Proximus is using Pega on prem, which is from Pega point of view.

It's a bit out of our control that we do not know what's going on at the infra level or application level.

So we really brought in our experts.

That really helped.

Uh, yeah, basically like did the assessments etc.

to understand what was really going wrong because there was a bit of a bad incident back in 2022, which was like a wake up call for all of us.

That, yeah, we basically decided to come together as three partners parties, that being Infosys, Pega and Proximus, and then really have the war room discussions and also decide, okay, what's the way forward? So how are we going to really come out of this, not only improve the current situation, but also to make sure that we have a future proof solution that is also scalable for future.

Um, so we have currently also a Pega expert involved.

I think Kurt will also mention it afterwards.

That is working quite closely with Infosys teams.

There is a huge modernization track going on for the order management application to make sure that we, uh, help Proximus adopt the latest capabilities that Pega has to offer.

So this is a bit of the current setup.

We will discuss a bit on the journey, but also look into the overall legacy modernization as well.

Uh, and yeah, basically you will hear from Infosys and also Proximus side on our approach, let's say, to this whole program.

So that said, um, hi, me, I mean, what are, let's say, the main challenges from your side that you see when a customer is interested, let's say, in the modernization journey. So what are the main top challenges that you see? Yeah, that's a good question.

And actually taking a step back indeed.

It was a nice introduction but we made some improvements.

Right.

Um, uh, as I said today, I'm looking forward to share some learnings, around modernizing Pega applications.

And I think if you take a step back and many of you will face similar challenges, and that's because most of the enterprises, or at least the clients that we have, they not choose for Pega just recently.

Right.

They choose.

They chose Pega a couple of years back.

And in Proximus case, even when when we were on Pega six.

Right.

And um, back then, there weren't that many capabilities that we have now, right? So just make an example.

For instance, case management was not available then.

So we had to, you know, customize and create code to actually create that functionality.

And then over time when new capabilities came in, we did not, you know, put the effort to really look at the code and the customizations and modernize them up, you know, back then, but we just concentrated on adding new functionalities to that.

Right.

And that result that resulted in challenges like performance.

Performance management.

Right.

So the application performance was performing bad.

We faced more and more defects in production issues, and it was very hard to really find.

The actual root cause for for those defects, because of that, you know, a lot a lot of customizations.

Right. And that combination led to an increased operational cost, both from a monitoring perspective but also a maintenance perspective.

And I think one of the most challenging factors that we faced was there were still coming in, you know, requests for changes and the time that it took us to really adopt those changes or to make that, you know, back into production.

That cost a lot of time.

Right.

Um, and if you then look on the left side of the, of the slide, it led to a very complex architecture.

It led to a limited insights into what was really happening.

Right.

And the incident that that you talked about in 2022 made us realize that we really have to, you know, we really had to modernize and modernize at the heart of the application.

Right? So, um, maybe those challenges are not new or not unique to Proximus.

Um, but these are the things that I think are relevant for any enterprise that are that is on an, you know, an old application and is continuing to modernize it.

Thank you.

Jaime.

And, um, Kurt, what was your approach to this whole modernization of this order management application? Well, approach.

Not not about a real approach.

So I Pega came into my, uh, area about 20, 21, and I knew Pega as an application because I was only dealing with the sales and production systems.

But when it came to me, first of all, I will mention we didn't have Pega in our company and I have to look at myself and as Proximus as a company Pega and having Pega consultants, they are expensive.

We don't take them, let's kick them out.

Cost savings.

So we were only dealing with our and I call still at that time Infosys an integrator and not a partner back in that time and I have heard a lot of complaints Pega low code.

But if you ask a change request, you come up with hundreds of mandates. How is that possible? A low code application? Uh, quite a lot of of issues, uh, change requests, a lot of exceptions in our orders.

How did it happen? How is this possible? So at that moment, like Didem said, when there is a new manager taking over an application, everyone wants to meet you.

So that's where Pega came to me and say, can we do more business with you? I say, first fix what we have today, then we can discuss more.

So today we don't discuss about new things.

And that's where I started with discussing with Pega.

Let's say I want to do an assessment of all we are having today.

Where are we today? What can we improve? What should we do? Because we were started on a Pega six and we were evolving.

And I started the preparation of that assessment.

Here you see a bit of the timeline.

The assessment was being done joined between Pega and Infosys.

And that assessment started somewhere in December.

Unfortunately, while preparing that and getting the needed funding fundings for that assessment, our ordering system went down for two days.

We did a Pega upgrade to 8.6 technical upgrade and we hit the wall.

Performance was not okay.

We didn't do properly.

Performance test, I do admit, because we were used to do those technical upgrades and everything went smooth and it didn't work down for two days.

So of course that assessment went very well.

We got a very nice recommendation list of Pega 152 recommendations.

That's how you should modernize your application.

And that was only for one of our six Pega applications.

And maybe it's only within Proximus.

But if you have a problem and I hear very nice stories today in PegaWorld time to market reduction, we can develop in two months. We are always facing a problem that takes six months is finding the budget to do those new things.

That's the difficult part.

So you see here that somewhere in March we got the recommendations of that Pega Assessment.

We selected the high priority ones.

We did a high level cost assessment.

It took me one year to get it approved within my company, to get the money to do the modernization of the application.

So that's a real struggle.

So that's a bit, and I hope I am the only one in this room that faced this problem.

But this is why it takes quite a lot of time to do this modernization.

The good thing of our incident was by being down, that in the end, we got the money to do this modernization.

So that's the from time to time, you need a disaster to get the needed fundings to progress on it.

So we are now doing that modernization.

We started in June 2024.

Uh, we have changed our agents to Q processors.

In the meantime, they are live and within two weeks we will finally have case management.

Finally.

So within two weeks we go live.

And so far everything looks good.

Looks perfect.

So let's hope we make it.

Um, but there again, uh, case management still on premise, still on Pega 8.6, which is out of extended support.

So it seems like a never ending story, but to be continued.

This is not what we discussed, Kurt, but okay.

Okay. Well thank you.

And, um.

Yeah, I'm we then after hearing all, let's say, challenges also faced from modernization perspective from a client point of view.

So what are the key success factors that you take into account in a modernization initiative.

Yeah.

So well so far so good right.

And modernization is full fledged on the way.

Um, I think there are a couple of key learnings that I want to share with you, Which makes, I think, not only a modernization engagement successful, but maybe also any engagement in general.

And a couple of them are cliche but true, right? But let me just point out some of the highlights.

And I think one of the main reasons why our modernization is going well at the moment is because of the, you know, team that we've brought in.

And I think it's critical, very critical.

If you're doing a modernization that you bring in a team that can, you know, really do a due diligence and really can understand from an in-depth perspective.

The application really understands at the core what the application is doing, where is, you know, where is the customization, what is the purpose, you know, to understand what is really needed to lift it up, to cut it out and to bring the out-of-the-box capabilities to life and not break any dependencies.

right? So that's one of the things that I think is really critical to bring in a very valuable team.

A second thing I think is, is turned out to be very successful, and that is a clear expectation to one another.

Like Kurt mentioned, there were 150 recommendations.

We only took the high priority ones, but even within the high priority ones, I think it is very effective to really set the clear expectation if you, you know, take those high priority ones only, you will miss out on some of the functionalities or some of the modernizations, aspects, aspects.

And you need to align upfront before, you know, modernizing your application and turning your application into something that is not expected by your client, right? So that's the second thing.

And then a third and final thing before I hand it over to you, what I think is really critical.

And court will also align in that in a few minutes. I think it's essential to bring, you know, Pega as a partner, your client as a partner, and us, your integrator, you know, as a partner and create that try partnership where you really back each other up and again, really, you know, clearly set the path to modernization, understand and align what it is that you're doing when it is that you're doing and also how we are going to support one another.

Because in every engagement, also in this modernization, we will face some difficulties.

And it's about that true partnership, um, that will drive success and willingness to really go for that modernization.

I think those are the key ones that I want to highlight.

And of course, it's test, test, test.

It's a cliché, but also very true.

Right.

Keep on testing.

Thank you.

And I think also just like we heard today at Unilever session, dream big but start small.

So I think with the 150 recommendations first.

Yeah we just wanted to make sure that we deliver on the top five, which hopefully will be concluded in the next weeks.

Um, and then looking into the future, the same modernization, it should be a continuous journey.

It shouldn't be a 12 month project, and then we just move on.

But it should be a continuous adaptation.

So that's it.

Kurt, from your perspective, what are the top three key takeaways in this whole journey of almost two years? Well, it's mainly about the the organizational setup.

But already said before you should work together, we should let's say partners partnership together and not see let's say for instance Infosys.

In the case as an integrator, we should clearly work together.

And more even more important for me as well is to bring on board Pega experts.

Everyone has a cost, but please do accept that cost.

Today we have chosen for a PGA Pega architect. It is helping a lot and it's also smoothening the The discussions you're having with that we are having as being Proximus with our partner, Infosys.

So whenever there is something in the whole modernization, when there was a doubt about do we go for option A or B? Infosys did prepare the different options.

Pros and cons.

We had a discussion together with the PGA with Proximus.

As we discussed, we agreed upon.

So far, no single dispute before we did had more disputes when Pega was not there.

Let's be honest.

Also, we were not always able to challenge as Proximus and having only one LRS internal Proximus employee being an LSA.

We were not always able to challenge the solution.

So often we did accept.

So really that PGA is helping a lot in making the right decisions before small, very stupid example guardrail.

It says something about your application.

It doesn't say everything, but it says something.

We started with our our ordering system, guardrail 68.

I heard and I read you should be 80 for very complex, preferable 90.

You can always fool a tool that you can do with guardrail as well, but at least now with that PGA, it's helping to make sure we don't fool the tool to come to that 90, but that we are really focusing on the right things to come to that 80.

If we go live in June and I remember very well, we will be about a guardrail of 9090 plus.

So it really helps.

We also have defined very clear, um, KPIs on less exceptions, less blocked orders.

So an improved performance.

So this really will help in this modernization track.

So the organization setup we also have every month now uh alignment meeting between Infosys management Pega and Proximus. do we agree? If there might be, let's say at a.

Squad level an issue, or at the design authority sessions where the lsas are discussing a misalignment or if they do not agree on some topics, we bring it to the governance call and we take a decision over there.

It's very often about change request or is it a change request? Do we pay for it? We have the views of as well our partner Infosys as the PGA.

We are around the table and we take a decision.

So far everything goes smooth, very smooth discussions.

We pay for it.

Infosys you take it should have been done better in the past.

So that's where it really helps this this partnership.

And at the same time, I think as being Proximus, we should listen more to our partner, to Pega, because what we've done and you see it at the right top.

We started in 2014 with Pega 6.2.

Just to be on the safe side and having support of Pega, we just did technical upgrades, never modernize their application, but okay, we are there to we are there today.

We could not we didn't have implemented case management.

No further progress to go towards Cloud future versions of Pega.

So it was a problem.

So luckily we we were down for two days.

I got the money to fund the modernization track and as of June we can look towards and we will not wait.

June, we are preparing already and doing an assessment of how are we going to migrate to Pega as a service? Do we still invest on remaining on site? I know they won't like it, but it's still an option.

Recorded court okay.

It's still an option on the table because we are doing that cost assessment.

But really listen to what your partner, your software vendor, is saying that if you have to modernize it, do it at the moment when it's there and not wait until you hit the wall and then need to urgently find the money.

We we we were building a new ordering management system with Pega starting in 2014. And we always said being Proximus.

No, no, no, it's not the right time because it might introduce regression.

Let's add new features to it.

Maybe we are the only one in Proximus, but I think, uh, in real life a lot of other customers are facing the same thing.

So my three main questions is please do invest in Pega, partner with your partner and don't see, um, Infosys just as an integrator.

And there that's the open discussions we are having.

Do not say once that we have to modernize as being Proximus.

keep on repeating until we hear you, because that's often we we try to not have heard the message.

So that's for me very important.

Also also one of the recommendations that you made last, I think last month you said to me as well that we should, you know, pre budget, you know, US budget to modernize and to keep in sync with the releases of Pega.

Right.

Once Pega comes out with a new release or new capability, we should, you know, spend time, spend effort to look at what the capabilities that they're releasing and if it makes sense to then and there decide to add it to the backlog of future modernizations.

Right.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um, and moving on to the last part of our conversation is actually Infosys, let's say, vision and approach towards modernization, as we discussed a lot today about legacy modernization.

So how do you see it, Amy? And where this is going? Um, yeah.

Well, if we talk about vision, I think everyone was with the keynote session this morning also, where Karim said, well, you know, the vision and the future of modernization is Blueprint, right? And we acknowledge that.

And as I said in the beginning of my introduction, also, we are, you know, continuously investing in go to market solutions.

And one of the things that we have done in the couple of months back is really investing in extending that capability that the Pega Blueprint is offering, right.

And we at Infosys, if we talk about the vision towards modernization and that is modernization of legacy applications, but we are now also exploring how can we modernize older versions of Pega into newer versions of Pega.

What we did is we have created a framework which is a legacy modernization framework, and we have added our IP, our domain knowledge to that.

And what? What? Blueprint is is accepting.

We have extended that functionality even further to accepting and and importing much more documentation.

And what we are producing and what we're doing is that framework is analyzing the complexity, the interdependencies and personas and use cases and all that.

And what it does is it prints out a human written summary like the one that, you know, Kareem was also showing in the morning, uh, very extensive, very detailed.

And that is, you know, the start of your modernization.

And, and that is massively reducing the the amount of time that we spend to analyze.

You know, I spoke about some of the, the key critical things that is about knowing the functionality of your application.

And obviously I and our migration framework is is able to help that and to speed up that, that understanding and use Pega Blueprint to really fast track your modernization.

I think if we talk about the future and vision Blueprint with Infosys IP technology is the future.

How I look at modernization? Definitely.

And also we heard a lot about sorry, speed to market and also a bit more experimental way of working.

I think that is also quite important given that with Blueprint we're significantly increasing the speed of delivery.

So I think going forward we will be using Blueprint a lot more within Proximus.

That's that's true.

Yeah.

So I'm making a lot of publicity on Blueprint in the company. Yeah.

Come and watch us tomorrow.

Yes.

So tomorrow it is exactly.

There is another Proximus session on how we use Blueprint actually for a complete non Pega application, just to get our hands dirty.

Yeah.

Um, that was the end of our presentation.

So thank you so much for your time.

Now we're open to take questions.

Do you see, once you get up on the latest version of Pega that, like future modernization efforts, are less like you hear a lot about on the sales pitch from Pega that one of the benefits is less technical debt.

And I'm wondering, like, does that really play out like long term, or are we still running into issues where Pega will release something that's not backwards compatible and therefore you're in this continual technical debt modernization thing? Or is things improving on that in that area? Can I come back within three months to answer that question? So because today we are just we do see, uh, about the Q processors.

It's their case management would really help us in reducing the development time in case we need to build something new on top of what we're having today.

We all hope and pray it will be the case.

So I do believe and I and it remains a very challenging topic to say yes or no to that question because whatever we developed, uh, prior to case management, we will not redevelop it afterwards.

You cannot always compare apples to apples, but I really hope that, uh, whenever we do a kind of similar change or new functionality within our Pega application, once case management is there, that it takes less time.

So it was the whole ambition, it was the whole business case behind the funding of it.

So yes, I believe in it.

Uh, otherwise I would not have defended, uh, the money for it, but I can I don't have facts today.

So I really hope that by in the coming months we see it really, uh, being the case.

My first worry now is let's make sure by implementing case management, that whatever we were doing and was working is still working after the release.

So that's my first worry.

So one step at a time.

But it's really the ambition.

So also the goal is that we see less let's say non-processed orders.

We call it because there are some exceptions left and right.

With that modernization.

We also took the opportunity that when analyzing the workflows we are having today and putting it to case management, when there were gaps that we fulfilled those gaps.

So that was one of the things that we discussed in those Design authority forums.

Hey, we have discovered a gap over here.

Do you give us the money to implement that change? Because it will reduce your, uh, non- processed orders left and right.

So that's a bit the type of discussions we are having.

Um, so yes, I really hope it will be the case, but a bit too early to confirm it with facts and figures today.

But if I just need to add, I mean, as a suggestion, of course, if you wait too long to do the upgrade, then you're really missing out.

And there, I mean, the speed of technology right now that is evolving and especially with GenAI coming, etc.

it is very easy to be left out, so to speak.

So in Proximus case, it was first an upgrade from 7.3 to 8.6.

By the time it was on 8.6, it was already in the extended support period.

And now, if we look into that, Pega is releasing a new release, let's say every year, then it gets very hard to keep up and the more you fall behind, then it gets harder also to get back to speed.

So yeah, but now we have first has to do the modernization and upgrade to case management because otherwise you cannot further upgrade your Pega.

But yes, we do realize we are out of extended support.

So I really hope we keep good friends with Pega because if tomorrow we have an issue with our application versus today, as such, they are not legally obliged to give us any support. I hope they don't do it, but okay.

No.

Of course.

But indeed.

And that's why we are now already doing the study to go to the Cloud that we get rid of this at our end, at least a very lengthy and rather expensive process of doing the upgrade.

Uh, yeah.

And I think indeed, to conclude, avoiding, you know, avoiding the the chance of waiting out on future capabilities and future features and just, you know, do technical upgrades.

I think avoiding is is a key word here.

And, um, making sure that the budget is always available to look at what Pega is going to release, how it impacts your current application and decide jointly to really adapt that change and not wait.

Because if you wait, you'll, you know, history repeats itself, I think.

Thank you.

How do we manage the rest of the integration bands.

You also mentioned your gems and things.

Are you modernizing those things as well? Yes yes yes yes.

We are also modernizing those parts as well.

Yeah.

Sorry, I should repeat.

Yeah.

So the question was indeed there are you know, Pega is only one side of the story in this whole order management, um, topic.

And you're right, there are a lot of integration capabilities that are also associated to the whole Pega application.

And the question was, are we also modernizing, you know, everything around, uh, the Pega application? Yes, yes.

Yeah, as much as possible. But everything has a cost.

So, uh, if there is a company that has no budget constraints, please raise your hand.

Let us know.

But it's 360 degree for you that you should look at.

You're right.

Yes.

Anything.

Can you go to the speaker otherwise? So you talked about technical modernization upgrade.

Do the upgrade on 2022 and then keep on going it.

But how it is impact on your business modernization with respect to technical modernization because your business business also is evolving.

The order process is changing.

So how do you see that your technical modernization impact business and vice versa? Difficult one.

So we have a whole IT transformation program which is running.

So phasing out old legacies.

Uh, so that's why we started in 2014 with Pega for a new ordering system.

Um.

We did phase it out partially.

So the 8020, like, I think a lot of other companies, the easy part we do, and then the remaining part.

We never get rid of those legacy applications.

So I really hope that, uh, whatever we saw this morning will help us in the future.

Uh, but indeed, businesses as well, evolving.

So we are not really focusing on this part.

The only thing we did is when we saw gaps in the current processes, we fulfilled those gaps.

But yeah, the only thing I want to add to that is I find it a very good question, actually.

Um, and one of the things the initiatives that we are doing is every quarter we organize Pega days. Right.

And on those days it's not, well, not yet, but I would like to invite also the business.

But there are product owners that we, you know, engage.

And the purpose of those Pega days is to bring innovations contextual to what we have implemented, right, and to bring the newest features that we think as a as a partner that makes sense and is relevant for Proximus.

And in that way, we also want to keep, you know, Proximus updated on the new features, the upcoming features or the innovations like the go to market solutions that we are building to, you know, present them and to make them aware and to open up that discussion that it might be indeed also relevant to take that that innovation.

Yeah.

So that is indeed something new that we start now.

Pega days.

But have we every workflow that was defined in Pega presented to the business and asked, what do you think about it? Is it still relevant? No, that we didn't do.

So yeah, it would have cost too much money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are there any other questions? Thank you.

Thank you, thank.

You for your time.

Thank you.