Organization best practices

This video shows you how to implement an effective operating model for Pega Customer Decision Hub™ (CDH) by utilizing best practices developed from Pega's extensive product knowledge and global delivery experience. These best practices amalgamate the most successful strategies to help clients optimize their CDH implementation.

Given an understanding of the types of changes that can occur daily in CDH, we previously discussed how those changes should be governed. Now, we will focus on the Next Best Action (NBA) Execution Team. With governance in place to funnel in optimal content, it is crucial to have skilled, streamlined teams that support the implementation of customer communications in CDH.

How Business Ideas are Implemented

Before diving into the roles and their details, let's start with a high-level view of the team. Business as Usual Activities (BAU) are our focus here, and it is helpful to split BAU activities into two categories for efficient operation.

The first category is content changes, which involve every-day, high-volume changes around messaging, such as building, testing, and deploying Actions and Treatments. The second category is capability changes, which are typically lower in volume and involve strategic Next Best Action Framework changes.

When an organization starts with CDH, a single NBA Execution Team can manage both low-volume capability changes and high-volume content changes. However, as the CDH implementation matures and more channels and actions are introduced, the Execution Team needs to scale to meet increased BAU demand. To scale efficiently, we suggest splitting the Execution Team into a Capabilities Team and one or more Content Teams.

The Capabilities Team handles low-volume, complex capability changes, taking advantage of their experience and skills in CDH. The Content Team would consist of less experienced resources that are responsible for delivering high-volume, simpler changes, primarily working in 1:1 Operations Manager.

To understand why this split is effective, let's examine the Execution Team and the roles required. This diagram shows an effective structure for either a unified Execution Team, or the Capabilities Team if split as suggested.

This team will have a depth of expertise and experience, with a broad range of product and technical resources to support any type of change, from quick delivery of new actions, offers, or treatments to more complex changes in strategies and arbitration.

These circles represent the roles required in the team. Note that one role does not necessarily equate to a single person. In smaller organizations, one person can handle several roles, while in larger organizations, multiple people might work in the same role. Key roles include:

• NBA Analyst: A specialized analyst who is responsible for translating business requirements into workable NBA concepts.
• Business Transformation Consultant: Responsible for defining and driving organizational change to align with the 1:1 customer engagement vision.
• Lead Systems Architect: Highly experienced and responsible for technical architecture, performance, and integrations.
• Lead Decisioning Architect: Designs structural elements such as Taxonomies and sometimes Strategies in CDH.
• NBA Designer: Responsible for taking requirements and configuring them in NBA Designer.

By splitting the Execution Team into a Capabilities Team and one or several Content Teams, we provide an efficient avenue for scaling the Execution Team. We aim to grow by adding lighter-weight teams that can use less experienced resources to handle high-volume changes that increase as a CDH implementation scales up and down.

The key difference in this team is the absence of Lead Decisioning Architects, Lead System Architects, and NBA Designers. Instead, the NBA Specialist role is introduced to implement these types of changes. The NBA Specialist works in 1:1 Operations Manager, a highly guided user interface within CDH, to manage these changes end to end in a safe and secure environment for potentially lower-skilled operatives. By adding these lighter-weight Content Teams, the Capabilities Team is free to focus on lower-volume, more complex changes that require greater skill and experience.

Looking at the learning paths for these roles, it becomes clearer why it is easier to grow by adding lighter-weight teams. Pega learning paths start with Pega Academy, which provides excellent content to begin your learning journey. It offers Missions consisting of Modules, Challenges, and Exercises that allow you to learn conceptually how CDH works, and practically through hands-on exercises.

Pega has identified the most appropriate and relevant Missions and Modules for each typical Execution Team role. Additionally, we have identified which roles should be certified. For example, much less is required to get an NBA Specialist up to speed compared to an NBA Designer.

However, Pega Academy is just the start of the enablement journey, which must be supplemented by experience, co-production with experts, and engagement with Pega communities. Still, the NBA Specialist role has a much shorter path to success, making it a cost-effective role to make use of for scale.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

• The importance of effective governance in managing customer communications in CDH.
• The need for skilled, streamlined, and scalable teams to work in CDH.
• The benefits of splitting the Execution Team into Capability Teams and Content Teams for efficient scaling.
• The roles and responsibilities within the NBA Execution Team.
• The value of Pega Academy in providing learning paths for different roles.