case studies

Making the external, internal

Building in-house capability to deliver Pega Customer Service, Case Management and Marketing for a major UK provider of pensions and investment products.

THE CHALLENGE

Our customer’s front and back-office customer service functionality is built on Pega Customer Service but over a ten year period their business has restructured and this along was no longer fit for purpose. The customer had previously used external providers for all their development and production support requirements, but this created major issues with dependency on external resource and limited internal knowledge. With this in mind, our objective was to assist the customer in building an in-house team of thirty people to internalise their Customer Service, Case Management and Marketing.

OUR SOLUTION

We began by utilising our enablement model to provide ‘contract to hire’ resources that involved us sourcing, interviewing, and hiring local talent, from recent graduates to those with over ten years industry experience. To ensure a smooth transition of the new staff, our enablement team of senior PSA/PBAs completed a knowledge transfer from the existing teams and an onboarding pack was created for the new team members. This included an overview of the business and its stakeholders, guidelines for development and testing best practices and environment details.
Throughout this, ai4consulting provided thorough training for all new hires, ensuring they were up to date with the existing Pega implementation, and that individuals achieved role based Pega Certifications where relevant. And finally, all team members were given on-the-job training and support for six months to support them in becoming self-sufficient with on-going design, build and testing requirements.

THE OUTCOME

At the end of the project, several highly capable in-house teams were created, eliminating the customer’s dependency on external resource. The new, local team members integrated well with the existing employees and the right mix of senior and junior resources was built.
Within a six-month period, all junior team members became Pega CSSA certified, all senior individuals were enabled to become in-house Pega LSAs.

And in the first year alone, the customer’s cost for development and production support was reduced by 40%. They were so impressed with the solution that a repeatable model was created to ensure that future hires continue to be on-boarded quickly and effectively.