Legacy Transformation: How Pega's Blueprint Revolutionizes Enterprise Workflows

Legacy transformation just got a whole lot faster. In this fascinating conversation with Matt Healy, who leads go-to-market for the Pega platform, we explore the remarkable evolution of Pega's Blueprint - a revolutionary SaaS product that's redefining how enterprises approach workflow automation and legacy system migration.

[Sponsored]

Blueprint has become the fastest-adopted capability in Pega's history, with over 150,000 applications generated in just 12 months. The latest advancement? AI agents that analyze legacy assets - from screen recordings to documentation - and transform them into cloud-ready applications. The results are staggering: Vodafone Networks has compressed their workflow deployment timeline to just 40 hours, dramatically accelerating their digital transformation journey.

At the heart of Pega's approach is what Healy describes as "center-out business architecture," allowing enterprises to define processes once and deploy them across all channels. This unified approach ensures consistency as customers navigate between mobile, web, and contact centers, while maintaining full context throughout their journey.

We also dive deep into Pega's unique approach to agentic AI, balancing innovation with enterprise requirements for governance and compliance. While research shows fewer than 20% of enterprises are realizing ROI from agentic AI investments, Pega's "predictable AI agents" wrap structured workflows with AI layers, ensuring compliant, auditable processes that deliver measurable value.

Looking ahead, Healy predicts 2025 will be "the year of adoption" as enterprises integrate AI agents into core operations. Through partnerships with cloud providers and system integrators, Pega is focused on helping organizations escape legacy constraints and embrace an AI-powered future. Ready to transform your legacy systems? Try Blueprint today at pega.com/blueprint and experience the difference for yourself.

🌎 Watch the full interview on YouTube - https://youtu.be/rD-HKW6m00g

#PegaWorld2025 #AI #AgenticAI #PegaWorld  #AILiteracy Pegasystems #ad #Sponsored

Chapters

• 0:00 Matt Healy's Role at Pega
• 1:05 Blueprint Evolution and Legacy Transformation
• 3:14 Customer Success with Blueprint
• 4:35 Center-Out Business Architecture Explained
• 6:32 Agentic AI: Risk, Compliance and ROI
• 10:27 Future Predictions for Enterprise Agility

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Matt. For those who don't know, you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to today.

Speaker 2: 0:05

Yeah, absolutely so, Matt Healy. I lead go-to-market for the Pega platform, so I get to think about all things development with Pega how we're setting up enterprises to bring new automations and AI to life, and then how they use those in their operations and customer service departments to really increase efficiency and change how they work.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Fantastic. You and I met 12 months ago and you made some predictions about what we would see at this. Yeah, I have video evidence as well, just to be clear, what we would see at this year's Pega World. And you mentioned that you hoped that Blueprint, in particular, would develop that little bit further because, let's be honest, between this time this year and this time last year, legacy transformation is still an issue. So there's been some exciting announcements this week around Pegablueprint. There's been exciting announcements around how quickly organizations can transform legacy. So bring the audience up to date with that as well, because there's some cool stuff, and I will refer to some of your predictions last year and describe how they were smashed out of the water.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Okay, hopefully I sound smart, but so it's been a fun 12 months with Blueprint. So this time last year, at Pega World 2024, blueprint was still a baby. It was only 10 or 11 weeks old at the time and for those of you who may not have tried Blueprint yet, you can try it right now. It's wwwpegacom. Slash Blueprint, open to anyone. You can try it right now.

Speaker 1: 1:23

It's wwwpegacom slash blueprint Open to anyone and I recommend it yeah it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So it's essentially our front door into our workflow automation platform.

Speaker 2: 1:31

It allows enterprises to define what they're trying to build and it uses a Gentic AI to then set a best practice template which their business and IT teams can collaborate on before actually pushing that to live. And we've seen it dramatically compress the requirements gathering phase and really accelerate the path to go live. So Blueprint it's a SaaS product. It's something which we enhance every single week.

Speaker 2: 1:55

So we started engaging with clients on this even before PegaWorld last year, and one of the main points of feedback that they had was hey, matt, this is cool stuff, but I already have existing systems which I'm trying to get off of. I'm not always starting from a clean slate here, so what can you do to really help me inform the applications that I'm building in Pega using my legacy systems and those assets? So this year we're pleased to announce that Blueprint has a set of new AI agents which allow enterprises to bring assets directly from their legacy systems. So things like screen recordings, ui screens, legacy documentations, standard operating procedures whatever it may be bring it into Blueprint and AI will analyze it and turn it into a future-ready application on the cloud so you can go and turn off that legacy system.

Speaker 1: 2:46

And the one you mentioned just I was saying I was going to joke you was that someday they'll be able to bring in video in the future. But that's in the platform as well. Wow, I look prescient.

Speaker 2: 2:55

That's it.

Speaker 1: 2:56

You thought ahead, but bring it to life a little bit, because we do hear a lot of technology companies talking about we've got this amazing technology and then we look for evidence and we want to see customers who are actually doing something with it. Because you did predict last year as well. You said there'd be lots of customers doing things. So are there lots of customers doing things?

Speaker 2: 3:14

yeah, blueprint is the fastest adopted capability in pegas history. We've had over 150 000 applications generated in blueprint over the past 12 months. Applications generated in Blueprint over the past 12 months. You saw on the main stage Vodafone Networks. They're using Blueprint as a core accelerator as part of their operating model for deploying new workflows and getting off of legacy systems. And what they talked about, which I'm super excited about.

Speaker 1: 3:38

I didn't know it was going to be this fast, but they are getting new workflows, new automations to live in their network operations division in 40 hours around Blueprint and I think people will struggle with that because if we walk through the process of transforming legacy, normally we're into months of meeting with the business and I think there's a big gap there.

Speaker 1: 3:57

And this is the bit that I've struggled with as a technology professional over the last 30 years. Like the usual, gantt charts don't work because customers can't consume them the ability for technology people to actually describe what it is going to look like and what it's going to feel like. And again now, across platform, across context, with chat, on mobile, it's difficult and the business themselves can't quite describe what they want. And this is where I have to say I really adore where Blueprint is starting to bring all this to life, so now I can see before I go to live what's actually happening. Bring that to life, because we've seen a lot on stage this week and a lot of the audience won't actually have been in the room to see some of this amazing tech.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah, no, totally so. Blueprint I like to think of it as almost like a mural or like a whiteboard type application, but purpose built for business process design and application design. So it allows you to have, you know, 10, 20, 30 various stakeholders across the business and across the IT teams all working on the same application design, you know, putting in their requirements, changing the data model, defining the logic for the various steps, whatever it may be, and at any point in that definition, they're able to preview how those workflows will come to life for all of the users who are going to need access to them. And it's really a showcase, at that point, of one of our key differentiators, in my mind, for enterprises, which is the center out business architecture, which you know you're like.

Speaker 2: 5:21

What is that? The whole thing with that is that workflows are abstracted from front ends. So enterprises, of course, they need to serve customers through self-service channels. They need a mobile application. They need to be able to plug workflows through to the website. They need people in the back office who actually do work for those workflows that are running. They need a contact center to be able to engage customers when they call in who need help with regard to one of those workflows. So they need to serve so many different constituents. So our approach allows them to define their process once and plug it into all of those channels for all of those users who need it, and you're able to view all of those channels directly in Blueprint for your workflows as you're making changes to them.

Speaker 1: 6:06

And I think that is the exciting and the interesting bit, because you're seeing this, when you're describing all of those different channels, it isn't that they're happening separately, they're all happening at the same time and again, the interesting bit you're starting to see is customers hopping across channels. You need that same contextual context and therefore, to be able to envisage it is really cool, and I watched someone actually adjust the flow live as it was happening as well. Now, we'd be a little bit remiss if we didn't use the word agentics during this interview.

Speaker 2: 6:31

I've heard that.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Have you heard of this? Okay, all righty. So just give me a little bit of understanding. What do Pega mean by agentics? And my biggest fear is, when we're using agentics, we run into hallucinations, we run into the danger of risks and if I'm a multinational bank, the last thing I want to do is send out a communication that's wrong. Or, as I discovered recently as I was doing a bit of research, one New Zealand-based health company who advertised a cyanide burger, so it got them a lot of attention, but let me suggest it probably was the wrong attention.

Speaker 1: 7:04

I'm an exotic eater, I don't know. Well, I will give you the list of the website and you can order, I'm told. But bring us to life then. What's agentics? And how do you guarantee ethical, responsible AI so the business can bet their bank on it for want of a better phrase without worrying about hallucinations or committing themselves to something they shouldn't or endangering their customers? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:25

I mean agentic AI. It's all over the market. If you look at it, I think every enterprise has an agentic AI strategy or is trying to invest in some way. But if you look at the research, fewer than 20% of those are actually realizing any return on investment from agentic AI at the moment, and some of the reasons are worries about risk compliance, governance and then integration.

Speaker 1: 7:47

And some of the reasons are worries about risk compliance, governance and then integration with some of their core operations and system, or using a prompt and calling that agentic AI.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, and that's what you see out there in the market, right, everyone is adding AI agent builders, where you define, you know, in a prompt what an AI agent should do, and then you give it tools and you essentially say, go, and that AI agent is going to get a request, it's going to think of what it should do, it's going to go off and call tools, which is really great for dynamic tasks, for you know types of work which where dynamism and flexibility is really paramount, but is not so great when you need repeatability, when you need to be able to show that you're compliant to, you know, standards and regulations. So you know our approach and I will say we do also have an AI agent builder. So we're, we have the ability for you to automate manual tasks with autonomous agents.

Speaker 2: 8:38

we have that Guilty as charged, yes, but I think we're also doing something pretty unique which is really important for enterprises, by enabling them with what we're calling predictable AI agents, which is all predicated on the idea that you're building a workflow in Pega, in Blueprint, which has your rules, has your regulations, has your process codified. That's how you want it to run, or that's how you need it to run because of your standards or your regulations. So what we're doing is we're wrapping all workflows you build in Pega with a thin AI agent layer which essentially turns them into AI agents themselves. So if a customer chats in through an AI agent on a website, essentially how it will work, it will comb through the list of workflows that it has available to it, find the right one based on that intent and then walk the customer through that structured process. So you know that the same process that you need to be followed is really being followed at scale.

Speaker 1: 9:36

And how do I guarantee that consistency and persistency? Is there traceability and trackability? Because if I'm in a bank, for example never mind even a bank in a risk or compliance team, I want the visibility, I want to see what's actually happened, I want to see a full workflow of that. Does it exist? Come on.

Speaker 2: 9:53

Of course it does. Yeah, pega, you know, for its whole history, has been built on an industry leading case management framework and that is underneath every single AI agent in Pega. So you get the full audit history and you're also able to then orchestrate AI agents and people and automated systems all working on one process and seeing what happened for a single customer transaction from beginning to end.

Speaker 1: 10:17

And I think that's key. It's not agent or person or automation, it's the combination of the lot. So last two questions, then Making you predict yet again, here we go. I know, I know, I know the things that I think are exciting in the market or needed is organizational agility. So I want to describe over the next 12 months how is Pega actually going to help organizations agility in the market. And then I want you to make some other predictions what else is going to happen in the next 12 months? And then we'll test you in 12 months time.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:47

So I think, in terms of agility, one of our main focuses building on some of the capabilities you saw this week is helping enterprises get off legacy systems and help them do that fast.

Speaker 2: 10:58

There's so many mainframe applications out there homegrown Java applications, lotus Notes applications, ibm Domino, stuff. There is just a ton of legacy that is hindering enterprises' ability to serve their customers in the ways that they want to and also really hindering their ability to adopt new and emerging AI capabilities. You can't slap AI on a mainframe right, so they need to get off of those. So we have those new capabilities in Blueprint and we're also tapping into the ecosystem to really help us get enterprises from where they are today to new agile, ai-infused, automated workflows in the cloud and do that fast. So we have new partnerships with AWS, with Google Cloud and with a number of SIs which bring together their source code analysis tools for things like understanding COBOL applications, or whatever it may be, and using that insight to then generate blueprints automatically, to then generate blueprints automatically, to then quickly bring new workflows to the cloud so you can turn off those legacy systems once and for all.

Speaker 1: 12:01

You know people are going on YouTube now going what is COBOL? But when their mothers are coming out earning more money than them as consultants, you know there's something up. So give me your predictions. And if you and I are sitting here in 2026 and you're saying what has happened with the Pega systems, what are you going to tell me is now available to customers and what success stories are going to be out in the market that we're all going to be seeing on stage?

Speaker 2: 12:23

I think to me, this is the year of adoption. Everyone has released their AI agent capabilities. We've done the same. Now it's which ones work in the enterprise and how can we actually build those capabilities into core operations and core service functions within enterprises to really unlock the value that they're looking for. So I am predicting put on my little prediction hat here that we are going to have clients on the main stage next year talking about how they've infused their operations and service with agentic AI to dramatically increase efficiency and their customer experience.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Oh, I like that. No, you've stayed very broad, but I'll allow you away with that. Look, this is the moment that we're in. At this time, you know, we need great people, we need great software, we need great applications, we need great cloud-based applications SaaS preferably. We need agentic labor. We need all of that working together because the world demands it today. Matt, until next year. Thank you so much, indeed. Thank you, brilliant.