Alan Trefler is the Founder and CEO of Pegasystems, which provides strategic business applications to companies around the world. He was awarded “Software CEO of the Year” by the American Business Awards and was named “Public Company CEO of the Year” by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. His book, Build for Change, describes a new generation of customers that have unprecedented power to make or break brands and the changes businesses must embrace to succeed in today’s digital world.
Tell me about your first job.
As a teenager I worked in my father’s crystal, porcelain and furniture restoration shop. That gave me a sense of what it’s like to be in business and do work of high quality — because my father had very, very high standards.
After I finished school, I went to work as a systems integrator. We would go through a process that struck me as extremely onerous: people would write big specs, they would hand it off to my team, we would build functional and technical decomposition and dataflow diagrams, and then we would type cryptic words into text files and compile them. I thought to myself, “This is the 80s! Why are we doing all this translation to get something that looks good to the machine rather than making the machines smart enough to make good sense to business people?” That was the stimulus for the ideas at the foundation of Pegasystems.
How does Pegasystems solve that problem?
Pega is software that enables our clients to improve customer experience, and enhance and automate their operations.
You’re familiar with CAD software? The technical person might draw a wireframe diagram in the software, but then you’d be able to let a business person play with that diagram and customize it, and if you were hooked up to a 3D printer, you could even create the product. We do the same, but with business problems, particularly those involving customer experience and CRM.
We created a model-driven architecture that helps business and IT work together to design the systems they want, and then our software actually writes the code that is used to run the application. If they want to change their application, they just change the model, which describes in business terms how the system will function, and that in turn changes the code.
What kind of companies use your software?
We work with many of the world’s leading brands in multiple industries as well as government. One customer who really uses our technology well is American Express, for their top-notch customer service. Sprint has been using us to dramatically improve client retention. We’re being used by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to handle the way they engage with the citizens of the UK. Xerox uses our software to help their field service engineers better support their customers. And one of LOT’s current members, Ford, uses our software for their warranty application that is used by their dealers worldwide.
How did you find out about LOT Network?
The principles of good corporate citizenship underlying LOT are very much in line with our values of reliability and integrity. Which, coincidentally, led us to being named as one of America’s 100 most trustworthy companies by Forbes Magazine. Abusive patent litigation has not only been a problem for us and our peers in the technology sector, but also for companies in some of the major verticals we serve – for example, financial services and automotive. As I mentioned, some of our customers such as JPMC, Ford, and Nissan are current LOT members, and we thought it was great company to be in. I’m sure they appreciate us supporting them on this issue of curbing costly and predatory IP litigation. Also, it positions us as a preferred supplier to our customers and prospects who can be reassured of our commitment to building technology and IP that creates value for their business, rather than detracts from it.
We really decry the emergence of the patent troll, and we are committed as a firm to fighting them. I think as a matter of honor and good business, firms need to not capitulate. All that does is fuel the fire and validates the trolls’ business model.
Finally, and most important, I’ve heard you’re a bit of a ping pong nut.
Every week I take ping pong lessons, which I view as a physical version of chess, though far more sweaty. At our annual Pegaworld conference we’ve had long nights of ping pong, with our staff and clients there. As well, of course, as other intellectual and physical pursuits.