PEGA Decisioning - Balancing Business Objectives and customer needs

To Balancing Business Objectives and customer needs, its good to remember the following points.

• Always-On customer brain stands behind the NextBestAction
•  Business Logic is an iterative development. We will develop with the current requirement and based on the customer behavior, we will change the Strategy
• The Key Elements in Implementing the Business Logic is:
• Business Issue * Group. All propositions will be added under any specific Group only
• Propositions - Proposition Catalogue will be maintained
• Prioritization - BL-Strategy
• Use the NBAM components to implement the logic Strategy. ADM is used to predict the customer Propensity and learning the data real-time.
• Predictive models will be used to learn from Existing models
• All Decisioning Strategy business rules are classified under Hard & Soft Rules. Eligibility rules are Hard rules and all Decision Data (Control param), Arbitration components are Soft rules
• Break the whole logic into Small sub strategies logically and process the Propositions in each stage to apply the proposition selection process
• Eligibility Rules are always determined as Hard Rules
• Prioritization component will be used to determine the Top offer at any given time.
• BusinessIssue and Group is something we want to think first before implementing NBAM project
• NBAM project is not a finished product. We want to learn and make the continuous changes to make the better decision 
• Apply BML methodology to keep optimizing the Strategies to drive the business outcome 
• B-Build - Make the Strategy/Logic changes
• M-Measure - Measure the performance of the Strategy 
• L-Learn - Learn the feedback from Customer 
• Repeat the BML method again. 

Happy Learning!

PEGA Decisioning - Decision Strategy execution

 To get the detailed understanding of PEGA Decisioning Strategy execution,

• Understand the purpose of each application component
  
• While populating the proposition itself, pxRank will be updated. Each source component is data source and destination is the final source. All propositions will be recomputed and pxRank will be updated again. Initially pxRank will be computed, the order in which the propositions received.
  
• When u call set property, new property will be set to the proposition
  
• Solid arrow means to copy the data from source to destination. Dotted arrow means only reference the data source. To refer the property from the referencing data source, use the reference component Name.PROPERTYName
  
• Aggregate component always refers the only one data (pxRank=1)
  
• Eligibility rules are Hard rules * Contextweight rules are soft rules
  
• use a Group By component to compute the average margin and a Filter component to filter out propositions with margin less than the average.

Happy Learning!

PEGA Decisioning - Assessing the Impact of the new product Offer

Assessing the Impact of the new product Offer is very critical in Decisioning & marketing prior to launch in Production. We can assess the Impact of the new product Offer using the following steps. 

• Simulation will be used to assess the new product offer. It’s more like what-if analysis
• Use the simulation and analyze the results using VBD to understand the forecast of the product sale. Identify the eligibility rules&context weight to identify the new offers to be proposed.
• Based on the simulation result, update the strategy and control parameters to give the better outcome for new product. It is an iterative process.
• Propositions are anything that can be offered to a customer. This can include advertisements, products, offer bundles and even service actions
• The actual definition of a proposition is “The proposed course of action.”
• Simulation enables you to execute a complex or simple Decisioning strategy using large customer sample both reference and new simulations.
• In Pega Decision Management we create a simulation run using decision data flows which can be run in a batch mode.
• Before adding the new proposition data in Decision Date, understand the structure of the proposition and update the static contents accordingly
• Understand the Strategy and modify the control parameters influence the offer and make the amendments accordingly. After changing the Marketing strategy, execute the product launch simulation strategy referring the proposition distribution report.

PEGA Decisioning - Managing the Decisioning Business Rules (Revision Management)

Has 3 envs in PROD (build-Sandbox, test-sandbox and prod).Revision Management enabled business users to make the change with the limited riles

Post every release, AppOverlay reset will be done in the dev environment (PROD-AUTH). ie, new version of the app overlay will be created. Post creation, completed package will be deployed in business sandbox (Simulation) followed by PROD like regular BAU release.     

• AppOverlay release & package deployment as part of BAU release has to be explored. 
• The process to create a version & export is based on the dynamic case management process.
• As part of Revision management, CRs will be created by Revision Manager and the change will be implemented by Strategy Designer. Revision manager will approve/Reject the CR

New AppOverlay version will be installed like below:

•      The System Architect can use the revision activation landing page which can be found at Decisioning -> Infrastructure -> Revision Management -> Revisions.
• These revisions are primarily used to implement the config parameter to alter the decision application behavior.
• To sendback the CR to the RevisionManager, use SendBack CR option incase any additional RuleSet access required.
• Once you submit the Revision, jar package file will be generated. We need to download them.
• To implement the changes in pre-prod & Prod environment, Decisioning -> Infrastructure -> Revision Management -> Revisions->Import revision.
• Select the Operator from the available list to test the changes for the selected operators before promoting the change.Decisioning -> Infrastructure -> Revision Management -> Revisions->"Activate" the change. Change will be activated to all the users. We can roll-back if needed.
•  After activating the package, we need to logout and login again

Working with the Revision Management is 2 set processes. 1. Create Revision. 2. Create CR. We can have more than 1 CR in a given Revision. Once Revision Submitted, Jar will be generated. If the change is not working, we can revert the change by doing "Roll-back", otherwise activate the Revision.

More details about PEGA Revision management is available here https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/articles/decision-management-overview/revision-management-decisioning-rules-pega-platform-pega-73 

PEGA Decisioning - Working with PEGA Decisioning Components

PEGA Strategy Decision Components are the building blocks of decision strategy, they are the language used by the business to express how business wants to go through the strategies.

The Import components bring external data into the decision strategy e.g. data from another strategy, or the propositions to the customer.

Business Rules components apply business rules, such as eligibility requirements.

Decision Analytics components make predictions about the customer, e.g. propensity, or, likelihood to accept an offer.

Enrichment components do calculations, such as a margin calculation based on the price and cost, and the pricing can be dynamic.

Arbitration components filter out propositions that are less relevant for the customer or that a customer is not eligible for.

Selection components allow propositions to be ranked, top offers for a customer can be selected.

Aggregation components allow the calculation of aggregate numbers e.g. telecomms company can calculate monthly usage, or a bank can calculate average monthly account balances to determine a credit card.

Business process kicks off a decision rule or a decision strategy. A Flow Shape is the link between BPM and Decision Mgmt, it can either call a Decision rule or a decision strategy via the Interaction Rule.

 

Run Interaction flow shape invokes a Decision Strategy via the Interaction rule type- it separates the decision strategies from the business processes, allows to swap out strategies without changing the process flow (business users do not rely on technical users to update business process).

From Strategy you can invoke other rule types: Decision Trees or Tables, Scorecards or Adaptive Model, which means that the strategy can invoke rule types that are a part of PRPC or PDM.

 

All of this is supported by PEGA Decisioning Core Services:

Interaction History- keeps a track of communication with a customer

Visual Business Director – preps the data rendered in 3D VBD landing page

Adaptive Decision Manager – live data is gathered and adaptive models are created and linked with a proposition.

NBA is determined by a collection of sub-strategies rather than a single strategy- this is called the “Separation of Concerns” design principle. It enables each sub-strategy to address a separate aspect of how NBA is determined. The result of each sub-strategy feeds into the corresponding component of the higher level strategy and is presented to the agent or a customer via appropriate channel.

In Pega 7 Designer Studio (App Explorer>Process Flow) we build the application, where in the Case Manager portal we can review it.

The results of the strategy can be written to a clipboard where the data can be accessed by BPM and PDM layer of the application.