Pega Customer Decision Hub vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

PRPC is a BPM and Case management suite from Pega Systems. Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product but is very difficult to learn. Even, if we go to Pegasystems for training, we have to work on a project at least for a year to have some confidence. Areas where it requires improvements: 1) One of the first things that client's IT department questions about is proprietary BLOB column in PRPC, for them, it is a disadvantage, but as we all know BLOB is what makes the highly complex data model of any BPM application fit inside to a common schema which eliminates the help of a DBA. 2) Another area of improvement is: when using the wizards to generate rules (such as the connector wizards) you have to be careful about the level of coupling between the work object's data model and the interface's data model. This can also create maintenance issues. 3) The complete Pega suite of products have a long time to develop and deploy and it can be easily done using other low-cost software.

Incentivized

At least for us, what we noticed is the best use case is that it replaces the use of cloud teams, which has a more complex platform to navigate; since we are already using Salesforce, it was just more straightforward to allow the teams to continue to do that as opposed to giving them a new system. This also works for us because they are both selling the same product in different ways. Any team collaboration is where this product shines.

Incentivized

• Ability to design custom integrated campaigns
• Analytics to provide key insights and ability to tune your campaign accordingly
• Ability to design agent workflows

Incentivized

• Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
• Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
• Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer

Incentivized

• Pega Customer Engagement Suite is ready to use out of the box with several features, but custom development is always needed.
• Although new features can be quickly implemented, they have to go through a screening Business analysis process, QA screening and SCRUM based development.
• Pega eliminates the need for custom code, but there are rare cases where an specific requirement has little to no support from Pega, and implementing custom code can break OOB functionality and make the system unstable.

Incentivized

• Automation studio is very hard to use. We need to create a Data extension with all required fields before we can run SQL. So it takes a lot of time.
• Query Studio is much easier to use but it often gives an error while running the same SQL in Automation Studio works fine.
• We were not able to set up SMS messages as SFMC is not supporting MMS which is a big problem.

Incentivized

We are happy with Pardot. It has made our jobs easier and installed some reporting functions that have increased our ROI with the company. We have worked hard to set-up the functions in Pardot and it has taken time, but paid off.

You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.

Incentivized

Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.

Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.

They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support

Incentivized

Training program is not very well established. There is very little documentations. More often than not it's in-person training. I wish there were more video tutorials so that somebody can learn the system quickly. Their documentation is very much like an RFP. Long and very technichal. They should definitly improve on this area.

Incentivized

Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.

From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.

I explained in detail in previous questions.

We use Salesforce Marketing Cloud for lead management, generating reports, tracking customer and dealer information, inputting orders, and more. I prefer HubSpot for email marketing and automation because it is easier to use and the emails are designed much better. We currently use Salesforce and HubSpot, and we are very happy to have both, as they have different pros/cons.

Incentivized

Salesforce Marketing Cloud does a great job at what it is designed to do. There are several SaaS products in the Marketing Automation arena and SFMC is one of the top providers. There are several things it does well, such as email marketing and automation, leads generation/segmentation/qualification, and reporting/analytics. There are a few areas of improvement when it comes to the product and they surround legacy systems and architecture, outdated UI/UX, as well as targeting data in the activity logs for reporting and segmentation.

Incentivized

• Cost savings on print marketing and email due to better targeting
• More timely campaigns to reach customers at the right time

Incentivized

• We have been able to create mature lead generation opportunities using Salesforce Marketing Cloud in conjunction with CRM.
• We have had to spend much more in technical support
• We have been able to save on costs of daily maintenance emails through automation.

Incentivized