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Coronavirus crisis pushes companies deeper into digital ‘they have to rethink their old way of working’: Pegasystems CEO

Software company Pegasystems posted its first quarter earnings back in April, beating analysts estimates. Pegasystems CEO Alan Trefler joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to break down the latest financial results and address how the company is faring amid the coronavirus crisis.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, let's talk more, though, about one company that's been performing well. And when you go to the bank, you may not realize that some of the software underpinning what the bank is doing for you is coming from Pegasystems. And their CEO, Alan Trefler, joins us now. It's a multibillion dollar software company. Market cap's over 6 billion, and just had a very good first quarter.

But I want to ask you a question. You actually played a role in helping banks roll out PPP. What role was that?

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ALAN TREFLER: Well, for many of our clients, they use us to automate their processes and put rules in place super fast. And when we have clients, whether they're existing customers or, in some cases, even new customers, they were able to take advantage of our no-code, model-driven architecture to be able to put new processes in place, whether it was, as you describe, a PPP-type process, or whether it was, you know, helping people who had lost their jobs get registered with, you know, for example, the German government.

JULIE HYMAN: Alan, it's Julie here. I mean, during this pandemic, I'm curious, especially when you're communicating with or creating platforms to communicate with people about things like loans and losing their jobs, are these platforms for live people to communicate? Are they automated? And how have you had to change, if at all, sort of the tone, or the training, or what have you to deal with sensitive issues here?

ALAN TREFLER: Well, it's been interesting. We were-- I think I was pretty worried when we closed down for the first 48 hours. But by the time we got to 72 hours, we realized that our customers were hanging in there. We're fortunate in that we tend to deal primarily with enterprises. The small and medium business segment is not something that we're very materially exposed to. And thankfully, also, we're not in some of the industries that have been slammed.

But we really tried to engage with our clients on a compassionate and empathetic basis because they were just getting slammed in terms of call center volumes or other types of communications. And our whole mission is to help our clients communicate with their customers better and to be able to automate the processes that will make them more effective.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Alan, it's Brian Cheung here. The automation is something that could be costly for a lot of businesses. And during this time, it seems like with a lot of companies with almost virtually no revenue making that investment might be really difficult. So are you seeing on the business development side of things a lot of interest in trying to take on these technologies right now?

Because on one hand, it's like, yeah, you want to take advantage of this time to really speed up your business to survive when we get out of this. But at the same time, companies might not have that money.

ALAN TREFLER: We're seeing sort of a dual track of interest. There is a pulse of the immediate interest, where people are trying to fix problems that are at hand. How do you create the right forbearance arrangements with your customer if they're unable, for example, to pay their phone bill or pay their loan?

But as I said earlier, our customers have tended to be the larger enterprises. You know, think about the sort of Fortune 2000. And they actually realized two things. One, they've got to do some things immediately. But two, they're going to have to rethink their whole way of working. And what we're seeing is a lot of interest in trying to understand what 2021 is going to look like, where they understand they need to do a whole variety of technology-related things very differently.

ADAM SHAPIRO: You mentioned earlier that Germany-- you're a global company. And you deal with, as you just said, some of the largest companies on the planet, insurance companies, for instance. Where do you see the greatest demand for what you're-- what you provide? And will some of it, if it were in Europe, be applicable in the United States?

ALAN TREFLER: Well, yes, many of these issues are global. They have different names. But people everywhere are struggling with a lot of the same issues as they think both about how they're going to continue their client relationships, but also how they're going to be able to preserve them so they don't have to win back those customers. So we're seeing a lot of global applicability of what the technology can do.

The most interesting thing has been the sort of pulse of interest and need coming out of governments. And some of them are both the immediate pressures, but a lot of them are also realizing they really need to do things very, very differently. And that's going to involve a lot of digital transformation platforms, which we're a leader in.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Alan Trefler is the CEO of Pegasystems, joining us from Boston. Thank you very much. All the best to you.