Case Study

How a U.S. manufacturer improved Pega guardrail compliance from 92% to 98% while maintaining business continuity

Pega complexity does not have to increase over time. UST helped a U.S. manufacturer modernize its Pega Cloud environment, improving governance, documentation, and code quality; raising guardrail compliance from 92% to 98%; enhancing performance; and simplifying long-term maintenance.

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UST upgraded a complex, multi-portal Pega Cloud environment while strengthening application performance, code quality, integrations, and documentation without disrupting critical business operations.

OUR CLIENT

Our client is a mid-sized U.S. manufacturer and distributor serving customers across North America. Its portfolio spans specialty home and lifestyle products, including refrigeration, climate control, and kitchen appliances. The company relies on Pega applications across customer service, account management, warehouse operations, knowledge management, and back-office functions.

THE CHALLENGE

Modernizing a complex Pega environment without disrupting critical business operations

The manufacturer needed to modernize a Pega environment that had become deeply embedded in day-to-day operations. Multiple portals, supported customer service, account management, warehouse operations, knowledge management, and back-office functions.

The company needed to move from Pega 8.3.2 to 8.6.2 as part of its digital modernization strategy. But this was not a straightforward Pega platform upgrade. The environment contained interconnected workflows, extensive user interfaces, and integrations with multiple enterprise systems. Critical business processes had to remain supported throughout the transition.

The complexity ran deeper:

Interconnected workflows increased upgrade dependencies, requiring assessment across a broad, multi-portal Pega ecosystem.
Extensive UI components increased remediation and testing requirements, adding migration complexity.
Multiple enterprise integrations require careful validation, including connections with Medisys, ACMP, and VUM.
Incomplete application documentation increased risk, making dependency analysis, impact assessment, testing, and migration more difficult.
Business continuity remained essential, requiring the upgrade to protect ongoing operations while the underlying environment changed.

These were not simply upgrade issues. The company carried technical complexity without the documentation and governance needed to manage it efficiently.

A successful Pega Cloud upgrade for manufacturing therefore had to accomplish more than move the platform to a newer version. It needed to improve maintainability, performance, and governance while keeping critical operations running.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Modernizing the Pega platform while strengthening its foundation

UST did not begin by moving applications to the newer platform version. The team first established what the upgrade could affect.

Pega architects, developers, and quality assurance specialists reviewed workflows, business rules, user interfaces, and system integrations. UST then mapped dependencies, identified remediation requirements, and defined validation procedures before migrating.

That assessment turned the Pega 8.3.2 to 8.6.2 migration into a broader modernization effort focused on the areas that would determine long-term performance and supportability:

Modernized the Pega Cloud environment, upgrading the platform from 8.3.2 to 8.6.2 while remediating upgrade impacts across the application architecture.
Optimized customer-facing and operational capabilities, using Pega CRM to improve user experiences, reporting, business rules, and data integrations.
Strengthened enterprise integrations, validating and enhancing connections with Medisys, ACMP, and VUM to maintain information exchange and operational continuity.
Improved service workflows, using Pega Customer Service and Pega Knowledge Management to strengthen service operations and workflow efficiency.
Validated the environment end-to-end, testing multiple portals and critical business workflows to support a controlled transition.
Created comprehensive application documentation, covering use cases, portal functionality, architecture, solution design, and test scenarios. This established a stronger foundation for future maintenance and enhancements.

Each intervention addresses a different source of upgrade complexity. Together, they improved the platform itself.

The manufacturer moved beyond completing a Pega Cloud modernization project. It gained a better-documented, more maintainable environment with stronger integrations and a foundation designed to support future platform enhancements.

THE IMPACT

Better application performance, stronger governance, and easier long-term maintenance

The project delivered more than a version upgrade. The environment became easier to govern, maintain, and use, with improved performance, faster integrations, better workflow visibility, and clearer documentation for future support teams.

The results make that improvement concrete:

Integration improvements also enabled quicker information access and faster customer query resolution. Customer service representatives gained better workflow visibility and operational control. The foundation was now stronger—and designed to support future platform enhancements without accumulating the same technical debt.

Complex Pega environments become harder to modernize when integrations, application dependencies, and documentation gaps accumulate over time. Discover how UST approaches Pega application modernization to improve performance, maintainability, governance, and scalability while protecting business continuity.