Bravo, PROS! What It Means for CPQ 

Thoma Bravo has acquired PROS Holdings for about $1.4 billion.  
 
Here’s what they’ve announced: PROS’ B2B pricing and CPQ business will merge with Conga, another Thoma Bravo portfolio company best known for revenue lifecycle management. Meanwhile, PROS’ travel business has been separated out as platform investment for Thoma Bravo.  
 
Here’s their marketing vision: The combined Congo/PROS solution will become a “super revenue platform,” offering end-to-end CPQ and contract lifecycle automation.  

Now for the uncomfortable truth: PROS core software has always been about Passenger Revenue Optimization Software (That’s where PROS got its name!). Historical investments show a clear focus on bolstering the platform’s travel sector feature set, with some outliers: CPQ is one of them. The way Thoma Bravo is splitting the business makes it clear that they recognize passenger revenue optimization as a worthy and profitable enterprise software business. However, PROS took on other tech investments along the way that detracted from that focus.  
 
Namely, CPQ and B2B pricing optimization.  

So now, the scraps leftover after fixing the PROS core are being fed to Conga. 😬 

 Despite what the press release says, injecting acquired leftover tech scraps into Conga’s already “combined solution” doesn’t really make the result a “super platform.” Well, unless by “super” they mean a lot of different things that require a lot of services to integrate with each other. 

And it doesn’t matter how well integrated contract automation software and CPQ can become, if the CPQ capability list doesn’t include handling complex bundles, still struggles with high-volume quotes, and still requires heavy implementation coding…it’s going to leave gaps for many organizations that need to use it. That means your sales and delivery teams end up managing more side-spreadsheets to handle the details and configurations that your CPQ can’t. 

CPQ or Déjà vu? 

We’ve all seen this story before: Investor meets company, finds the diamond in the rough and then salvages the rest for parts.  
 
PROS, itself, acquired other companies on its journey; after buying Chameleon for its CPQ solution in 2013, the company focused again on its core, acquiring two more travel-focused companies, as well as a pricing analytics software firm. The travel side of their house took off (pun intended), but the rest? Well, that’s what’s being recycled into Conga’s collection bin now.  
 
This story also sounds a lot like Salesforce CPQ — after acquiring Steelbrick CPQ in 2015, Salesforce became a large presence in the CPQ market, just from the sheer magnitude of the market share of its CRM platform.  
 
Despite the hype and initial promise of Salesforce CPQ, though, we’re now witnessing it fade into the sunset (after nearly a half decade without major feature additions). Salesforce CPQ customers are facing re-implementation. It’s just a few years away.  

Salesforce might be an extreme example, but it doesn’t take a platform’s sunset to hold your CPQ capabilities back.  

Where to Expect Innovation Investment 

Let’s give credit. Airline carriers kept renewing PROS because its Travel platform works. Revenue management, digital selling, demand forecasting, and yield discipline, all tailored to the travel sector.  

Thoma Bravo is letting that business breathe as an independent platform. That’s a sound call, and airline customers should expect a clearer roadmap and more product innovation focus. That core business was shouldering the weight of carrying large code bases of CPQ and other non-core products that were not providing a solid return and encumbering PROS overall.  

So, what’s in store for PROS CPQ customers? 

Conga could combine PROS and Conga CPQ under one solution. That will take years and require significant investment to catch up with the cutting-edge capabilities that the CPQ market leaders have.  
 
Will Conga instead ditch PROS CPQ software and mine the customer base to get them to re-implement (er, we mean “upgrade!”) onto their own, existing Conga CPQ product? 
 
That path makes a lot of business sense (to Conga), but it’s likely to just end up leaving customers with higher licensing fees, fewer features, and less support. Conga’s business and marketing focus leans heavily on CLM (contract lifecycle management). Does that mean CPQ is just going to be another afterthought for them? If so, the risks are clear: 

• Fewer CPQ-specific feature updates 

• Less CPQ innovation 

• Greater integration complexity 

• Performance and quoting delays 

• Admin UX complexity 

• CPQ falls further behind (just like Salesforce CPQ did) 

One of the other big things to think about is usability. Bringing together a bunch of features sounds great on paper, but when you have a business with even modest amounts of complexity, you really do need dedicated tools to get the CPQ job done.   
 
What happens when advanced pricing administration is buried behind custom implementation coding? You’ll need to get those expensive consultants back in more often. 
 
Or when your sales teams keep using spreadsheets, because the product configurator can’t model your product and pricing rules the way your business defines them. 

What It Means if You’re a PROS CPQ Customer 

Your CPQ is likely already showing signs of strain. Many implementations require ongoing injections of professional services just to stay functional. That support is most likely going to become more expensive and more scarce. 

Now is the time to start evaluating your options. Begin with the systems you’ve already invested in, like your CRM and ERP, and ask which CPQ solution integrates deeply with what you have (or where you’re going to be). That’s where long-term CPQ capability, efficiency, and scalability live.  

Surface-level integrations might sync some data between systems, but they often create as many problems as they solve. You end up with duplicate records, manual workarounds, missing information fields and teams toggling between platforms and spreadsheets to try to get a complete picture.  

Deep integration with your CRM/ERP means your CPQ becomes part of your tech ecosystem, not just bolted onto the side of it. 

PROS CPQ + Conga CPQ: Specific Questions to Consider 

1. When will you have to reimplement?   
   • What new CPQ capabilities will you get for effort, cost, and time of reimplementing?   

2. Will the PROS CPQ code base be maintained an independent release path or die a slow death as you are presented with an “upgrade” path onto Conga CPQ? (Revisit question 1.) 

3. If migration is required, what will the runway look like? 

4. What will customer support and those recuring professional services injections look like during and after the transition? 

5. What changes are planned for authentication, data residency, or audit logging? 

6. What complexities does my business have already (or will have) and how will my new CPQ accommodate it? (Or will I have to contort by business to conform to my chosen CPQ?) 

The Bottom Line 

This acquisition could be great if you’re in one of the passenger transportation industries: rail, airline, or maybe even ferryboats. Call your local PROS travel agent and hook up your ticketing systems with their passenger revenue optimization software today. They’re going to focus on that now. Expect some innovation.  

For anything else from PROS (like CPQ), it’s a good time to look around and see what you’ve been missing. If you’re faced with an upcoming re-implementation, you should figure out how to make that investment count the most for your business.