PROS invests significantly in co-selling with Microsoft based on strong internal rate of return

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Fully embracing the Microsoft co-sell system

When asked about his company’s co-sell efforts with Microsoft, Chris Jones gives a ringing endorsement. “PROS has fully embraced the Microsoft co-sell system, including investing in marketing and partner sales executives for our alliance staff so we can better facilitate our co-sell activities,” said Jones, who is the Senior Vice President of Sales of PROS Americas.

PROS, which provides price optimization, sales effectiveness, and revenue management software to both B2B and B2C customers, uses the Microsoft Azure platform for its cloud solutions and engages with Microsoft to support significant co-selling efforts between the two companies.

Accelerating PROS’ ability to reach customers

“Through partnering with Microsoft, we have identified millions of dollars in sales pipeline value and will continue to invest in the Microsoft relationship based on the strong internal rate of return,” said Jones, who also noted that engaging Microsoft co-selling resources has helped shorten PROS’ sales cycles. “Microsoft’s investment in co-marketing and co-selling has accelerated PROS’ ability to reach and inform prospective customers of the benefits of pricing optimization in the cloud.”

Jones also said participation in the Microsoft programs are proving to be well worth the effort. “PROS participates in dozens of Microsoft industry events and customer executive briefings, yielding hundreds of marketing leads each year,” he said. PROS also taps into marketing programs made available to Gold Partners with Microsoft, such as content syndication programs and online campaigns. “These marketing activities yield initial leads, which get winnowed down to qualified opportunities, and then mapped to Microsoft enterprise sales teams,” Jones said.

Increased efficiency, reduced operational costs

One joint engagement that PROS and Microsoft sales teams worked together on was for a multi-billion-dollar food production company who sought to improve their approach to providing customer pricing and quotes. Their existing process was time-intensive and inefficient, and resulted in margin leakage and missed opportunities. They wanted to transform their pricing capability by improving pricing analysis, optimization and administration.

PROS deployed PROS SellingPro Smart CPQ and PricingPro Guidance and Control, which are built on top of Microsoft Azure. This enabled the customer to maximize their margins on every deal, increase their selling and quoting efficiency, reduce their operational costs, and manage the financial risks associated with differing pricing strategies. The customer experienced immediate improvements and is on track to capture $20 million in incremental revenue in 2017.

Expanding into new divisions

By partnering with Microsoft, PROS was also able to expand more easily into other divisions of the customer’s business. Microsoft Azure was positioned as a strategic platform, and the PROS solutions were the first mission critical deployments for the customer on Azure. “Because of our partnership with Microsoft, PROS is able to access customer technical decision makers and better position pricing optimization in context of customers’ broader priorities,” Jones said.