The world is changing faster than ever. To stay ahead, companies must respond rapidly across pricing, packaging, and business strategies—activating every change in real time. Native AI companies will seize opportunities while others are still planning. In this keynote, PROS executives explore how leading organizations must Outthink, Outpace and Outperform by deploying AI knowledge engines to accelerate learning, scale workflows and automation, and utilize AI agents to amplify and unleash the full human potential of their workforce.
Featuring:
- Andres Reiner, former President & Chief Executive Officer, PROS
- Jeff Cotten, Chief Executive Officer, PROS
- Sunil John, Chief Product Officer, PROS
- Ajay Damani, Executive Vice President, Engineering, PROS
Full Transcript
Narrator: Winning takes more than strategy. It takes precision, agility, and the right partner to help you execute. The PROS platform is the only unified end-to-end solution, seamlessly connecting sales, pricing, and marketing, transforming business challenges into opportunities. Powered by industry-leading AI, PROS optimizes every sale interaction across all channels. Replace guesswork with crystal-clear, data-driven insights that give you confidence in every decision. Watch customer signals transform into personalized offers that drive revenue in real time. When the perfect offer meets the right customer at the right moment, you win. This isn’t just automation and efficiency, it’s intelligence amplified. In fierce markets, PROS helps you outthink and outpace the competition. Don’t follow the market. Outperform it with PROS.
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Announcer: Good morning. Please welcome President and Chief Executive Officer, PROS, Andres Reiner.
Andres Reiner: Good morning. Welcome to Outperform 2025. 40 years ago, our founders Ron and Mariette Woestemeyer had a vision around leveraging data science and algorithms to help people and companies outperform. That vision would not have been possible without our amazing customer and partners. Every one of you. I want to take a moment to celebrate some of our long-term anniversaries. So, if you’ve been a PROS customer for at least 10 years, please stand up so that we can recognize your contributions. Come on, stand up. 10 years or more. Thank you. Now, if you’ve been with us for 20 years or more, remain standing. Amazing. And if you’ve been with us 30 years or more, remain standing. Amazing. We cannot be more grateful. Huge congratulations to all of you. What I love the most is that because of all of you, we’ve been able to innovate in the areas of AI for the last four decades. From the very beginning, we believed AI would be a transformative technology for business, helping people and companies outperform. Every one of you has played a very important part in this journey. Last year, we welcomed you to Generation AI and predicted that most successful companies will embed AI into every aspect of their business.
Andres Reiner: And that’s exactly what’s happening. Companies are now embracing AI and everyone in this room has led the way. You’ve been at the forefront of AI adoption and you’re reaping the benefits of it. Some companies will be great at AI, and then there’s everyone else. We want you to master AI adoption so that you and your teams can continuously outperform the market. Our conviction about AI has never been stronger. And today, I’m really excited to show you the new AI agents that we’re launching right here at Outperform. Agentic AI represents the next leap in innovation. Think of an AI agent as just another member of your team. It can complete your business tasks, guide you, amplify your knowledge, and give you new superpowers. Imagine you could give every person in your organization their own team. They can run ideas by it. They can get feedback on possible decisions. And because an AI agent is digital, it’s always there to help you achieve the best outcome possible. By the end of the year, you’ll see 50 new agents. We’re introducing many of them right here at Outperform. They can guide you to help you outthink the market.
Andres Reiner: They can run autonomously to help you outpace the market. When you outthink and outpace the market, then you’ll be able to consistently outperform. Before we get deeper into our latest AI innovations, I have a very special guest that I’m very excited for all of you to meet. As many of you know, last year I announced my intentions to retire after 26 incredible years at PROS. And I’m thrilled to share that a couple of weeks ago, we announced Jeff Cotten as our next President and CEO, starting June 2nd. Please join me in giving Jeff a warm welcome.
Andres Reiner: Jeff, it is great to have you here and to introduce you to our amazing customer, partners, and shareholders. When I first met you, I was very inspired by your passion for culture, your passion for innovation, and your passion for customer value. I saw how you aligned to our vision of helping people and companies outperform. I’m so happy to have you here at Outperform, a huge warm welcome to you.
Jeff Cotten: Well, thank you very much, Andres, and thank you all for being here today. I have to tell you, it is a great honor to join this amazing company. And I think you will all agree that it is a great honor to join this company in great part because of this gentleman right here. Andres has been a phenomenal leader to this business, and what a great legacy he has created here with an organization that’s full of passionate people that is a great honor to be joining. So, I think we owe him a huge round of applause. Andres, thank you.
Andres Reiner: Thank you.
Jeff Cotten: Thunderous applause. From the very first time that Andres and I first spoke, it was very clear what made PROS very special. You have a market-leading platform, a bold vision grounded in AI, and a strong track record of delivering measurable outcomes for customers. It’s a company also built by very passionate people who care very deeply about innovation, impact, and doing right by customers, and that kind of culture is rare. When you combine world-class technology, customer obsession, and a strong, authentic culture, you get something special, and that’s PROS. That’s ultimately what drew me to the company and why I couldn’t be more excited to be here and even more energized about what’s ahead. I’m looking very forward to meeting all of you over the next couple of days, and for those that I may not get to, in the coming weeks and months, I will be out in the market a lot with customers, partners, investors, analysts, everybody in between, and I certainly look forward to what’s ahead.
Andres Reiner: So, Jeff, what do you think if we now invite Sunil and Ajay up on stage so we can share how we’re shaping the future?
Jeff Cotten: I think it’s a great idea. Let’s go.
Andres Reiner: Thank you guys for joining us. I’ll start with, if you look at the history of the software industry, most companies have created technology predominantly to drive automation and management oversight. But at PROS, we’ve been singularly focused on helping people and companies outperform. We’ve always led the way in AI innovation, and I’m super excited as we accelerate our AI journey, through the adoption of new agentic AI capabilities in our platform. So, Sunil, let me start with you. Share your view on the power of agentic AI and how it will drive transformation in the market.
Sunil John: Andres, I’ve got to say, I’m as super excited as you about agentic AI. Agentic AI helps you outthink. It can turn knowledge across your organization into accessible insights, compressing the learning curve, and making every team member as capable as your strongest performer.
Jeff Cotten: You know, when I was thinking about joining PROS, you showed me some of these agents, and it really blew me away. Can you tell us how these agents are going to transform work?
Sunil John: So, Jeff, I absolutely could tell you, but I’d rather show you. Even better.
Narrator: Your product catalog is powerful, but navigating hundreds or even thousands of SKUs can be complex and time-consuming. The sales agent makes product selection easy. The agent responds instantly with intelligent data-backed suggestions, empowering sales reps to work faster, quote smarter, and win more. Together, the seller and the agent quickly create accurate quotes, streamlining the process and minimizing errors in product selection and configuration. Unlock your sales potential.
Sunil John: This is our new sales agent. Everyone knows that time kills deals. So with this new agent, we’re focused on helping salespeople execute better, smarter, and faster.
Ajay Damani: And with our sales agent, every rep has access to the knowledge of your most experienced reps instantly. The agent frees reps to focus on what matters most, and that is understanding customer needs and winning business.
Andres Reiner: So, this to me is pretty incredible, this notion that now I think every rep now has an agent to help them be their best self, to help them achieve their full potential. So, could we share some examples of how this agent helps the rep?
Sunil John: Yeah, Andres. Let me set the stage. You know, let’s imagine that I’m a sales rep for an HVAC manufacturer, and I’m working with my builder who’s got a community that they’re building. And they’re selling houses and they’re selling on sustainable energy efficient homes. Now, as a new sales rep, I want to help my builder, but I don’t necessarily know all of the options and configurations and models that I’ve been manufacturing. What I can do now with the agent is focus on the conversation with the builder on what kind of homes they need, what’s the mix of homes in terms of size and shape and specific HVAC components that drive their value proposition. By interacting with the agent in natural language, my agent can scour the catalog and find the exact products and configurations that make sense for my situation. It’s going to be incredible.
Andres Reiner: If you think about it, the agent is almost behaving as a sales engineer behind the scenes and helping them. And now, whether your rep just started your company or is a very tenured rep, they have access to all of the wealth of knowledge right at their fingertip.
Sunil John: That’s a great way to think about that.
Andres Reiner: What about measuring the productivity and goals? How can the agent help support those use cases?
Sunil John: That’s right. So, every agent has a goal. And in this case, in my example, the goal of the agent is to help put together a quote as quickly and as accurately as possible. And that’s the way that we measure our agents to make sure that they’re actually accomplishing that goal so that they’re in support of the sales rep.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. To me, this concept, so now think about the concept. The agent is helping the rep really have a much better experience in terms of creating the right quote at the right time, remove a lot of manual effort, and then the agent can also start measuring, you know, think about quote turnaround time, how you’re improving that. Think about win rate. Any other goals around the sales organization. So, think of the agent as continuously learning and being able to measure the performance as well as always being there at any time to help support.
Sunil John: You know, Andres, that’s one of the things that really got me excited as a business leader. I’m sure a lot of you out there thinking, how can we make sales reps more productive better all the time, right? Like there’s so much admin work you have to do when you’re building a quote trying to think through a proposal, right? And I’m sitting here thinking, man, if we’re going to have a product where we can remove almost all of that admin work, a sales rep or agent is now engaging with this autonomous AI agent, and now they can actually go spend their time thinking about how am I going to get the deal closed? Who do I need to know that I don’t? What relationships do I need to leverage? And all their energy goes there and none of the admin. I mean, sales reps will probably tell you today they spend 40 to 60, maybe 70% in a lot of cases on admin, especially if it’s a complex product like HVAC, right? This is amazing.
Ajay Damani: And this is really how sales productivity will scale from 1X to 10X to 100X.
Andres Reiner: That’s pretty amazing capabilities. Now, I’m sure all of you are thinking, okay, how do we get people to embrace these agents?
Sunil John: So, in my point of view, this is the greatest opportunity ever because every employee now becomes a leader. Teams are always stronger than individuals on their own. Now, imagine a world where everyone has a team of agents. These leaders lead people, lead agents. Sometimes they’re going to lead manager people and agents. This is how we help each one of our employees scale from 1X to 10X to 100X.
Sunil John: I love this concept of 1X to 10X to 100X. Ajay, can you show us how one person can actually 100X themselves?
Ajay Damani: Absolutely. Let me walk you through an AI agent that we’ve built for revenue management. Let’s say that demand for US-bound travel drops suddenly. Now, instead of waiting for an analyst to notice, an AI agent spots this shift in real time and automatically adjusts the right strategies to align with the new demand pattern. Let’s take a peek.
Narrator: You see demand shifting, but where? And how fast can you act? Meet the revenue management agent, delivering real-time shopping insights. Analyze shopping data and quickly identify unexpected demand patterns across specific time segments and markets. No more guesswork. No more lag, just insight, influence, and impact. Act faster and more efficiently. Effortlessly factor shopping data into demand influences to adjust the forecast and maximize revenue.
Ajay Damani: This isn’t just automation. It is autonomous AI. It’s decision intelligence that reasons, acts, and scales human productivity.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. To me, this is, think about this, we talked about the concept of the agent helping an individual. Now think about the agent continuously running autonomously to help you. We all know, you know, across organizations, we always feel we’re just strained from a team perspective. It’s just not having enough people and enough time to do everything. So, think about now an agent that’s continuously learning to make sure you’re successful. That to me is very powerful. Could we share some ideas on how this agent actually helps a revenue management team?
Ajay Damani: Yeah. So, think about the demand analyst at an airline today. The number of markets that they have to manage on a day-by-day basis with all of the signals that are going through every single one of those markets. Now here we have an agent that is actually looking for those signals. In this particular case, a shopping behavior change on the airline’s website, and then translated that shopping behavior change directly into demand influence and adjusting the demand such that it can capture that pattern in real time. It recommended how long the influence should be in place. It recommended when the influence needs to start. It recommends when the influence needs to finish. And it also includes the magnitude of the influence as well, truly being an assistant to the demand analyst and augmenting their work.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. To me, this concept of now not only the analysts have to manage the flights and ensure that they’re setting the right influences and strategies, but now they have a team of agents that’s also monitoring for them, that’s making them drive the best outcome possible. To me, this is game-changing. It’s almost not just relying on the team to have to find everything, but having agents that ensure that we’re creating the best outcome possible.
Jeff Cotten: That’s right. I mean, with an agent that has a goal of really making sure that actual demand materializes into what’s realized, I mean, that’s incredible.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. And now can the agent also measure the performance of the changes that are being applied?
Sunil John: This is, again, the goal framework, right, Ajay?
Ajay Damani: It really is completely the goal framework. So as we saw earlier, it recommended not just the duration of the influence, but also the magnitude of the influence. So, it was able to detect in real time what demand shift actually occurred and recommended exactly the right value for that influence, measuring productivity.
Andres Reiner: To me, this is how we outthink. So now, Sunil, how do we outpace the market?
Sunil John: To outpace the market, we have to be adapting to the market in real time. Think about it. As we’ve been having this conversation on stage, think about all the factors in your businesses that have changed, from currency fluctuations to global policy shifts somewhere around the world to supply chain concerns. Is your team aware of all of these changes, for one? And two, are they aware of how they need to adapt their commercial decisions to reflect these changes?
Ajay Damani: So, now imagine an autonomous teammate that’s monitoring open offers in real time, and it identifies the ones that are ready to convert and surfaces those offers that are high impact with clear and prioritized actions. Or your supply chain is suddenly disrupted in a key region. Your AI agent flags the affected products and comes up with the right strategy to drive the best business outcomes. Now, think about all of the commercial decisions that have to go in from pricing to incentives to rebates and how that flows through the entire flow. Let’s take a look at our rebate agent.
Narrator: Creating rebates shouldn’t be so complicated. Introducing the rebate agent, your intelligent collaborator. Quickly and easily generate data-driven rebate programs at work. Together, you define criteria, structure incentives, and visualize outcomes. And with your approval, the rebate is created. Simple, efficient, and hassle-free. Build smarter rebates in no time.
Ajay Damani: This is the power of AI agents. From forecasting to pricing to rebates. They don’t just support decisions, they drive them in real time with precision.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. To me, the powerful part of this is if you think about most rebates, all rebate solutions in the market are there for someone to have to know what rebate structure to create and ensure that they have the right insights. I mean, to me, this is a transformation where now an agent actually helps you craft that right rebate structure to incentivize the right demand pattern, the right product mix to win in the market. To me, this is transformative and maybe y’all can share a little bit more about these innovations.
Sunil John: Let’s go back to our HVAC manufacturer. Now, as a category manager working there at the manufacturer, I notice that this sales rep and this sales rep and this other sales rep, everybody’s seeing a lot of demand from builders, especially as we approach the summer season along the Gulf Coast. Now, all of these contractors are working with my sales agents, but they’re buying the models that they’re familiar with, these 18 SEER units. Well, just a few months ago, I launched a 21-SEER variable unit with a series of options on it with better thermostatic controls, and I want to try to incentivize all of my customers towards this product. Now, what my rebate agent can do is develop a program in conjunction with me where I express the goal of what I want, and it tells me that in the southwest area of the country. Let’s drive a rebate for this particular model. Let’s drive the incentive to be 10%, and let’s really make sure that there’s a commercial incentive for us to get awareness and adoption of our newest manufactured air conditioning unit.
Andres Reiner: That’s pretty amazing. I know also a lot of companies struggle with measuring the outcomes of the rebate programs, and again, going back to the goal setting and ensuring are the rebate programs that we create actually driving the right behavior? How are agents helping to support that?
Ajay Damani: So again, this is where the goals really come in. So in a rebate, it’s actually really nice because there is an incentive, and we are tracking all of the accruals and the settlements that come with those rebates. So at the end, we can always monitor performance in real time, and the agent can adjust if needed to alter the programs, adjust the timeframe of when they’re offered, and this is really powerful because it knows that we have the same goal, me as the category manager and the agent as the rebate agent.
Jeff Cotten: One of the things that got my wheels turning as you first showed me this rebate agent was the channel, right? I mean, number one, our partners. We have a lot of partners here in the audience today, and obviously we want to continue to grow that ecosystem, but also our customers’ distribution channels and the different partnerships that they have. What do you think about how are our customers or how are our partners going to be able to leverage this rebate agent?
Sunil John: It’s going to be amazing. You know, so many times we’re working in worlds where there’s multi-tier distribution channels, and every single spot in that distribution channel needs a way to deliver value and capture value from the downstream customers. And so now with the rebate agent, we can make sure that all of those factors are identified so that everyone makes their fair share.
Jeff Cotten: That’s amazing. So, we’ve talked a lot about how agents can help our teams drive more success, but Sunil, can you now also share with us how agents are going to transform the customer experience?
Sunil John: Jeff, that’s a great question because, you know, as we’ve talked, AI isn’t just about internal operations. It’s about transforming customer interactions as well. Self-service is no longer a nice-to-have, it is a must-have. Our agents can interact with customers instantly, in real time, anytime the customer wants to engage. The future of travel isn’t just automation, it’s AI that anticipates and understands customer needs, providing a seamless, intelligent experience. Let’s take a look.
Narrator: AI is transforming the way customers shop for and book air travel. Meet the Fare Finder agent, where real-time fares meet real traveler intent. Whether it’s a quick escape or a bucket list adventure, Fare Finder helps shoppers find exactly what they want when they want it. Airlines can capture early intent and shopping signals, convert more shoppers faster, and increase engagement across digital channels. Just imagine the trip. The Fare Finder agent will handle the rest.
Andres Reiner: So, Sunil, this agent is really remarkable, but you can see how it can actually transform customer experience for the travel industry. Can you share some insights into how this can actually be applied to other industries as well?
Sunil John: That’s right. What I’m excited about is inspirational shopping is not just for passengers seeking travel anymore. Inspirational shopping could be for any customer in any industry. So, imagine a customer interacting with your website. And typically, at least in the B2B markets, one of the things that’s kept us slower on the adoption curve of e-commerce has been complexity of catalogs, challenging sales processes. But now with an agent, I can actually help the customer navigate the catalog and have them express what they want in their quote, and have the agent manage the catalog and the process for them. This becomes really, really powerful.
Jeff Cotten: That’s really cool because it’s the exact same agent that’s helping both the buyer as well as the seller.
Sunil John: That’s right. So, my builder in my earlier example, if they found a custom house in that neighborhood that needed a specific type of AC model, they can go and interact with the agent to modify the quote as they need. So, in that particular case, instead of just a 410 unit, they need a 1210 unit because the house is just really large at the end of the block.
Ajay Damani: That’s great. I mean, this is taking complexity and making it very simple and being able to browse the catalog at scale.
Sunil John: That’s right.
Ajay Damani: I think the other incredible concept is we talked about an agent helping a team member. Now, imagine every customer now in your client list having their own agent. Their own agent is there to support them. That’s the power of this. I mean, we talked about a travel agent experience. Think of everything that’s possible now. Think of a B2B buying experience now, an agent to help support that rep. And the beauty of this agent is that we can actually track that particular conversation and actually have agent to rep digital experiences. So don’t think as these disconnected workflows, the power of this in a B2B world is an end customer can be talking to an agent helping them configure their quote or helping them do their own renewal, but they can get rep assistance. And now that rep can see all the changes that they’ve applied. They can actually interact digitally in real time. That’s the power of this agent technology. And that’s how we want you to think about how you’re evolving your businesses both internally, how you’re equipping your organizations, but also externally. How are you equipping your customers to have the best experience possible? And then going back into how do we measure performance of those experiences and how does that agent help in that? Maybe we can share that.
Sunil John: That’s right. I mean, you know, with this, this notion of goals, when you can construct an agent and express it with a goal, now all of a sudden it’s got something to measure itself against. And this makes it really, really powerful because the use cases for these agents are limitless. It’s bounded only by our creativity.
Andres Reiner: Yeah. To me, I bet all of you can see using this agent technology to transform how your people work and how you engage with your customers.
Sunil John: Andres, how far away are we from that world?
Andres Reiner: We’re ready right now. And do you want to share a little bit about our building agent right here at Outperform?
Sunil John: That’s right. So, I hope all of you got a chance to go to our Innovation Center yesterday, but if you haven’t, please go there. There’s lots of amazing demos and customer conversations to have. But one particular booth that I want to call out is where you can build your own agent. If you haven’t built your own agent before, go there. Our teams are happy to help construct with you an agent. And you should leave here with this conference with having built your own agent.
Andres Reiner: Hey, Sunil or Ajay, do I have to be a computer scientist, up-to-date in coding? Because that was my background, but it’s been a long time since I’ve written code. Could I actually build my own agent?
Ajay Damani: You can build your agent. You don’t need any technical skills. Our teams will help you. They’ll show you exactly how to do this. It is a very simple interface to be able to create these agents. They’re very natural language, very business-oriented as well.
Andres Reiner: I’ll test that in a moment, you all get to see if I can actually do that. But now one thing we want you to think about while we’re launching and we said 50 new agents, what we want at Outperform is for you to see the power of this agent technology. And the beauty of it is not only the agents that we’ll be able to provide, but within our platform you can extend these agents. And it’s truly limitless what you can do. Your teams can do or partner ecosystem can equip you to extend the workflows. And the beauty of having an open architecture for agent technology, is that now you can integrate with other systems outside of the PROS platform to create even more complex end solutions. So to me, this is just the beginning. And the way you should think about as you’re launching agents, think about what percent of the work the agents are helping your teams accomplish. And don’t think of perfection. I think sometimes innovation, what holds us back is we look for a 100% solution. We really want you to think about how are you driving a 30% improvement, a 40%, a 60, an 80, and over time driving higher and higher productivity. But all with the spirit that we’re actually helping our teams really reach their full potential and be more successful.
Andres Reiner: So that’s the mindset. I really encourage all of you, if you have time, go to the build your agent and try to build your own. It is an amazing experience and it will help you see the potential of it. But Sunil, Ajay, thank you for sharing some of our amazing agentic AI innovations. We actually look forward to getting a deep dive in your product keynote. Jeff, thank you for joining us today. And I’m so excited to see where you and the team take PROS. Please.
Jeff Cotten: Thank you.
Andres Reiner: We are extremely excited about the power of agentic AI. Hopefully you can see that. We know it’s going to amplify your teams and your business. Together, we’re shaping the future of AI-powered business. To outthink, outpace, and outperform. We wish you an amazing outperform and we look forward to engaging with you. Thank you.