Corporate Sales Reinvented: Driving Differentiation in a Competitive Market

Airline corporate sales are at a crossroads. While business travel spending is rebounding, legacy systems and manual processes can no longer meet the expectations of today’s high-value travelers who demand speed, personalization, and measurable value. Sales executives face mounting pressure to grow revenue, deliver smarter discounts, and differentiate their offerings in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Watch this webinar to see PROS demonstrate how airlines can replace outdated technology with AI-powered, automated quote-to-contract process, enabling precision, customization, and speed in managing corporate deals.

Speakers

Full Transcript

Awesome. Thanks, Elsie. Appreciate it. Welcome, everyone. If we can move to the next slide, Sam.

Thanks for joining us today. Well, what we’re walking through is is not a demo. This is a strategic conversation about a high value opportunity hiding in plain sight. So we’re gonna move fast and we’ve structured this to build, from the real world breakdowns and corporate sales to a solution that’s proven and scalable.

Each of these sections is designed to be tight, direct and rooted in what we’re seeing across the industry. So let’s jump in.

So let’s be fair, this isn’t about neglect. Tools like Prism were purpose built to serve corporate sales and for a long time they did. But the game has changed. The challenge now isn’t just about managing accounts or offers, it’s about orchestrating strategy at scale.

So airlines need to optimize for margin, loyalty, exclusivity and speed all inside the tools or teams already live in. Today corporate sales are still run through these fragmented workflows with spreadsheets, custom CRM builds, offline approval processes, disconnected quoting and modeling systems. So it’s really a patchwork that just can’t keep up. And the result is what we call structural execution gap.

So you have the strategy it exists, the scalable execution doesn’t. And I think, McKinsey summed it up well, most airlines still treat corporate sales like a black box. So it’s time to move from an art to a science and from black box to a system of record and the opportunity is significant. So Sam’s gonna take us through why corporate sales and corporate matter margins matter the most.

Well, thank you, Mike.

So corporate sales is more than just a revenue stream. Right? It’s a profit engine for airlines.

While corporate travelers typically represent only about twelve percent of total passengers on a flight, they contribute a disproportionate share of both revenue and profit. In fact, they account for roughly seventy five percent of revenue and over fifty percent of margin.

So why such a dramatic impact?

It comes down to the purchasing behavior of business travelers. Right? They often book last minute. Those fares tend to be significantly more expensive. They prefer premium cabins, which command higher prices, and they frequently purchase ancillary services like seat selection, lounge access, and priority boarding.

So this combination of urgency, premium preferences, and added services makes corporate travelers incredibly valuable. And that’s why corporate sales is a strategic priority for airlines looking to grow profitably.

So while this segment is highly lucrative, it is also sensitive to friction in quoting, discounting, and execution workflows. Executional leakage in this segment through unmanaged discounts, delayed quotes, etcetera, doesn’t just impact revenue. It has a disproportionate effect on overall airline profitability. So fixing the leakage here has an outsized impact. It’s where every point of margin truly matters.

Every point of margin leakage in corporate sales actually carries a multiplier effect on your bottom line. Like a two percent two percent improvement in corporate deal performance can translate to about four to five percent margin uplift.

And airlines are sitting on billions in untapped value in their corporate travel channel, and the challenge isn’t demand, it is execution.

So manual processes, fragmented systems, and slow quote turnaround cycles all prevent airlines from capturing the full potential of their highest yielding customer base.

Based on the latest GBTA estimates, we’re looking at over three hundred and thirteen billion in global business air travel spend in twenty twenty four, and it’s gonna continue to increase as we go into the next few years.

Our view grounded in real world implementations, as well as feedback from over a hundred and sixty pros customers that provided data to us, is that with the right execution tools, most airlines can unlock a two to three percent margin uplift in their corporate channel. This conservatively translates to six to nine billion dollars globally.

So put it in perspective, if your corporate sales revenue is five hundred million dollars a year, you can unlock an additional ten to seventeen million dollars a year in revenue with over fifteen x return on investment.

If you assume your current margin is thirty percent and that your costs remain the same, this translates to a seven point four percent margin boost. So going from thirty to thirty two point two.

So what makes up this two to three percent? There are three key drivers behind the margin boost. First, seamless price and discount management and execution.

This is where you centralize all your discount and price governance and enable execution of complex corporate strategies automatically.

Second is around accelerating your digital selling, specifically offering a seamless end to end guided selling workflow that is fully integrated into your ecosystem. And that always results in a profitable contract for the airline, as well as delivering a fair and acceptable contract to your corporate customer.

Third is leveraging a neural network based discount optimization solution.

With AI, you can bring many attributes into the picture to personalize discounts and ancillary offerings for each customer interaction. And PROS offers the industry’s best AI solutions. And our platform is also allows you to execute on your own proprietary in house AI as well.

And later on in the presentation, Mike will talk about execution options for science driven strategy.

So yes, this is a transformation, but it’s not the kind that eats up two years of your life and burns through your IT roadmap for the next year or eighteen months.

What we’re talking about is surgical. So we’re modernizing a specific part of your commercial engine, the quoting, governance and execution. We’re doing it inside the systems you already live in, CRM, CLM and pricing. So no replatforming, no rip and replace.

It’s relatively fast to deploy light on IT and incredibly powerful out the gate. In fact, most carriers we work with see ROI in under twelve months and that’s not soft ROI. We’re talking about faster quote cycles, tighter discount discipline and better alignment between revenue management and sales. So if you’re sitting on a mandate to increase corporate share margin or speed, this is likely the highest impact, lowest risk move you can make.

It’s not just a fix, it’s a smart investment.

So at this point, carriers recognize that their corporate sales function needs modernization, but the past they’ve taken to fix it are often part of the problem. So we really see two kind of typical plas play out in this field. First is what we call the Frankenstein stack. And it’s a mix of CLM tools like iCertus or Conga layered on top of a CRM Salesforce or Dynamics with forecasting models. It’s often an Anaplan and contracting and data in the Prism system along with a healthy dose of Excel or Smartsheets filling in all the gaps. So none of these tools were really built to work together and none are designed for the commercial logic that airlines need quoting against fair families, applying exclusivity rules, managing tiered partners or dynamically guiding discounting. So instead of one system that executes the strategy, you end up with a patchwork of systems that create drag, inconsistency and risk.

And the second pattern is what we kind of what we call the custom build trap. So it’s where a carrier invest heavily in building corporate workflows inside the CRM, often done with third party consultancies.

These efforts can take years. They create a fragile ticket driven environment where even the basic updates require consulting hours or risk system breakage every time a CRM version changes and worse, they’re usually just rebuilding the standard workflow tools. So the strategic value, it’s still missing in the equation.

So the real shift is where we come in and it’s a move to a unified commercial execution platform. One that’s airline native modular built to integrate directly with your CRM and your revenue management systems. And it’s really designed to operationalize your corporate sales strategy at scale, not just track documents. So that’s the shift we’re here to show you today and there’s always this question around build versus buy.

Well, the question around build versus buy is really what is it that you’re building. Right? The corporate sales workflow is very similar across different airlines, but the strategies and execution can vary. Most build paths still rely on these third party CPQ engines, service integrators, and maintenance heavy configurations. And there are huge upfront costs in the development cycle, as well as in maintaining the solution longer term.

So one key reason that companies in general develop their own in house systems is that is to retain intellectual property, which is mostly about business strategies and execution.

With the pro solution, you can still have full control and ownership of your business strategies and how you execute. We can enable you to bring those to market quicker and at a lower cost in both the short term and longer term. And you can be rest assured that our platform will continue to evolve with your evolving needs so that you’re never stuck in a situation where you have to redo everything just to adapt. According to Gartner, organizations increasingly favor SaaS solutions over custom built applications because SaaS accelerates time to value, reduces the maintenance burden, and provides continuous innovation without the cost and risk of in house development.

So the PROS platform is purpose built for airline corporate sales with proven deployment, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

So getting into the PROS platform, our PROS corporate sales solution is powered by two core products from PROS. PROS Smart POM, which is price optimization and management, and Pros Smart CPQ for con configure price quote. These tools are built on a shared data platform with connected workflows forming a unified and intelligent solution configured to address the five major points in the corporate sales workflow.

So first, the corporate sales process requires close collaboration, as you know, internally across airline teams and externally with partners and customers.

Today, this collaboration often happens through phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets, which leads to long negotiation cycles and a fragmented user experience. It’s also heavily reliant on a few subject matter experts, making it very difficult to scale.

With PROS, this entire process is digitized and streamlined. So contract modeling, ancillary selections, approvals, and signatures all happen within a guided workflow, reducing what used to take days or weeks down to just minutes.

So second, the corporate sales corporate sales doesn’t operate in isolation. It depends on systems like CRMs, so think Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, e signature tools like DocuSign and Conga, and fair finding platforms like ATPCO. PROS integrates seamlessly with all of these.

Third, smart CPQ empowers sales managers to tailor contracts directly within the CRM.

Instead of relying on guesswork or offering deeper discounts just to win deals, they use data driven insights to model profitable customer accepted contracts. This eliminates that black box and ensures that every deal contributes to your airline’s bottom line.

Fourth is in execution. Traditionally, combining and submitting fare data is manual and error prone. With PROS, your fare finding document is generated automatically upon upon contract execution in a ready to file format. So it’s accurate, fast, and immediately usable by corporate clients.

Finally, there’s change management. This is a critical factor in any digital transformation.

Smart CPQ lives directly inside the airline’s existing CRM, so it offers a familiar interface and workflow and minimizes disruption, accelerating adoption. Now let’s zoom into the PROS platform and how it empowers your workflows.

According to Forrester, sales teams embrace CRM more readily when it evolves from a system of record into a system of productivity.

Embedding CPQ capabilities within CRM elevates your CRM from a reporting tool to a platform that accelerates deal velocity, enhances quote accuracy, and empowers settles sellers to deliver value in every interaction.

The pro solution is natively embedded in your CRM and fully compatible with Salesforce and Dynamics.

Your quoting journey can begin from either an account or an opportunity. The workflow is configured to mirror your existing processes, but typically starts with analyzing historical performance.

This is where you identify your customers’ travel patterns and tailor the contract around the origins and destinations that matter the most.

Performance insights are derived from your data inputs into the PROS platform. So whether you’re using ARC data or Prism or other sources, you can load those directly into PROS, and the platform handles both simple and very complex calculations seamlessly.

Next is around deal modeling. Deal modeling determines the optimal mix of discounts and ancillary offerings. The recommended values provide a strong starting point for negotiation, while real time deal scoring evaluates profitability and flags whether approvals are required.

Collaboration is streamlined through a microservices powered portal, enabling joint partners and customers to manage all contract interactions in one centralized space. So you eliminate the emails and the spreadsheets.

Once terms are agreed upon, documents can be routed for signature via your CRM or directly through esignature. For contract execution, the PROS platform generates ATP cofilings, either through API directly or as JSON or XML outputs, ensuring compliance and speed. At this stage, your corporate customer can book travel and access agreed discounts and ancillary benefits through their existing channels.

Now post execution, you can monitor compliance and take actions such as amend, renew, extend, or terminate a contract all within a single cockpit that supports the entire contract life cycle.

This platform is trusted by hundreds of pros b to b customers, which is a testament to its flexibility and configurability.

So this is really where things start to separate from the good to the great. A lot of carriers are still spending time and budget just trying to stitch together the basics. So quoting discount approvals and contracting. But here’s the thing, none of that creates a competitive advantage. That’s just the plumbing and it’s expensive plumbing to maintain.

What you actually want is a system that handles that eighty percent. So you can reinvest your time, talent into the twenty percent that matters the most. And that twenty percent that’s science. Discount logic that adapts to buyer signals, elasticity models that change based on partner behavior, share of wallet prediction, exclusivity scoring, that’s really where the the real margin lives and breathes.

So with pros, we let you bring your own science into the platform, whether it’s our gen four models, your own data science teams outputs, or even third party. We support it, extend it and make it operational. And when the science evolves, you don’t have to rewire everything. The feedback loop is already built in.

So again, let the system handle the execution layer and let your team focus on the innovation layer. That’s how you build a moat or a competitive advantage and that’s how you scale it.

Well, thank you, Mike. One of the most common questions that we get is how heavy is the lift? The good news is that it’s not. We have we use a proven agile methodology that allows for phase deployment, adapts to your internal resources, and minimizes disruption. And as you can see here, there’s four key phases to the implementation, and each phase has a key set of key deliverables.

So in phase one, professional services works very closely with your corporate sales team to understand the challenges and the scope and estimate the timeline and effort required. This effort culminates in a statement of work defining the deliverables.

The real fun starts in phase two or the planning phase. This phase can take anywhere from four to eight weeks depending on project complexity, and it starts with a series of workshops that are designed to capture all the necessary details needed to design and implement your your solution.

The the deliverables out of the planning phase include a solution design document, data requirements document, and a system interface document that outlines all the integrations. The PROS project manager will work with your airline project manager to develop an integrated project plan to ensure that we are aware of any resource constraints or other projects, competing projects, right, and dependencies, and factor those into the plan.

So the third phase is configuration, and this is governed by an agile methodology with multiple sprints that address deliverables based on the agreed upon solution design.

At the end of each sprint, we hold configuration validation sessions with the business and IT stakeholders, and we demo our progress and capture any feedback and recommendations that you may have. The process is agile and accommodates changes as needed to maintain alignment between your vision and the solution.

So at the end of the configuration phase, the solution will be ready for user acceptance testing followed by go live. I mean, I can talk about how great we are all day long, but I’ll let Mike tell you about what our customers and research firms think.

It’s always about trust and proof at the end of the day. Right?

Yeah. So let’s talk about trust and proof. At PROS, we’re not just theorizing what this could look like. This is already happening with global carriers at scale.

And you can see here how United Airlines is using pros to bring their entire commercial engine into the hands of their sales team. So it’s not just fares, but it’s ancillaries, sustainability products, loyalty benefits and even B2B marketing capabilities. So that’s the kind of enablement that moves corporate satisfaction scores, expands deal size and drives your additional margin. That’s why the three largest research firms, Gartner, Forrester and IDC all recognize PROS as a leader in CPQ.

But more important than the quadrant is this, we’re the only vendor in this space with actual airline experience. We know your systems, we understand your commercial logic, and we build a platform that speaks that language fluently. That’s why we win trust and that’s how we drive results.

So move to the next slide, Sam. And if you remember just one thing from today, let it be this corporate sales isn’t just a revenue stream, it’s a strategic lever and most carriers are not pulling it. Why? Because quoting is slow, discounting is manual, execution is fragmented.

So what we’ve shown you today is a new path. Execution that aligns with strategy commercial layers, you can actually activate a quoting process that becomes a competitive weapon and margin that’s already being earned, not just being captured. CPQ, POM aren’t back office tools, they’re frontline weapons. And this is your moment to make them part of your system.

So we’re ready to help you lead this shift and we can start mapping it out this month.

And so I think we can move to the q and a portion. We have plenty of time.

Yeah. Let’s get to the q and a.

Thanks, Mike and Sam. Incredibly insightful presentation there.

We’ve had a couple of questions come in, so let me just start with the first one.

Apologies. Oh, yeah. Okay. I’ve had someone ask, we don’t have a CLM. How flexible is PROS when it comes to document generation and contract workflows?

So let me add I’ll take that one. That’s a great question. The good news is that PROS does not require a CLM to deliver value. Our platform supports native, configurable document generation.

We can generate any kind of document that you want as an output. So your exhibit a’s, your actual contract document, any reference documents that you may wanna include. We can include graphics, different logos.

For for example, in the case of participating airlines, we could put their logos on the contract as well for your, you know, joint business partners or joint ventures.

And we can support multiple languages and units of measure, so different currencies, different types of units of measure, and so on.

And that’s all right out of the box.

And that includes the signature piece as well.

All right, thanks. Anything from Mike on that one or ready for another question?

No, he’s got it.

Okay. So looking at the next question, how does PROS CPQ handle complex airlines specific logic, for example, fare families, exclusivity or tiered discounting?

Actually this is core as to why airlines choose PROS.

Unlike generic tools, we’ve built CPQ specifically to handle this kind of complex logic, like, for this use case for airlines. So whether it’s fare family mapping, partner exclusivity, channel tiering, or even traveler level scoring. It’s all native to the platform, and no custom development is needed. Everything can be achieved through just configuration in this solution.

Perfect. I’ve got another question here about Salesforce. What if we already have quoting workflows built inside Salesforce? Would PROS replace these?

I’ll take this one too, Mike. I would say not necessarily. Right? So think of PROS as the execution engine behind your CRM.

So if Salesforce is where your reps live, that’s your sales team, then PROS plugs right in, and it powers those airline native quoting approvals and pricing logic behind the scenes. So you get full control without disrupting your CRM. In fact, the PROS CPQ solution works hand in hand with your CRM. Right?

For all intents and purposes, your sales team will not even know they’ve left the CRM. It’s the same user experience, same UI.

But we do leverage. We even leverage functions out of the CRM, the approval workflows, your data that you’ve already loaded in CRM, like your accounts and roles. You don’t have to redo any of that. We plug right in, and there’s a bidirectional sync of data between the CRM and CPQ to make it one kind of cohesive system environment.

Nice. Anything from Mike? No one.

Oh, wow. So I’m naming it with the questions today.

Okay. I think I another one here. Can pros ingest our in house science or data models, or are we limited to your logic?

Yeah. I think, you know, so the question, you know, it’s a big kind of it goes back to that competitive advantage portion of the discussion. So we think that it’s important for carriers to really spend the majority of their time thinking about, you know, these differentiation levers. And so you’re not limited at all with what you can bring into the pro system.

With pros extensible AI, you can plug in your own science or you can use our gen four guidance to capture share of wallet models or we’ll operationalize. The beauty is we can operationalize it across from all your workflows. So that way your strategy doesn’t really sit in a spreadsheet. It’s embedded into every deal.

Perfect.

And I think a final question, though, if anyone else has any more, please do submit in the Q and A because we’ve got some time.

We’re sitting on a lot of data like ARCCI, but it’s not actionable. Can PROS help with that? And if so, how?

That’s a good question. So when I think about carriers, obviously fall in several different tiers sizes. So if you’re using Prism data or ARC CI or you want to make a move to ARC CI, right. But you’re really trying to figure out how to drive additional value or how to process that maybe depending on the size of carrier and the data science team or the BI team that you have behind you.

Our tool, the PON tools really exactly what this is designed to solve for. So we take all that raw data, the RCI data, CRM data, QSI data that you may have internally or externally. And we bring that into internal performance metrics and really translate that into not only just execution logic, but also a BI layer within that system.

So things like travel lovers level scoring or discount triggers, eligibility rules, whatever they may be. We don’t just visualize that data. We turn it into decisioning power at scale.

Yeah, if I’m if I was to add to that, historically, I mean, studies show that the sales people spend enormous amount of their time, think of a swivel chair effect, right, going back and forth between different systems. So let’s say they’re negotiating a deal with a big corporate customer. They have to they have to compile all that historic performance data so that they can identify the travel patterns, try and figure out what they need to incentivize for a successful contract.

With the pro solution, all of that happens in one cockpit. Right? So there’s the if you heard my the the phases or the steps in the process that we’ve kinda built in, the very first step is really all about this part here, which is operationalizing this data, allowing the sales user to go in and quickly identify opportunities and tailor that contract specifically to their customer needs.

Fantastic.

Well, that’s all the questions we’ve had so far. I don’t know if anyone else if anyone has any more questions, please put them in the chat now or forever hold your peace. I don’t know before I wrap up, if Mike or Sam, do have any closing words or anything before I wrap up?

I mean, from my side, I’d like to thank everyone that participated for joining and listening, hearing us out.

And, you know, we’re happy to talk to you all after this call as well. So if you wanna reach out to pros, we’re happy to engage with you as well.

Yeah. So I’ll hear that. Sam thanks for bringing that. Thank you for your time everybody.

This is kind of near and dear to my heart because I often, I’m involved in a number of different solutions within each carrier. And I really believe that this is probably one of the most single powerful solutions that we could put in place for a given carrier depending on their situation, what they’re doing with their RM systems or whatever.

And I really feel like it’s a place where the current state of the toolkit is so disconnected that it just drives a lot of value. So I was at a GBTA conference talking to frontline sellers for carriers that use the system. And it was really impressive just to get their feedback of somebody who’s actually putting them together a deal and they’re talking about the ability to complete that in a number of hours where previously for them it had taken weeks and emails across whether it’s joint business partners or internal stakeholders trying to build these deals and put it together. So having a system that enables frontline sellers like that as a frontline seller myself is really empowering and allows me or, you know, your frontline sellers to really focus on being consultants.

Right. So really listening to the customer, hearing and understanding what they need. And I think that builds better relationships. Obviously, I believe it increases margins.

It definitely increases speed response times. And, you know, there’s a pretty commonly used saying, right, time kills all deals. And I think it really exists in this space as much as any other. And then we can help you improve that.

Well, I think a fantastic note to end on that, Mike. It doesn’t look like any more questions have come through, so I think we’ll leave it there for today. But as Mike and Sam said, if you do have any questions in the following days, keep it on your inbox as we will be following up with ways to get in touch with the PROS team. And also if you missed a bit of this webinar or you want to rewatch any of it, it will be available on demand. So, yep, just keep an eye on your inbox for details on how to access all of that.

And if you’re interested in discussing any more of these topics at length, please come along to one of Terrapin’s aviation festival events next year, the first of which is Aviation Festival Asia in Singapore. If you’re interested in joining us, we will be also sending out an exclusive discount code to anyone who’s looking to join us there. And also a reminder that if you’re an airline, you can join us completely free of charge. Please just get in touch with us for a complimentary pass to any of our events next year.

So just thanks once again to Mike and Sam and the whole PROS team for sharing your insights with us. It was a great session today. And yeah, thank you to audience and have a great day everyone.

Yep. Thank you, Elsie.

Thank you, sir. No worries. Appreciate it. Bye, everybody. Cheers. Bye.

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