Driving Digital Transformation And A Better Customer Experience At PROS
By Jeff Leroux and Shastri Purushotma | B2B Signals
Did you know that the same company that facilitates the pricing of your airline tickets also helps optimize the distribution of the milk, butter and cheese you may buy from the supermarket? Our latest guest, Celia Fleischaker, Chief Marketing Officer at PROS, spoke with us about their fascinating business and marketing strategies.
About PROS
Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, PROS Holdings (NYSE: PROS) provides cloud software for price optimization, sales effectiveness, and revenue management. Celia underscores that PROS has been a market leader for several decades in the airline revenue management space. The company subsequently expanded into other industries, delivering CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) and pricing optimization for manufacturers, distributors, and services companies. Celia notes that PROS has been in AI for several decades: “We were in AI before AI was hot.” In FY 2017, PROS reported Annualized Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $160.6 million. The company has guided investors to expect 2018 revenue to be in the range of $188 to $191 million, a 17-19% increase for the fiscal year.
Background and Career
Celia indicates she had always known she wanted to pursue a career in marketing at technology companies, having been familiar with computers from an early age. When she was young, her father would only allow her to play computer games that she programmed herself!
We asked about mentors in her career, and she says she was fortunate to work with the former CMO of Epicor, John Hiraoka, now Executive Vice President at Saba Software, who she says was a “fantastic leader and mentor.”
In our conversation, Celia also mentioned two books that have strongly influenced her thinking:
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. She says the idea of “the bowling pin strategy, having a target and knowing where you want to go and being able to pinpoint that,” has had many important applications in her career.
- Building a StoryBrand, by Don Miller. Celia says this book helps marketers realize the importance of being able to cut through the vast amount of noise by shaping their brands in the form of a story that matters to your customers.
Customer Profiling at PROS
There are quite a number of success stories on the PROS website, and we asked Celia to highlight three that illustrate the breadth of PROS solution:
- HP, Inc. – PROS helps HP improve how they quote, which has led to a 25 percent reduction in quote-cycle times.
- Fonterra – This New Zealand-based company is the largest milk exporter in the world. Working with PROS, Fonterra has improved the value of optimization by $20 million per quarter.
- Perstorp – A Swedish specialty chemicals innovator and supplier with a global reputation for quality and reliability, Perstorp recovered $1 million in monthly margin leakage through improved pricing discipline powered by PROS dynamic pricing science.
We asked Celia how her team approaches profiling potential customers. PROS typically segments customers into larger, enterprise accounts in specific industries within the manufacturing, distribution, services and travel sectors. She says PROS sells globally in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
Beyond the typical ways to profile for size and industry, PROS also looks to work with progressive companies that have prioritized a digital transformation. If a company has a digital transformation initiative in place or planned, PROS solutions can help these companies achieve sales transformation to drive a better customer experience.
Marketing Tech Stack
The foundation of the PROS marketing technology stack begins with Salesforce and Marketo. The company has built elements on top of these two technologies that include ABM solutions like Terminus and Engagio. Celia is closely watching the applications of AI in Marketing that allow companies to “get smarter in terms of how you target, who you target and how you surface opportunities.”
Key Initiatives
Celia disclosed three strategic initiatives that are primary areas of focus for her team:
- Strengthen Customer Advocacy. As brand and customer experience become more intertwined, it is critical to make sure PROS is continually improving the customer experience and working with its customer advocates to tell their stories about the value PROS brings to their respective companies.
- Expand the Digital Footprint. Digital is driving more and more from a marketing perspective. PROS is working to significantly enhance and strengthen its digital footprint.
- Drive a Robust Content Strategy. PROS continues to strengthen its content strategy given the foundation it provides for demand generation. Her team is putting a plan in place to build and execute on a comprehensive content strategy.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
At PROS, Celia indicates that while a lot of marketing activity aims to fill the top of the funnel, in the enterprise space it is critical for marketing to work closely with sales to also drive accounts through the funnel and on to fruition. This includes sales enablement and working closely with sales leadership to increase deal velocity and help close business. One key element is measuring how marketing activity assists and influences the various stages of the pipeline so they can accurately decide where to invest resources.
Social Media
From a social media perspective, Celia notes that PROS sees the best performance with customer stories – not just in terms of views, but also in terms of driving visits to the site and subsequent downloads and engagement. “When there is a great story about the value we’ve driven – with outcome-based content – it gets a lot of interest,” she said.
We hope to have a follow-up interview with Celia later this year to discuss the results of the initiatives she described. Please share your comments and questions so we can raise them with her in our next conversation.