Not another article about ChatGPT but kind of another article about ChatGPT

It’s funny how technology works. One day everyone thinks they have it all figured out, and the next day everything changes.

AI or Artificial Intelligence has been around and growing in importance for decades. At PROS, we are considered a world-leader in AI that augments and automates business decisions. We’ve continuously evolved our machine learning approach to profit and revenue optimization using supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning frameworks. Our models have advanced from rule-based, to decision trees, and most recently, to deep neural networks.

The most common objection we run into in the sales cycle is “do I really need AI?” or “what is AI?” or most concerningly “I’m nervous about AI.” We’ve been waiting for that moment when AI could mature to a point where it would “cross the chasm” and start moving from early to mainstream adoption. It’s taken a while, but ChatGPT has brilliantly pushed AI across the chasm and into the common parlance of everyone in the world. It has suddenly normalized a technology that has been hard to understand and generally demonized in the media and Hollywood.

It's an exciting place to be, and our team is ready. In fact, we’re coming off our biggest fiscal year ever, where we announced in our Q4 and full year 2022 earnings last Thursday that we more than doubled our deal count compared to 2021 as businesses turned to PROS to drive greater efficiency into their operations and fuel profitable growth with our platform. We welcomed many new customers to PROS throughout the year, and in Q4 we saw companies such as Aegean Airlines, Air Albania, Auto Ware, GE Power, Sidel, Signature Aviation, Unlimited Technology and Vector Security, among others, join our family.

Most people know us at PROS for our AI-powered revenue management systems for the airlines, and our pricing and profit optimization systems for B2B businesses. However, profitable growth isn’t just about managing prices and costs – it’s also about driving revenue. This is where our CPQ capabilities shine.

It’s a fact: businesses that get optimized quotes out faster win. However, working at speed is becoming increasingly challenging because of the number of product configurations, distinct sales channels and negotiated customer prices. Complexity and manual processes can also lead to errors in quoting. For businesses today, the only solution is to digitize sales and support an omnichannel sales model. The PROS Platform is uniquely able to automate and digitally connect omnichannel sales experiences to deliver optimized quotes, driving higher productivity in sales and a better customer experience. In fact, in Q4, PROS was recognized again as a leader in Gartner’s 2022 Magic Quadrant for CPQ Solutions, with Gartner citing that PROS’ Smart CPQ is ranked number one overall for our ability to support channel sales.

Additionally, Gartner noted that PROS delivers more AI-driven guided selling capabilities than any other product evaluated, and AI is becoming increasingly more core to the way companies execute. In today’s volatile markets, AI ensures you stay relevant. As businesses lean into AI, they will be looking for the technology that delivers the best outcomes.

In Q4, we announced availability of our next generation of price optimization powered by PROS Gen IV AI, the first pricing solution in the market to use neural network technology. Neural network algorithms adapt in real time to ever-changing market factors and drive robust results even with imperfect data, which drives higher ROI results for our customers. We’re infusing this neural network technology to support dynamic pricing for B2B businesses and airlines.

Beyond the use of more powerful models, business applications of AI require additional technologies to drive adoption and ROI. We also developed explainable AI which turns the black box neural network model into a glass box, helping our users understand how the algorithms are working. Additionally, we have made our AI platform extensible to customer developments, allowing customers who love innovation as much as we do to infuse their own data science into our platform.

The innovations we continue to deliver and the passion we have for customer success makes me so proud to be a part of PROS. I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to register for our 2023 Outperform conference in Denver, CO, where you can see this firsthand, network with customers, and learn everything you need to know about fueling profitable growth with innovation.

In a year where we grew subscription revenue by 15% and delivered 40% improvement to adjusted EBITDA year-over-year, I want to thank our team for their passion and dedication to PROS, our customers, and our communities. I also want to thank our customers, partners, and shareholders for their ongoing support of PROS. I look forward to sharing more updates throughout the year as we continue to deliver on our mission of helping people and companies outperform.

And lastly – thank you ChatGPT for making the world understand and love AI.