Thoma Bravo Buys PROS: What the Conga Merge Means for CPQ Customers
Thoma Bravo is splitting PROS into two paths: a travel-focused platform investment and a B2B pricing + CPQ stack that merges into Conga. Here’s the practical read on what that implies for product focus, integration reality, and CPQ roadmaps.
What was announced
Thoma Bravo has acquired PROS Holdings for about $1.4 billion.
Here’s the structural split they announced: PROS’ B2B pricing and CPQ business will merge with Conga (another Thoma Bravo portfolio company known for revenue lifecycle management), while PROS’ travel business has been separated out as an independent platform investment for Thoma Bravo.
The marketing vision vs. the operating reality
The combined Conga + PROS vision is being positioned as a “super revenue platform,” aiming to deliver end-to-end CPQ and contract lifecycle automation.
The promise sounds simple: bundle CPQ and contract automation into a single, integrated revenue workflow. The problem is that “combined solutions” often read better in press releases than they run in the field.
The uncomfortable truth about PROS’ core
PROS’ core has always been passenger revenue optimization software (it’s literally where the PROS name originated). Historical investments show a strong center of gravity around strengthening travel-sector capabilities, with a few outliers along the way—CPQ being one of them.
Thoma Bravo’s decision to split travel from B2B pricing + CPQ signals what they likely believe: passenger revenue optimization is the “real” durable platform business, and the non-core investments were dilutive to that focus.
In that framing, the CPQ and B2B pricing pieces aren’t the crown jewel—they’re the remainder being folded into Conga. 😬
“Super platform” or just more integration work?
Despite the “super platform” messaging, injecting acquired product pieces into an already “combined solution” does not automatically create a cohesive platform. Sometimes it creates a larger collection of capabilities that still require significant services, integration work, and operational compromise to behave like one product.
Even if contract automation and CPQ become tightly integrated over time, the overall value collapses if the CPQ capabilities still fall short where customers actually need them.
CPQ gaps that still matter
If a CPQ tool can’t handle complex bundles, struggles with high-volume quotes, or requires heavy implementation coding to model real-world product and pricing logic, organizations end up with familiar outcomes: more spreadsheets, more workaround processes, and more operational friction across sales and delivery.
When the CPQ system can’t carry the full configuration and pricing detail, teams compensate by pushing complexity into side systems. The result is less control, less auditability, and more quoting risk—regardless of how polished the “platform” story sounds.
CPQ or déjà vu?
This pattern is not new: an investor finds the strongest core business, then salvages and repackages the rest.
PROS has done its own version of this over time. After acquiring Chameleon for CPQ in 2013, PROS refocused again on travel by acquiring additional travel-focused companies, plus a pricing analytics software firm. The travel side accelerated (pun intended), while the rest is now being recycled into Conga’s stack.
This also echoes a familiar CPQ arc: Salesforce CPQ. After Salesforce acquired Steelbrick CPQ in 2015, Salesforce became a major CPQ presence largely due to CRM scale. But despite early hype, customers have watched Salesforce CPQ stagnate for years, and re-implementation pressure has become the headline reality.
Salesforce is an extreme example, but you don’t need a platform sunset to get boxed in. A “good enough” CPQ that stops evolving still creates compounding cost: manual work, extra services, and missed automation opportunities.
Where to expect innovation investment
Credit where it’s due: airline carriers kept renewing PROS because the travel platform works. Revenue management, digital selling, demand forecasting, and yield discipline—tailored to travel—created real value.
By keeping the travel business as an independent platform investment, Thoma Bravo is giving that core space to breathe. Travel customers should expect a clearer roadmap and more focused product innovation now that it’s no longer carrying the weight of large CPQ and other non-core codebases that weren’t returning the same value.
What’s in store for PROS CPQ customers
There are two broad paths from here, and both have implications that customers should pressure-test early.
Path 1: Combine Conga CPQ and PROS CPQ into one
Conga could attempt to unify the PROS and Conga CPQ products under one solution. That is a multi-year effort and requires sustained investment to catch up to market leaders across configurator depth, performance at scale, and admin UX.
Path 2: De-emphasize PROS CPQ and migrate customers
Conga could instead maintain PROS CPQ just long enough to steer customers toward an “upgrade” (read: re-implementation) onto Conga’s existing CPQ. This can make sense for Conga economically, but it can leave customers with higher costs, fewer fit-for-purpose capabilities, and less CPQ-specific innovation if CPQ remains secondary to Conga’s CLM-first positioning.
If CPQ becomes an afterthought, the risks are predictable
- Fewer CPQ-specific feature updates
- Less CPQ innovation
- Greater integration complexity
- Performance and quoting delays
- Admin UX complexity
- CPQ falls further behind (a familiar story in the market)
Usability is the quiet deal-breaker. Feature breadth looks great on paper, but businesses with even modest complexity often need dedicated CPQ strength—not a checklist of adjacent capabilities buried behind custom code and professional services.
When advanced pricing administration is effectively hidden behind implementation coding, you’ll be paying to bring consultants back in more often. When the configurator can’t model your product and pricing rules as your business defines them, spreadsheets become the de facto “real CPQ.”
What it means if you’re a PROS CPQ customer
If your CPQ is already showing signs of strain, you’re not alone. Many implementations require ongoing injections of professional services just to stay functional, and that support can become both more expensive and more scarce during transitions.
Now is the time to evaluate options with a bias toward depth, not surface polish. Start with the systems you’ve already invested in—especially CRM and ERP—and evaluate which CPQ integrates deeply with where you are (and where you’re going).
Surface-level integrations can sync some records, but they can also create duplicate data, manual workarounds, missing fields, and constant context switching across platforms and spreadsheets. Deep CRM/ERP integration is what turns CPQ into a real part of your operating system rather than a bolt-on tool.
PROS CPQ + Conga: specific questions to consider
- When will you have to re-implement? What new CPQ capabilities will you actually gain for the effort, cost, and time of re-implementing?
- Will PROS CPQ remain on an independent release path? Or will it slowly degrade as the “upgrade” path toward Conga CPQ becomes the default?
- If migration is required, what does the runway look like? What timelines and milestones should you plan around?
- What will support look like during and after the transition? How do customer support and recurring professional services needs change?
- What changes are planned for authentication, data residency, or audit logging?
- How will the new CPQ accommodate your complexity? Will it model your business cleanly, or will you have to contort your process to fit the tool?
The bottom line
This acquisition could be great news if you’re in passenger transportation—rail, airline, or maybe ferryboats. PROS travel is now the clearly prioritized core, and it should see more focused innovation.
For anything else coming from the PROS side (like CPQ), it’s a good time to look around and be honest about what you’ve been missing. If you’re staring down a re-implementation, make that investment count by choosing a CPQ path that can handle your complexity, perform at scale, and integrate deeply with your CRM and ERP.
