CRM in 2025: Less About Big Databases and Monolithic Apps, More About Creating Point-in-Time Experiences

As part of the CRM in 2025 conversation series organized by the CRM Playaz, included for the first time were executives at vendors well known in the industry for their specific focus but that are not directly CRM/CX platform providers, vendors that are increasingly impacting how those platforms enable companies to create and deliver customer experiences.

During the series John Bruno, vice president of strategy at PROS, a leading provider of AI-powered SaaS pricing and selling solutions, shared why he believes the need for companies to emphasize creating "point-in-time" (PIT) experiences is a catalyst for people to adjust how CRM is perceived and how partnerships with CRM/CX platform vendors will benefit both companies and their customers.

Here is a short cliip of Bruno sharing an example of how the PROS-Microsoft partnership creates those PIT experiences, with an edited transcript below.

John Bruno: In a lot of our markets we operate in some well-known spaces price optimization and management configure price quote. If you were to ask someone off the street they can oftentimes define what that means to them. And I think what that means to them is going to change pretty radically.

For instance, the core applications of sales, marketing, service and commerce. They're still going to exist. But what is going to enhance and augment these areas are these vignettes. Obviously Microsoft was very loud and very proud for the last 18- 24 months or so around co-pilots. And I don't want tokind of turn this into an LLM conversation because that can go off the rails quickly. But what I find interesting about that approach and that strategy is you are serving a user for a specific need in a point in time, so they can deliver a better customer experience for their customers. It's less about the big database, the monolithic applications, these long end-to-end processes and workflows and statuses. And so we see something very similar.

How do you capture what's important to that user at that point in time Whether you're browsing United.com and you're seeing that little widget on their website that says “hey looking for a vacation here are some ideas?”. That's us. We're capturing some interesting intent at that point in time.

Or whether you're talking about how a customer is browsing a product catalog Instead of relying on a salesperson to create a quote. What if I could tell that salesperson the things that a user's actually clicking on, because that's going to be a really strong, intense signal. And then use that data both for the salesperson but also for the customer to help guide them along their journey.

One of the ways we stepped into that kind of arena last year is we became the first CPQ provider in the market to integrate with Microsoft Sales Copilot. You email a salesperson and it helps them craft an intelligent response that's contextually relevant. And now that contextually relevant response can contain the products and the prices unique for you. It's all being powered by PROS.

We see a lot more of these vignettes coming up and augmenting what these core applications do. But they're these point in time experiences that really elevate the customer experience.