PROS and IBS Software have announced a strategic partnership that combines PROS Kairos Offer Management with IBS Software’s iRetail Order Management, giving airlines a way into modern retailing without replacing their commercial technology stack.
The two products cover different halves of the retailing shift. Offer management is where an airline builds and prices what it puts in front of a traveller. Order management holds the record of what was sold and lets the airline change it after the sale. PROS brings the first and IBS Software the second, and the companies describe the link between them as a pre-engineered integration designed to reduce complexity and speed up deployment.
The pitch speaks to a decision many airlines face. IBS Software CEO Somit Goyal says airlines have been asked to choose between a single stack they cannot shape and a modular approach they have to assemble themselves, and that the partnership is designed to change that equation. PROS CEO Sunil John describes the aim as freedom to modernise on the airline’s own terms. For carriers that have spent years investing in their current systems, the companies’ proposal is to start with offers and orders and leave the rest in place.
Both companies bring wider ambitions than the two modules named in the release. PROS launched Kairos on 12 October as a new retailing platform, following its decision earlier this year to focus exclusively on travel retailing. IBS Software describes iRetail as a modular, cloud-native platform covering the full offer, order, settlement and delivery chain. The partnership therefore links two companies that each have a broader retailing platform, and it positions PROS as the offer specialist alongside IBS Software’s order management.
PROS also has a large customer base to draw on. It says its forecasting and pricing technology is used by more than 150 airlines, including Lufthansa, TAP Air Portugal, Aeromexico, Etihad Airways and Japan Airlines. That figure reflects PROS’s established pricing business. Kairos is only weeks old, so the partnership extends long-standing relationships with airline revenue teams into a new product area.
Modularity brings its own questions, and the answers will decide how far the pitch travels. Airlines will want to know how the handoff from offer to order works in practice, how it connects to the passenger service, inventory and revenue management systems already in place, who is accountable when an issue sits between two vendors, and whether they stay free to bring in other providers. The release does not yet name an airline or give a timeline, and it does not say what the pre-engineered integration covers or whether each product works with other partners.
The partnership frames retailing as something airlines can buy in stages, and it sets two specialists against the suite vendors on the argument of choice. Whether airlines accept that argument depends on evidence the announcement does not yet contain, starting with the first airline to run both products together.
