Price is never truly optimized because the "right price" is a constantly moving target, hence optimal price setting is the virtue.

At Pricing Cloud we not only provide the models for optimizing prices for a point in time, but we also provide the learning necessary to manage the price setting process more optimally in the future. So managing the perpetual "optimal” price setting process can be done to use price to achieve your corporate goals of share, revenue, growth of breadth & depth, or margins.

Optimization Sample

How does pricing support the overall business model and is it firmly communicated to the organization?

• PRICING CAPABILITIES ASSESSMENT – Determine where internal pricing practices stand in comparison to world class pricing organizations in order to uncover areas of opportunity and “at risk” procedures and protocols.
• SEGMENTATION – Statistically based customer and product groupings created using backward looking statistical techniques and forward looking subjective strategic inputs.
• CUSTOMER VALUE ANALYSIS – Analyze “value pass through” to the customer base through multiple mediums; customer interviews, email campaigns, online surveys and more. Findings are then used to embolden areas of strength and guard against potential marketplace perceived weaknesses.
• MERGERS AND ACQUISITION PRICING CAPABILITIES ASSESSMENT – Determine whether pricing arbitrage exists for prospective acquisitions through a comprehensive seven “pillar” approach. Resulting output provides aggregate and category scores.
• VALUE MAPPING – Analyze specific attributes of the company and product offerings against the marketplace and build a relative quotient matrix for price influence. The output provides value clarity by product line against each major competitor.

Are there firmly defined policies and streamlined processes supporting your pricing actions?

• DISCOUNT AUTHORITY MATRIX – Provide a fluid customized discount matrix, that is supportive of marketplace and commercial behaviors, thus minimizing approvals due to acutely set discount ranges.
• NEW PRODUCT PRICING – A process and support model, ensuring all pricing influences are incorporated into price development at multiple Stage Gate phases prior to the product or service launch.
• PRODUCT PORTFOLIO ALGINMENT – Establish product family pricing guidelines, to maximize total return in support of the overall pricing strategy.
• PRODUCT LIFECYCLE – Manage product pricing throughout the innovation cycle to maximize product throughput and optimize inventory management.

Are current go to market prices designed to optimize win rates, while maximizing returns?

• LIST PRICE SETTING – Multi-factor modeling and strategic determination of List Price levels, optimize differential pricing sensitivities.
• NET PRICING and DISCOUNT OPTIMIZATION – Customer /SKU specific prices and discount structures are based upon specific customer attributes and behaviors
• MARKET BASKET – Bundling products together and discount properly, maximizing transactional hit rates and bundled product revenue.
• PRICE TESTING – Deploying, recording, and analyzing strategic prices across the verticals of: markets, customers, geographies to determine differential sensitivities for incorporation into future pricing.
• SELLING TOOLS – Developing workflow pricing tools for the commercial team, providing them with an enhanced information platform to maximize win rates.

How are your pricing practices supported by competitive research, Firmographics, market analytics or customer evaluation?

• COMPETITIVE RESEARCH – Utilizing web-scraping algorithms, survey studies, or building competitive knowledge markets that are quantified by the pricing organization ensure that the organization can react quickly and intelligently to new pricing dynamics.
• FIRMOGRAPHICS – Finding new ways of segmenting the client’s database beyond traditional methodologies. Some examples include: NAICS/SIC Codes 2 to 8 digit levels, number of employees on site, revenue by site, credit rating, square footage, and many more.
• MARKET ANALYTICS – Market driven analytics with RSS feeds to help predict trends from key component groups thus allowing the organization to proactively engage in pricing rather than reactively.
• CUSTOMER EVALUATION – Customized surveys built with non-leading language and built from around rigorous analytics to maximize the intended results and reducing misinformation/disinformation from your customer base.

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Data Development Sample

Is strategic pricing accepted as a necessary function and does your team have the skills to support it?

• TRAINING – Ensure employees understand: Value Based Pricing, What Is Pricing, Willingness to Pay, Right Pricing, Buying Behavior, and more.
• PRICING COUNCILS– Establish a core leadership team and protocols to ensure pricing remains a competitive advantage as market dynamics change.
• HELP DESK – Design a feedback loop and analytic process for transactions that fall outside of ordinary business thus maximizing the success of all potential opportunities.
• COMPENSATION ALIGNMENT – Derive commercial compensation metrics to drive sales behavior toward pricing and strategic goals.

Have pricing actions been successful and what can be learned from them?

• ASP REPORTING – Properly produced Average Selling Price Dashboards to help bring clarity to deployed prices and guidance on the next steps of enhanced performance.
• SALESFORCE EFFECTIVENESS – Develop a forced ranking of salesperson success based upon advanced pricing methodologies (such as price realization) and a commensurate incentive/improvement plan.
• PRICE VOLUME MIX – Determine how the price /volume relationship interacts with the churn on the axis’s of new business/core business/lost business, thus maximizing resource utilization while balancing revenue with return.
• PRICE REALIZATION – Determine whether deployed prices are hitting their target by creating acute price bands and recommended prices: expert pricing, target
• realization, and floor development.
• PRICE WATERFALLS – Recognize the areas of margin and profit leakage in aggregate all the way down to acute levels using visual depictions for comparative analysis.

How does pricing as a discipline within your organizational team fit into the overall business model? How is it view by each of the major components of the organization?

• CORPORATE PRICING COMMUNICATION – Working within the findings of the value-based approach, to effectively communicate the pricing strategy to the rest of the organization.
• PRICING PERSONNEL – Determine which candidates are the best for your internal Pricing Organization, from Chief Pricing Officer to Pricing Analyst.
• INTERNAL PRICER MANAGEMENT REPORT – A non-biased report built of the functionality of: price realization, change management, “pricer” effectiveness reporting, and internal views of the pricing organization with an effectiveness reporting plan detailing areas of improvement.
• PRICING MANAGEMENT EDUCATION – Education for the pricing organization focused of the soft-side skills needed to effectively price, build organizational confidence, and create change management.

Does the organization’s pricing information reside in a single clean repository and is the data trustworthy?

• IN-HOUSE DEVELOPMENT – Custom built software applications for tablets (both the Android and Apple markets)
• Leverage Point Innovations – The only solution for Value Based Pricing. A SaaS based platform providing a low cost high alternative to more expensive enterprise solutions.
• ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE PURCHASE CONSULTATION – Providing analysis, required platform changes, and vendor selection assistance for a new pricing system to maximize results and shorten the vendor selection process.
• DATABASE ENHANCEMENT/ARCHITECTURE – Utilizing proven techniques and methodologies, we will clean, enhance, improve through firmographics, or fill voids via virtual markets, the backend data systems needed for proper Strategic & Scientific Price development and deployment.