For a long time, PROS Inc. was a prominent pricing management software provider for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) industries. Lately, however, the vendor has been leveraging its decades-long experience in handling large volumes of data to provide big data applications for sales effectiveness (pricing being only a part thereof). In other words, PROS now delivers prescriptive analytics and data science to help customers identify sales opportunities, develop offers, and set prices.

PROS has announced that it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with SAP to embed the SAP HANA platform with its big data apps. SAP HANA is a real-time in-memory database platform that streamlines analytics, planning, predictive, and sentiment assessments to allow business to operate in real time.

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While the jury is still out on whether the price management software market is lucrative and blossoming, at least price management solutions provider Vistaar Technologies recently announced that it closed 2012 with record customer growth and expanded implementations. Vistaar’s continued leadership in the beverage alcohol industry, with a strong presence in spirits, was marked by expansion into the wine and distribution markets. Moreover, one of its most significant 2012 wins was with GE Energy Management, which designs technology solutions for the delivery, management, conversion, and optimization of electrical power.

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The Terlato Wine Group has announced that it selected Vistaar Technologies’ pricing solution to optimize distributor price management throughout its organization. Founded in 1955, Terlato is a leading importer, marketer, and producer of luxury wines that are sold across the globe, representing more than 50 brands spanning the world’s finest wine regions, varietals, and styles. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced LeveragePoint as a cloud-based newcomer to the business-to-business (B2B) pricing market with a novel pricing approach: value-based pricing. In this day and age of highly accelerated new product introductions, history-based pricing approaches are often inadequate. My previous post explained the company’s approach and current state of affairs.

Part 2 follows with my discussion with LeveragePoint’s CEO Steven Forth both during my recent visit to the company’s head office in Cambridge, Massachusetts (US), and via follow up correspondence. Steven Forth is CEO of LeveragePoint and sits on its board of directors. He is responsible for strategic direction, finances, and key relationships.

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TEC’s in-depth 2011 article not only described the opportunities inherent in the business to business (B2B) pricing software market, but also ascertained that the value of this budding software category has yet to become universally known and appreciated. Sensing the opportunity, LeveragePoint is the latest market newcomer with a fresh approach to deal pricing negotiations.

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Part 1 of this series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies, and by Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained the frequently used vernacular terms. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday) prices.

Part 3 analyzed the other two building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then, the post went into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA: Lifecycle Pricing.

Part 4 continued the series by analyzing the pricing optimization vendor landscape, and featured the next-generation pricing optimization approaches of two on-demand software specialists, Revionics and DemandTec. Coming at the heels of the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) BIG Show 2010, Part 5 will conclude the blog series by further analyzing the retail pricing optimization vendor landscape and other vendors’ approaches to the next generation of pricing optimization solutions. 

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Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies and by Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 of this series analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained the frequently used vernacular terms. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday) prices.

Part 3 analyzed the other two building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then the post went into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA – Lifecycle Pricing.

Part 4 continues the blog series by analyzing the pricing optimization vendor landscape and various vendors’ approaches to the next generation of pricing optimization solutions. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotions strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

Part 2 of this blog post series analyzed some common retailers’ practices and explained some of the frequently used vernacular. Then the post went into the building blocks of pricing optimization, starting with setting optimal initial (everyday or base) prices.

Part 3 of this blog post series will analyze the two other building blocks of pricing optimization: promotions and markdowns. Then, the article will go into the next generation of pricing optimization according to JDA: “Lifetime Pricing.” Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog post series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better pricing management and optimization practices. This series, which focuses on the complexity of pricing and promotions in retailing, was inspired by JDA Software’s recent “edu-nouncement” on leading retailers’ consumer-centric pricing and promotion strategies and Revionics’ recent (and still ongoing) educational series of Web-seminars.

To recap Part 1: due to the phenomenon of the “cross-elasticity” of demand, retailers may want to consider whether promoting an item would result in increased sales volume and, if so, whether that increase would represent incremental revenue or merely cannibalize sales of other items. Retailers have to be able to compare items on promotion against the entire department, product category, and subcategory. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Four Ps” of marketing strategy, also known as the “marketing mix,” are basically applicable to all businesses. TEC’s two-part blog post series in 2008 talked about the importance of pricing management in a down economy. Price and promotion in particular are the lubricants in retailing, although the two remaining Ps–product and place, are indisputably important there as well.

In his guest author article in Retail Info Systems (RIS) News, Wayne Usie, senior vice president of retail at JDA Software, remarks that one doesn’t have to go far to see the impact the economy is having on retailers. The evening news is plagued with store closings, while “going out of business signs” and ominously empty “for rent” spaces seem to pop up on every corner. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series described the conundrum that commodity-based manufacturers encounter when it comes to determining the best price, production mix, and volumes. It also introduced SignalDemand, Inc., which applies math and science to the problem of price and margin optimization software for large-scale manufacturers.

SignalDemand stands alone as the only provider of price management and optimization software that takes into account the key supply and production constraints impacting manufacturers. In other words, its application is using pricing as a demand and supply matching mechanism for manufacturers of consumer goods.

Namely, on the supply (upstream) side, commodity-focused hedge funds have long leveraged supply optimization software, while on the demand (downstream) side, wholesale distributors and retailers have for some time leveraged demand management and optimization software. Conversely, manufacturers have for too long been left in the middle shooting in the dark when it comes to concurrent pricing and demand management. Read the rest of this entry »

In TEC’s previous articles and blog posts about pricing management and optimization vendors like Zilliant, Vendavo, DemandTec, Servigistics or Revionics, the main focus was on finished goods (including spare parts). Whether these final products are sold at retail shelves to consumers or dealt directly between trading partners, their proper pricing is meant to create demand and profitability for the seller. In other words, the idea is to harness science to understand products’ baseline demand, price sensitivity, and the impact of pricing actions based on demand sensing insights.

Recently, however, I had a chance to meet with an interesting pricing optimization startup vendor whose aim is to help upstream manufacturers and suppliers understand how to better translate commodity (e.g., corn, soy, oil, gas, electricity, metals, polypropylene) prices into viable final product mixes. For example, how can a meat packer make better downstream supply chain decisions on its choice of cuts (e.g., a beef carcass as a source material can yield more than one thousand various meat cuts as finished products) and ensure that they are priced best on the retail shelf at the end of a highly perishable supply chain? Read the rest of this entry »