Competitive Advantages
In this section, we are going to highlight the Top 7 Competitive Advantages of Next Gen Price Optimization & Management Software Â
Earlier in a prior article, we established if your business is suited or not for optimization. Now, let’s examine the top 7 advantages of Next Gen price optimization and management software such as that offered by Pricefx. We will highlight and how it can help you become a more profitable and streamlined modern company via these advantages:
Speed to Implement
Flexibility of Next Price Optimization & Management Software
Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
A Complete All-Round Price Optimization Solution
Better Return-To-Investment (ROI) TimeÂ
Compare Your Business Against Competitors
Partner EcosystemÂ
Speed to ImplementÂ
To provide added value to customers and enable fast time-to-value, Next Gen pricing software allows for standard ‘out-of-the-box’ implementation at lightning speed. Â
The technology that allows that to happen is specifically designed with the end-user like you in mind. Â
Designed for use in the User Interface (UI), your Next Gen pricing software can be implemented quickly by your current staff without any need for a pricing scientist. Given the ‘no code or low code’ native cloud technology, little to no technical knowledge is required to implement. Your regular IT staff can be trained to implement the Next Gen pricing software quickly.Â
Being a multi-tenant scalable solution, it allows clients to run sophisticated pricing software immediately while spending less money. Moreover, tenants don’t need to maintain the infrastructure or train inexperienced staff, allowing them to save money and resources on storage, hardware, and maintenance costs.
Flexibility of NextGen Price Optimization & Management SoftwareÂ
As Next Gen pricing software is designed ‘from the customer’s needs up,’ rather than prescriptively from ‘the pricing vendor down,’ inherent flexibility is built into the system. Straight out of the gates, the data used in the software will come from you, the customer. And it will be informed through AI & ML that works in the real world. Utilizing this form of ‘data-first’ design, Pricefx takes your data, ingests it, and creates your pricing model quickly.
Given that data can be fed into the Next Gen pricing software quickly, it also assists in short implementation timeframes. Â
 Using APIs (Application Program Interfaces), outside data sources such as Index data (for manufacturers using raw materials), Google Maps (to calculate more accurate distribution time and costs), weather data, competitors’ data and other cost drivers can be fed into the pricing software quickly and easily to allow for flexible use.
New pricing ideas, strategies and business requirements can therefore be implemented at speed. Â
Other forms of pricing technology usually constrain the user’s imagination or require costly technology rebuilds to implement new business needs. Â
Therefore, Next Gen pricing software contains inherent unlimited potential for transforming business vision in a different direction and considering future profit imaginings. Â
Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)Â
Pricefx Next Gen pricing management and optimization software’s low TCO costs are built upon being a multi-tenant platform as we discussed above. What that means is, with its native cloud-based architecture, the Pricefx can be operated as an independent self-service system with minimal maintenance costs.Â
New pricing models and shifts to different pricing strategies can be done in-house by your own staff. Never fear, if there is a change required that is beyond your staff’s comfort zone to execute, Pricefx will assist. But your staff will be trained to know how to execute it next time. Â
Significantly less ongoing maintenance and subscription costs in addition to the low initial implementation costs all make Next Gen pricing software TCO lower than the first-generation pricing software models.Â
Complete All-Round Price Optimization SolutionÂ
Next Gen pricing software delivers a 360-degree view of pricing – from list to gross to net – including advanced data analytics and AI-ML based optimization, and it does so in several ways. Â
The price optimization enabled by the technology allows for pricing to get as real-time and as precise as possible. It’s a level of business agility that can easily adapt to changing market conditions that may shift multiple times per day (such as raw material indices like oil or gold). The AI-ML employed can be as dynamic as your business requirements dictate, even allowing for price fluctuations in real time if the need arises.Â
What’s more, the Pricefx Next Gen pricing software technology is what can be called a ‘clear box’ approach.
What that means is that the entire system is open, transparent, and accessible with full reasoning for price shifts clearly provided for you as the end user. Â
First generation pricing software models where the reasons for price changes are ‘black box’ (not always clearly known, interpretated nor understood without the assistance of a deep analytical dive from a pricing scientist) provide no clear explanations to the client.Â
The ‘clear box model’ provides transparency and therefore, confidence in the pricing software.
Price optimization can be built upon multiple constraints from multiple sources all in real time with Next Gen pricing software. By this, understand that rules like targeted gradual price mark-ups over time rather than total price mark-ups can be implemented (for example, 5 x 1% price increases rather than 1 x 5% price increase). Or if you want to institute a rule to always price your in-house brand product 10% less than a national brand, that is possible too. Â
It’s what is widely referred to as ‘Real World AI’ or ‘Pragmatic AI.’ With this technology, scenarios like the above-mentioned Uber pricing disaster can be avoided as restraints on price-gouging can be built-in as a rule. It can therefore be used as a method to clarify to your customers that your pricing is democratic and fair. No more unclear and mysterious over-pricing where bad data becomes confused and makes curious and impossible to defend decisions.Â
The possibilities of the Next Gen AI-ML pricing software model are quite literally endless. It can even be used to balance and create rules to allow for multiple pricing objectives from different departments within your organization to run concurrently!
Better Return-To-Investment (ROI) TimeÂ
Due to its abbreviated time to implement, minimal maintenance costs and greater value through increased capability over first-gen models, Next Gen pricing software has a markedly shorter ROI time.Â
Number 1, with Next Gen software you will be getting a higher return in general, but leave that important detail aside for a moment. With lower TCO and faster time to implement and therefore bringing value faster, you will be seeing 49% faster ROI breakeven as compared to the three leading first gen pricing software companies*(G2 report Spring 2021).Â
Compare Your Business Against Competitors
Unique to the Next Gen pricing solution offered by Pricefx, the Plasma tool provides industry-level benchmarking to B2B enterprise companies that need to develop strategic insights in their pricing processes and performance compared to companies like them in terms of scope, industry, size and regions.Â
Plasma gives organizations a unique business advantage to improve their pricing strategy and execution by scientifically measuring their pricing performance against their competitors. Â
Laying the foundation for a data-driven assessment of developing opportunities and target setting, Plasma does away with guesswork, anecdotical evidence, and poorly defined benchmarks in assessing pricing. A set of more than 20 market-relevant performance KPIs reveal insights into industry pricing and assist in measuring your pricing performance against competitors or even between different departments in your own organization and track your performance over time.Â
Partner Ecosystem Enables Increased Networking Opportunities
Finally, as an additional value point for Pricefx customers, the company provides exclusive marketing and sales resources to help your business expand your client base. Through special product updates, training, shared one-off events and expertise, Pricefx assists you to unlock your businesses’ unique advantages.Â
Live, instructor led, and on-demand training programs are available for all partner education, designed to help you maximize and enhance the business objectives that you are seeking with Pricefx Next Gen pricing software.Â