Glossary of terms

Accelerator 

tools with unique functionalities and capabilities to ease and speed up deployment of Pricefx

Access Admin

an area where user management is taking place.

Account executive

a salesperson with primary day-to-day responsibility for an ongoing business relationship with a customer.

AE

Accrual

accrual/s - refers to a time-procedural process usually carried out by accounting departments to “accrue” money in the bank for payouts that are expected to be made in the future.

Adaptive Multi-Agent System

a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.

AMAS

Agent

An autonomous program that indefinitely loops its lifecycle of perception-decision-action. “Autonomous” means the agent decides itself what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

AHI

artificial and human intelligence

AHI

Airline Tariff Publishing Company

a privately held corporation that engages in the collection and distribution of fare and fare-related data for the airline and travel industry

ATPCO

Analytics

one of the Pricefx functional areas where users can visualize pricing data.

Annual contract value

the average annual revenue generated from each customer contract, excluding fees

ACV

Approval Workflow 

a process of approving the quotes when the content of the quote does not fit into the defined thresholds (e.g., minimum margin). Approval workflows should be programmed in the calculation logic. There could be multiple approval workflows connected to different user groups in the Pricefx software.

Automatic upgrade

assisting Pricefx customers in maintaining their core product version that is N-1 compliant. This means that the QA environment will be updated by default to the N-1 compliant version (as Pricefx support schedule permits). After QA upgrade, then within 30 days the PROD environment will be automatically upgraded to the N-1 compliant version (as Pricefx support schedule permits).

Best &final offer

BAFO

Bill of materials

data that identifies the items or raw materials used to produce any physical thing, whether that thing is a structure or a product.

BoM

Bottom-up pricing

method in which all the costs are calculated first, and the desired profit is added to the total cost to calculate the price

Business development representatives

someone who is responsible for generating new business opportunities by qualifying leads and prospecting through existing business accounts to engage with potential buyers.

BDR

Business Intelligence Software

types of application software that collect and process large amounts of unstructured data from internal and external systems

BIS

Business Roles

 a tool to combine user roles and user groups for a certain level of access to the software.

BR

Calculable line item collection 

refers to Quote/Agreement/Rebate 

CLIC

Calculated field set

CFS

Calculation flow

CF

Calculation logic

 a common term in Pricefx that defines a particular combination of Groovy code that defines how prices are being calculated.

CL

Change request

CR

Charts

standard pricing charts available by default in Analytics within Data Analyzer.

Claim Records

a table containing the approved claims' records to be processed and paid out

Claims Types

an area where the pre-programmed types of claims calculation are displayed. The types are used to create claims with pre-defined parameters.

Cloud security alliance

CSR

Cluster

a partition's home. Used in Pfx interchangeably with  instance. A given cluster runs exactly one version of Pricefx. Any partition on that cluster is upgraded at the same time. 

Competition price

the price of a competitor ​with a similar product

Computation 

An agent which takes variables as input to compute a value that it assigns to the output variable. This is one of the concepts of the meta-model.

Condition type

formerly called Contract Term Type

CT

Configuration engineer

CE

Configuration Wizard

an area to modify different pricing setups in a simple, step-by-step way without programming knowledge.

Configure-Price-Quote

configure a price, add a quote

CPQ

Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaire

a downloadable spreadsheet of yes or no questions that correspond to the controls of CSA's Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), our cybersecurity controls framework for cloud computing

CAIQ

Constraints Parameters

Constraints are threshold and target criteria. Their parameters are namely: Acceptable delta – Acceptable margin of error. Precision – Expected precision of the target.

Contract Header 

an overview of the complete contract. Currently used as Agreements and Promotions.

Contract Line item

a contract item that defines a particular type of discount, agreement, campaign. One contract can have multiple line items.

Contract Term Types

an area where the pre-programmed types of contract calculation are displayed. The term types are used to create contracts with pre-defined parameters.

Contracts 

Previously used name for Agreements and Promotions.

Coordinates

Associate dimensions (e.g. product, client) to categories (e.g. product X, client Z) to situate variables in the problem's space. This is one of the concepts of the meta-model.

Core

Pricefx term used to define the off-the- shelf capabilities (what comes with the basic subscription) along with selected accelerators in their out-of the-box form, meaning to customization or client specific set-up.

Costs (freight/transportation)

the costs to move products

Costs (product)

the cost of production (types: standard, fixed, variable, avoidable, internal transportation, internal storage)​

Criterion 

It is an agent which expresses a criticality level by reflecting their satisfaction and their importance, e.g. targets, thresholds, or mini/maximization objectives. Criteria are applied to a variable. This term is one of the concepts of the meta-model.

Cross-sell

Cross-selling is the practice of marketing additional products to existing customers, often practiced in the financial services industry.

Customer 

a table that includes customers data with a variety of attributes. Mostly used in B2B.

C

Customer Extensions

 a type of data table containing additional customer information, such as sold-to, hierarchy, etc.

CX

Customer Health Score, Product Health Score

Calculated based on the fields Revenue Trend Last 12 months and Margin Trend Last 12 months. The Revenue Health Score and Margin Health Score are set according to the Revenue and Margin monthly or quarterly change (trend) in the last 12 months ( the maximum value is 100, the minimum value is 0) 

Customer relationship manager

combination of practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. The goal is to improve customer service relationships and assist in customer retention and drive sales growth.

CRM

Customer segment

To group customers by common characteristics, the Customer Segment is defined in configuration (Company Parameters) – a list of fields the segment consists of, e.g. customer size, region, country etc. According to values aggregated on the Customer Segment level, certain KPIs for particular customers are calculated, e.g. cross sell. 

Dashboards 

graphical user interface that provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators relevant to a particular objective or business process.

Data Change Request

DCR

Data feed

DF

Data Load

DL

Data Source

a type of data table that includes cleansed and structured data used to build data marts.

DS

Datamart

a type of data table that includes multiple data sources and is used for analytics.

DM

Dimensions

They are what defines levers and criteria. For instance, if your levers are product prices and your criteria are margin targets per product family and customer, then your dimensions are product, product family, and customer.

Discount impact

see Margin leakage

Dissatisfaction (criterion)

How much a criterion is dissatisfied, high = bad.

Distributor price 

wholesale price in B2B​ businesses (example: manufacturer sells tyers to distributor)

DRM

data readiness methodology

DRM

EBITDA margin

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization

EBITDA

Electronic data interchange

a process which allows one company to send information to another company electronically rather than with paper.

EDI

Elite

The smallest group of the most influential Value Finders whose cumulated influence is greater than half of the total influence received by the Criterion Agent.

Enhancement request

previously Change Request

ER 

Enterprise resource planning

a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations.

ERP

Environment

used sometimes in Pricefx with the meaning of instance or cluster. Instance is preferred though.

European Article Number

 is a barcode standard, a 12- or 13-digit product identification code. Each EAN uniquely identifies the product, manufacturer and its attributes.

EAN

Excel Client

a tool based on Excel macros that allow to modify and upload the data to a particular partition.

Extend

Pricefx term used to express extended configuration. This is strictly client specific and is not covered in the core capabilities.

Floor price 

the lowest price calculated on the base of profitability

Global pricing

global price setting​ that is applicable for all business units

Grace period

Once a major release date has passed and the customer’s environment has been deemed to be non-compliant with the Pricefx N-1 policy, then they will enter a Grace Period phase. During this 30-day period immediately after the major release, the customer will be encouraged to present a plan for a timely upgrade of their environment to N-1 compliance.

Graph Patterns

Simple computation graph patterns to test the system and identify some Non-Cooperative Situations. They include SISO – Single input single output, SIMO – Single input multiple outputs, MISO – Multiple input single output, MIMO – Multiple input multiple outputs, Asynchronous feedback, Phase shift, Phase interference, Cycle.

Group purchasing organization

model combines the spend of businesses from diverse industries to achieve better pricing, service levels, and account representation from suppliers.

GPO

Home

a starting page of Pricefx that displays all software functional areas. It can be customized according to user preferences.

Instance

see cluster

Impact (criterion → value finder)

It defines how much the criterion pressures the value finder, relative to other neighboring criteria.

Induced Movement (criterion → value finder)

How much the value finder has moved because of the criterion.

Influence (value finder → criterion )

Estimation of how much the criterion’s dissatisfaction has moved because of the value finder’s actions.

Influence proportion (value finder → criterion)

Weight of the value finder’s influence on the criterion, relative to the other influencing value finders.

IntegrationManager

a back-end interface that manages data transformation and uploading into the Pricefx data tables.

Live Price Grid

a type of price list with products and calculated by logic prices which should be recalculated several times per day depending on new data (e.g., competition) updates.

LPG

Local pricing

regional price setting​ that comes on top of the global pricing

Maintenance, Repair, Operations

MRO

Manual Price List

MPL

Margin

the product's price - cost​; margin is usually the key profitability indicator.

Margin Leakage

areas where the company loses money

Marketing development funds

are funds that a company provides to all its intermediaries such as dealers, distributors, and agents, so they can use them to run marketing and sales campaigns.

MDF

MAS

Multi-Agent System which performs multi-dimensional multi-criteria optimization.

Mass Update

a function that allows updating the similar value, for example, cost, in many or all existing quotes. A feature that is useful during quotes revisions and common price parameters updates.

Master Data

a term used to define key data tables essential for software functionality.

Material Pricing Group

way of grouping materials to which one wants to apply the same conditions

MPG

Messages

They are the objects used by agents to communicate with each other. Their types are: Notify Value, Notify Criticality, Notify Elite, Subscribe to Value, Set Value, Notify No Longer Critical.

Models

one of the Pricefx functional areas where users can create, run and maintain optimization models.

Models Types 

an area where the pre-programmed types of optimization approach are displayed. The types are used to create an optimization model based on the defined data and optimization target.

N-1 Compliance

Pricefx customers being no more than 1 release behind the most current major release. e.g., when Paper Plane 11.0 is released in 2023, then support will cover Bees Knees 10.x and Paper Plane 11.0.

N-1 Policy

Pricefx will officially provide support for ONLY the last 2 major releases.  In June 2023, Pricefx will begin diligently enforcing our N-1 release policy. 

N-1

Negotiation Guidance

Pricefx accelerator where a segmentation tree using a pre-defined set of attributes called segmentation levels and then provide price recommendations based on the information from the whole segment is built. The segmentation levels are usually a combination of product attributes, customer attributes, and even transaction attributes. 

Non-Cooperative Situations

The AMAS approach states that agents must be cooperative: they should seek to help each other, adopt a useful behavior, and communicate useful information in a non-ambiguous form. This is the way to ensure that local behaviors lead to an adequate global function. Some situations may prevent agents to cooperate. They are called Non-Cooperative Situations (NCSs) and are of different types depending on what is going wrong at what part of the lifecycle (e.g. conflict, uselessness, ambiguity, etc.). An agent should be able to either detect and solve NCSs or anticipate and avoid them. This documentation mentions the following types of NCSs: Computation Agent Conflict (Phase Shift), Value Finder Conflict (El Farol Bar Problem), Value Finder Unproductiveness (No Neighbor), Value Finder Incompetence (Asynchronous Feedback), Criterion Agent Conflict (Gradient Loss).

Number of Transactions

Total Transactions in a given period / Total days in a given period

Open to buy

an inventory management strategy that helps retailers calculate how many products they need to buy. This includes physical inventory on hand and in transit, as well as any outstanding orders.

OTB

Operation profit

gross profit

Optimization Engine

an area where users can define and run AI-modeled optimization.