From tweaking your pricing to running large price revisions, every aspect of your pricing process contributes to the overall success of your business. While this means there are plenty of opportunities to improve and grow, it also means that there is a lot to keep track of, which is why you need a Price Optimization & Management (PO&M) system. Here are the benefits of PO&M for your business and your pricing team.
And then there’s everything outside the business.
No organization works in isolation, and staying in tune with the market and industry you operate in is just as important as knowing what’s going on internally.
You have a knack for spotting new opportunities, but if you want to grow your business and build your team, you need visibility across your entire business and every member of your organization needs to be aligned.
There’s an entire industry of software tools designed to help you keep your finger on the pulse of your business, and it goes by the name of Price Optimization & Management (PO&M) software.
How PO&M Software can help your business benefit
So, what are the key benefits of PO&M software? In short, PO&M can help your business:
- – Improve pricing efficiency
- – Improve profit margins
- – Increase revenue
- – Increase the customer lifetime value
- – Do better forecasting and reporting
But how do you take advantage of price optimization management to do that?
Former CEO of SAS, Jan Carlzon insists that the secret to making it to the top of your industry (and staying there) starts on the inside:
“You cannot improve one thing by 1000% but you can improve 1000 little things by 1%. An individual without information can’t take responsibility.”
Jan Carlzon | SAS
Carlzon left SAS in 1994, but his words about the importance of transforming those learnings into actions still ring true today.
In an era when all the information you need is at your fingertips, managers are overwhelmed by the amount of company data in their grasp. KPIs, conversion rates, sales forecasts, margin levels, traffic stats, budget info: the list of numbers and the quantity of spreadsheets goes on and on and on.
Tracking price-performance metrics allows you to make better pricing decisions—your future price success hinges on how well it’s done—so successful companies invest in the best possible data management tools available.
But most companies neglect data management, including the data needed for pricing.
Excel was used as a primary finance tool by 69% of American companies with annual revenues under $25 million in 2018—a prime example of how many organizations aren’t making use of newer and more effective tools to keep track of how they’re doing.
Spreadsheets are not the most user-friendly way to share data within a small team. For a big company or for a business looking to grow, spreadsheets can become a significant productivity-killer. They also require a lot of manual data entry and increase the risk of human error.
If you do swear by spreadsheets for finance, pricing and all manner of company data management just make sure that the reasons stem from a data-driven strategy, and not a fear of change.
Here’s why:
Dimension Data’s 2017 Digital Workplace Report surveyed over 850 companies and found that 62% perceived IT barriers as the biggest obstacle to adopting new technologies, however helpful, to the workplace.
The same study also found that 61% haven’t defined a strategy for how technology is used within their workplace.
If you truly believe IT is your biggest obstacle to implementing a dream data management strategy that you know will take your business to the next level, then it’s time for you to consider a PO&M software.
Without PO&M Software you give away an advantage
One of the key benefits of a Price Optimization & Management (PO&M) system is that it is designed to break down the data silos in your organization. In other words, it gets you and everyone around you organized around pricing and generating and setter better prices.
PO&M systems give you and your team easy access to the insights needed to steer themselves towards their goals by integrating the communication, analytics, forecasting, and data handling tools of your company. For more details on the basics of PO&Ms read our guide ‘What is a PO&M system?’.
As technologically advanced as they may sound, the best PO&M tools are also easy to integrate, user-friendly and totally manageable without any expert IT knowledge or support—and many PO&M software providers also have onboarding for new customers and support staff. Away goes the “IT barrier” problem and in comes a new era of higher productivity and focus.
Here are 3 ways adopting a PO&M tool can really help you benefit and give you a competitive edge:
1. Spend fewer hours handling boring price admin work
Manual data entry is not only less reliable, but also a waste of your most important resource: time. You should be focusing your efforts on more strategic activities )like actually taking pricing decisions prices). A PO&M will automate the collection of important information about product data, sales, customers, web traffic and more through a wide range of features designed to make you more productive.
Most PO&M software options also integrate with your other tools, allowing you to sync data between them for efficient and error-free data management—meaning you’ll spend so much less time switching between solutions and duplicating tasks.
2. Easily manage your pricing processes
A static view of what your current prices, future prices, and pricing processes look like has its limitations. While it gives you and your pricing team a framework for how to operate and an overview of the steps it takes to complete a specific process, you can’t ensure consistent execution or track performance in real-time.
And, as you know, things rarely go according to your initial plans.
Using customizable views, PO&M tools help you and your team visualize even the most complex pricing processes. These not only make it easier to keep track of performance, but this practical approach to pricing management makes it easier to tweak and improve based on live results.
3. Get pricing insights when you need them
Instead of sifting through spreadsheets for hours, PO&M software gives you a snapshot of your most vital sales & pricing stats on a visual and easy-to-read dashboard. Moreover, PO&M software often comes with pricing KPI tracking and forecasting features, which use existing data as it comes in to help you pinpoint your progress and monitor pricing performance.
Make your digital workplace agile
“We’ve moved from digital products and infrastructure to digital distribution and Web strategy to now into more holistic transformations that clearly are based on mobile, social media, digitization and the power of analytics and we think it’s really a new era requiring new strategies.”
Saul Berman | IBM
The majority of PO&M tools are switching from on-premise to cloud-based, meaning that the data is secure and accessible no matter where you are. The future of the workplace is not just digital, it’s SaaS-based. Learn more about cloud PO&M software.
Lightweight and scalable, PO&M software is designed to grow alongside your business, making it the ultimate tool of choice if you’re looking to grow your pricing team, margins and revenue.
For more guidance on finding the ideal PO&M solution, read our article on a PO&M solution’s advantages and three steps to finding the best for you.
Productivity-boosting features in PriceEdge
PriceEdge was designed by pricing people who believed they were spending way too much time not improving pricing.
PriceEdge’s PO&M software was developed to address the huge time cost of repetitive tasks and need for always adjusting the pricing logic to the latest optimizations and market findings
PriceEdge was built to give pricing managers and pricing teams the time and visibility they needed to focus on growth—one of the biggest benefits of PO&M solutions. The most important productivity-enhancing aspect of this PO&M software is that it encourages activity-based pricing.
Most pricing teams tend to focus on end-results like margin targets, which are outside you and your team’s control. Instead, PriceEdge is designed to encourage you to focus on the tasks and actions that drive profits and reduce the amount of time you spend on activities that do not.
Below are a few admin-reducing features that help PriceEdge users spend more time on profit-generating activities.
1. Integrate all your pricing data in one place
There is no single perfect tool for every company task.
Different companies, teams, and individuals may have their own preferred ERP, CRM or E-commerce platforms. While stratification of tools in your team is an inevitable part of growth, there’s no reason why the information can’t be all in one place. PriceEdge solves that by acting as a hub for all important pricing data in your organization or team.
Sometimes less is more, and using a single platform for your pricing can save you a fortune in time costs.
2. Setting up reminders for key activities
Tap into the collective power of your team by keeping everyone on the same page. Automatic notifications via email or messaging service are designed to keep your team in the loop and avoid any lost opportunities.
PriceEdge’s prompts help you stay productive, keep you up to date on important deals and scheduled meetings, and tell you when to follow-up with clients or customers.
3. Use filters to segment and target leads
If you’re in the midst of wrapping up a large price revision pitching an important idea to your superiors, or presenting quarterly results to your team, having key data at your fingertips is priceless (pun intended 🙂).
While you can filter information on a single Excel spreadsheet, and even multiple spreadsheets with a bit of work, setting it all up takes time. Not to mention the fact that maintaining the same hierarchy of information and templates as you share editing rights with your teammates is a whole other challenge.
PriceEdge makes it easy to customize filters and search criteria for important information about your products, web traffic, customers and pricing opportunities. Even a couple of seconds can make or break a sale, and in the long term, you save hours in spreadsheet admin.
Choose a PO&M tool that grows with you
As we’ve seen, cost and IT barriers tend to stop companies from investing in workplace technology. For small businesses, in particular, the idea of implementing automation tools and PO&M solutions seems like a luxury expense for a later stage.
To be fair, some PO&M tools are notoriously clunky, demand extensive staff training and have hefty monthly costs. But not all PO&Ms are heavy on your wallet or schedule. PriceEdge is designed to be lean, adaptable and scalable, all while giving you all the benefits of PO&M software.
Tech tools and employee satisfaction go hand in hand
According to a 2018 study conducted by Aruba, a Hewlett-Packard company, there is a strong positive correlation between employee satisfaction and digital technology at the workplace.
“Employees who work in fully-enabled digital workplaces where new workplace technologies are in widespread use were 51% more likely to have strong job satisfaction, 43% more likely to be positive about their work-life balance, 60% more likely to say they are motivated at work, and 91% more likely to praise their company’s vision.”
Not all tasks are made equal, and repetitive admin work is an easy motivation killer. By investing in technology to automate administrative tasks, you give your team more time to focus on value-adding activities that require their unique skills and give meaning to their life at work.
It’s about more than simply boosting productivity, and ensuring that the majority of your team members’ workweek is spent on challenging tasks drives up engagement and, as a result, job satisfaction.
Choosing the right PO&M software for your business
Once you’re sure that adopting a PO&M tool into your workplace is the right move it’s time to decide which one is best for your business’ individual needs.
There are plenty of PO&M tools available on the market, each of them with different benefits, strengths, and weaknesses. Identifying the one that will work best for you and your team will depend on the specific features you need, as well as the budget you are working with.
Research is an essential part of making this or any decision, and you can start by contrasting the price and features of the most popular PO&M tools on the market, for example, starting at Capterra.
If a more practical approach to research is more your thing you can give us at PriceEdge and we will talk you through and demo all our relevant features for you. Book a demo today and find out why world-leading companies choose PriceEdge as their go-to pricing platform.
About The Author: Radu Marin
Radu is a former Pricing Manager at HP and is now actively working in our pricing projects as a Pricing Analyst and contributes to Price Edge marketing efforts when possible.
More posts by Radu Marin