Your business and markets are becoming more complex every day, and your prices need to reflect that reality with agility and precision. In this article, Aneesa Needel, Product Marketing Manager at Vendavo, discusses what you need to know about dynamic pricing, the companies that are using dynamic pricing successfully, and what to watch out for in dynamic pricing models so your team gets it right.
B2B companies that want to offer their customers fully optimized dynamic pricing at every step of the sales process need data-powered solutions they can trust. Dynamic pricing optimization software facilitates smarter, better-informed pricing strategies. A top-of-the-line dynamic pricing solution gives you the power to:
- Support price forecasting
- Accelerate profitability
- Enable deal price management
- Optimize targets
- Embed business insights
- Utilize data-led segmentation
- Gain access to specialized metrics and data visualization
Pricing data demands specialized metrics and visualization, neither of which is typically found in general-purpose business intelligence tools. You want to choose a dynamic pricing software provider and intelligent price optimization software solution that supports both specialized metrics and visualization. This will help you move beyond manual processes to more automated, profitable, intelligent operations.
7 Companies That Are Using Dynamic Pricing Successfully
Value-based pricing is a pricing strategy used by many successful manufacturing, aftermarket, and distribution firms. It backs the agility and flexibility that makes organizations more resilient to changes and market volatility. Here’s a look at seven companies who are using dynamic pricing successfully.
ABC Supply Co. Inc.®
ABC Supply is one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing supplies, siding, windows, and other exterior and interior building products in the U.S. The company is relentlessly committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and wanted to better serve their contractor customers with appropriate and competitive prices and quotes. They leverage a dynamic pricing solution to achieve:
- Up-to-date, accurate pricing that scales
- Competitive quotes for commercial projects
- Simpler and quicker maintenance
ABC Supply must be agile and ready for change to remain a leader in commercial excellence. Implementing dynamic pricing has meant that the company has experienced no downtime, seen a decrease in price overrides, and continued to find ways to do simpler and quicker maintenance.
DeLaval
DeLaval is a full-service manufacturer and distributor of dairy and farming machinery. Their prior cost-plus pricing strategy was unilaterally set with little granularity and internal processes that consumed too much time and energy. DeLaval implemented dynamic pricing software to drive higher customer satisfaction with a value-based pricing methodology, and the result has been:
- Consistent, competitor-aligned, and easy-to-explain prices
- Improved customer relationships and trust
- Enhanced governance and internal efficiency
- The ability to manage, maintain, and communicate global and local prices
The company eventually rolled this strategy throughout their organization, restructuring their teams, implementing training, running central pricing and management analysis, and developing supply subsidiaries with value-based, market-driven local prices. Dynamic pricing software gave them the level of detail they needed to revamp their system for positive results.
Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies is an approximately $60 billion American multinational technology company that wanted to improve its pricing inefficiencies, win rates, and profitability. In this dynamic pricing example, they turned to dynamic pricing software after reviewing their pricing and quoting strategy and finding opportunities for improvement. This has led to:
- Fast, efficient quoting, including an increase in quote velocity to just four hours for 90% of deals
- Optimized pricing with strategic guidance that boosts win rates and profitability
- Improved sales effectiveness
- Links built between optimal price and sales compensation
The Dell team first got buy-in from their C-suite to move forward with plans that went beyond determining price by simple gross margin calculations. Dynamic pricing software allowed them to set prices optimized for increasing win rates, generate quotes faster for customers, and improve overall efficiency. Dell also has a better data reporting engine, enabling the pricing team to better measure results and regularly track and report on progress.
Dynapac
Dynapac is a leading supplier of soil compaction and paving equipment, enabling construction of highways, roads, airports, and other vital connectors for commerce, communications, and everyday travel. They struggled to centrally manage pricing, which meant they were also offering unnecessary discounts for aftermarket parts and capital equipment. Adopting dynamic pricing software meant they:
- Created master pricing controlling 70,000+ SKUs
- Reduced time-consuming special pricing approvals by 90%
- Gained central control of all pricing and discount terms for better accuracy and margins
- Could focus on improving margins across aftermarket and capital equipment product lines
The Dynapac team was already using a robust pricing management solution to manage pricing for aftermarket, so they created a plan to optimize that program and roll it out to their capital equipment line. They also implemented additional dynamic pricing software to improve configuring, pricing, and quoting for that capital equipment line. This has given Dynapac a new level of readiness to respond to customer needs, competitors, and marketplace dynamics.
Emerson
Emerson is an innovative global Fortune 200 technology and software company working to make the world healthier, safer, smarter, and more sustainable. Delivering a fair price to build strong customer relationships is a top priority for them, so they turned to dynamic pricing software to achieve:
- Optimal prices rooted in customer willingness to invest
- Easy view pricing practices across an expansive product portfolio
- Quick quotes that consistently offer the right price for customers
The Emerson team uses dynamic pricing solutions to optimize prices based on market demand, pivot quickly when circumstances require, and understand both opportunities and risks for pricing across their entire company. The software gives them easy-to-access insights on price realization and which of their products rise per industry, which improves operations across the board.
Grundfos
Grundfos is a global pump manufacturer that supplies pump solutions for buildings, water, and industrial applications. They struggled with transparency, agility, and empowering their sales teams to focus on value-add selling, so they turned to dynamic pricing software. This allowed them to:
- Gain insights into their revenue, margin, and pricing for their sales and finance teams
- Encourage sellers to move beyond selling by price and instead focus on value-add selling
- Develop the infrastructure and guidance to foster agility and speed
The Grundfos team had been focused on improving their global pricing governance model fort the last decade amid increasing competition, dynamic markets, suboptimal internal pricing processes, a growing mix of product variants, and disconnects between field and corporate pricing. Dynamic pricing software has created a strategic shift from finance to sales, helping them achieve a high degree of automation, accuracy transparency, compliance, and pricing visibility.
Molson Coors Beverage Company
Molson Coors Beverage Company has been in business for more than 200 years, offering products from beer to seltzers, whiskeys, canned cocktails, and more. Their complex business makes pricing equally complex, largely because their pricing execution team needs to balance the intricacies of various regions and distributor partners with large amounts of pricing data, taxes, and regulations. They turned to dynamic pricing solutions to accurately and efficiently set, manage, and optimize their global prices and:
- Reduce the risk of pricing errors and inconsistencies
- Improve customer satisfaction and brand reputation
- Create greater trust, credibility, and collaboration between the pricing execution team and the wider organization
- Improve pricing accuracy, efficiency, and agility to respond to changing market demands
Molson Coors implemented dynamic pricing software to optimize their pricing strategy. This has helped them achieve consistency and efficiency so they can quickly and accurately price new products and stay competitive in the market. It has also allowed them to manage an incredibly complex pricing process and has saved their pricing practitioners countless hours of work.
Your pricing teams set, manage, and share pricing strategies, but that process gets simpler and easier to scale with the right tools in place. Dynamic pricing solutions ensure the right price is always shared with your sellers and channels no matter the context. Getting the most out of these systems requires knowing their pros as well as the potential challenges involved in making the shift.
What to Watch Out for in the Shift to Dynamic Pricing
Every new strategy has benefits, but there are also pitfalls and challenges to watch out for during implementation. If your company is considering transitioning to dynamic pricing, you may run into the following challenges:
- Customer satisfaction and retention
Some customers may be alienated if they are paying more for the same product compared to other people or companies. This can reduce customer satisfaction and may lead to churn. - Data acquisition
It can be time-consuming and expensive to find and acquire the data required to make informed pricing decisions. - Data utility
The type of data needed changes with the use case. Some data might need to span seasons or other conditions, which can require very large databases for algorithms to generate accurate pricing.
- Data accuracy and errors
Inaccurate data can lead to pricing errors that can have a negative short-term impact on sales and revenue as well as impact a brand’s reputation. - Competition
There will always be competitors trying to encourage your customers and prospects to use their services instead. Focus on best pricing and offering top solutions rather than out-pricing your competitors or you could create a price war that results in slim profit margins.
Dynamic pricing is important because market conditions are always shifting. The right price management software solution can help keep your operations prepared for any business, competition, or market-related change and your customers satisfied with the pricing and services you provide.
How Vendavo Can Help You Achieve Dynamic Pricing Success
Applying dynamic pricing, price analytics, price optimization, and more to your pricing strategy helps drive greater profitability. Vendavo’s intelligent pricing software supports price forecasting and offers a wealth of benefits to companies in all industries. We give you access to specialized metrics and data visualization, opening a new world of opportunities.
To learn more about Vendavo’s dynamic pricing software solutions, click here.
If you’re looking to elevate your pricing game and gain exclusive access to recent insights and predictions that are shaping the future of pricing, check out the Pricing Excellence Report and Outlook 2024 collaboration between Copperberg and Vendavo. It digs deep into survey results from the pricing industry’s top pricing professionals to explore topics related to pricing talent, pricing maturity, common challenges, pricing models, and more. Click here to download your copy of the report.