Industries 

Many distributors are moving from analyzing what their customers currently purchase to what their customers could be purchasing by using sophisticated customer profiling techniques.  We collaborate with clients to devise the business processes, tools, advanced analytics and models to:

• Understand buying patterns and trends at a customer segment and channel level
• Compare individual customer behavior to its segment to identify “at risk” customers, opportunities to sell higher volumes or additional product lines, and higher costs to serve
• Develop reports and alerts to facilitate field sales discussions at the individual customer level

For many distributors, product lifecycle is a significant driver of demand and must be accounted for in determining optimal pricing and discounting strategies.  We partner with clients to:

• Create sophisticated measurements and metrics to determine individual SKU lifecycle stages
• Develop pricing, discounting and inventory strategies to maximize revenues throughout the entire product lifecycle
• Design business processes for proxying new product lifecycles

Many companies experience significant revenue leakage due to decentralized pricing processes, complex discounts and terms, and a significant cost-to-serve.  Capturing this lost revenue has a large impact on the bottom line.  We collaborate with clients to:

• Identify and recommend ways to control key revenue leakage elements (cost-to-serve)
• Rebates, unearned discounts, extended payment terms, late payments, etc.
• Conduct detailed pocket price analysis leading to profitability segmentation by customer or sales segment
• Create a price band analysis to quantify the variability of transaction prices and identify the underlying drivers

In our experience working with distribution clients, we have found that the best pricing strategies are well-defined, communicated throughout the organization and actionable. Developing the right pricing strategy requires combining strategic objectives with granular data analysis. We partner with clients to:

• Educate stakeholders about potential pricing strategies that fit their current operating model and strategic objectives
• Perform detailed analysis to determine value proposition vis a vis competition at a customer segment level
• Compare value proposition analysis to potential pricing strategies to determine ideal strategy by segment
• Ensure a rational price structure across channels and substitutable or complementary products
• Create change management plan to communicate pricing strategy throughout the organization

Companies in distribution are faced with the daunting task of pricing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of products.  We design rules-based pricing approaches and:

• Create price ratings and reports that communicate price responsiveness to decision makers
• Develop business processes to use business rules for identifying pricing errors, making pricing changes and predicting the impact of pricing / discounting decisions
• Design models to measure price responsiveness while accounting for the impact of non-price demand drivers such as seasonality and product lifecycle
• Develop a plan of action for implementation and ongoing performance measurement

Although traditional segmentation approaches are useful for mass marketing, they often do not help describe customer behavior and consequently are not optimal for pricing decisions. We work with our clients to: 

• Understand strategic, share and profitability objectives and identify key customer attributes
• Perform clustering, CHAID and regression analysis to identify commonly held traits and behavior patterns among customer groups
• Develop strategies, business processes and methodologies for optimizing pricing, discounting and inventory allocation decisions across customer segments

Leveraging our experience across multiple industries, we help clients create and enhance Pricing and Revenue Management programs that deliver sustainable results. We combine our knowledge with our clients’ insights into their own organization and culture and partner with them to:

• Collaborate with the executive team to determine roles, responsibilities, fit within the current organization and success criteria
• Develop a Pricing and Revenue Management organizational framework
• Design process flows to smoothly integrate new Pricing and Revenue Management group operations with current operations
• Build consensus throughout the organization to determine priorities, identify “Quick Wins” and ensure new Pricing and Revenue Management group acceptance