Common Problems with Price Management Software

When determining your pricing approach, it’s important to consider the implications of these common pricing management system issues:

1. Scheduling price updates

If you deal with price changes that are scheduled or temporary, check to make sure that price list scheduling is among the available functions (scheduling start and end dates for price deals and price lists). Some of the older order and price management systems lack this functionality.

2. User interfaces for price management

Updates to price lists and maintaining the skills needed to manage the catalog pricing can easily become very complex and time-consuming. Ensure that the system interfaces accommodate price management effectively, whether updating a single product or the entire catalog.

3. Gaining data for business insights on prices

To gain data for business intelligence and ongoing price optimization, see if your system will collect information in a manner that will allow you to review wins/losses and changes in sales performance with various price levels and various client types.

4. Structure vs flexibility in price setting

Using software with excessive or inadequate price level control can result in lost revenue and errors. For example, software can allow a single price level per product, require prices to be manually set for each quote or order, allow the setup of an array of prices based on products and rules, or a combination of all these options. You have to decide on a balance between structure and flexibility. Flexibility may lead to lost profits through price dumping and errors by salespeople. Structure requires significant effort upfront to ensure prices are competitive. It may be challenging to find software that accommodates sophisticated price structures with functionality that is thorough, sufficiently flexible, and manageable.

Other information to consider when deciding on catalog and e-commerce systems

• Product information management systems benefits and things to look into
• Smart search benefits for users and marketers - what to look for
• Basic price strategies (pricing 101)

Steersman price management systems

If you are thinking about reevaluating your B2C or B2B pricing strategy, consider what an intelligent pricing optimization system can do for your business. Explore Steersman pricing management features.

~ by Lorna Rogahn and Andrey Kolesnikov, business development manager at Steersman