B2B Manufacturers: Enable Intelligent Commerce with Dynamic Pricing
By Zilliant
Sep 01, 2022
Table of Contents
Learn how to achieve dynamic omnichannel pricing capabilities at this Zilliant-led session at Copperberg’s Manufacturing Pricing Excellence 2022 event.
Legacy Systems Are Ill-equipped for the Challenges of Today
A highly volatile marketplace, unprecedented inflation, a broken supply, and the rise of digital commerce are only a few of the seismic macroeconomic and pandemic-driven challenges B2B manufacturers have faced in the past few years. For pricing teams inside of B2B manufacturing companies, this meant added pressure to be more nimble, proactive, and strategic. The problem? Legacy systems of record and systems of management for pricing lack the flexibility, dynamism, and scale necessary to consistently execute the right pricing strategies necessary for success in today’s landscape.
A pricing system of record is essentially a B2B company’s “pricing engine,” which is typically an ERP system. All of a company’s list prices, customer-specific agreements, price matrices, and discount or override structures reside in the ERP. However, while ERPs can provide value, getting pricing data into and out of an ERP is a highly manual, time-consuming, and error-prone task. Additionally, B2B companies have a separate system of price management, which is usually spreadsheet-based.
But the pace of digital is simply too overwhelming for ERP-based pricing systems of record and manual price management systems. As the market shifts and cost changes increase in frequency, the ability to dynamically update prices as costs change is more critical than ever. “Investing in the right digital initiatives at the right cost can blunt the negative effects of economic pressures in the short term and build long-term competitive advantage,” writes Gartner in their 9 Winning Actions to Take as Recession Threatens report.
Make the Leap from Legacy to Dynamic Pricing
In order to keep pace in today’s rapidly changing business environment, B2B manufacturers need to take their companies to the next level by implementing dynamic pricing, which means that customers see prices that are relevant to market and channel conditions at any given time. And the best way to operationalize dynamic pricing within your organization is through the use of a real-time pricing engine. A real-time pricing engine becomes the company’s new mission-critical pricing system of record, sitting alongside ERP and performing all the same pricing functions, but now in milliseconds.
- But what’s involved in shifting to a dynamic omnichannel pricing capability?
- What are some examples of how leading companies are leveraging dynamic pricing?
- How should B2B manufacturers get started?
