Listen to Zilliant’s Latest Podcast Episodes

Zilliant’s podcast, B2B Reimagined, brings a uniquely relevant perspective to B2B pricing and sales challenges. Our esteemed guests and knowledgeable hosts provide regular thought leadership around industry segments, economic trends, technological innovations, and much more.

B2B Reimagined: New Podcast Episodes

The Zilliant podcast feed has been busy. Since mid-summer, we’ve heard from pricing practitioners, industry analysts, and executive leaders covering the big trends from all angles. Check out what we’ve been up to over the last three months:

Episode #58 – Get Ready for the Intelligent Commerce Boom

This is an unprecedented moment that starts with the pandemic, it leads into an economic sea change defined by inflation, underscored by a digital world that took a 10-year leap during COVID. You put that together with the old systems and approaches and it's a moment where people have to say, ‘How should I change?'... as opposed to ‘should I change?’

In December of 2021, Madison Dearborn Partners acquired Zilliant as a strategic growth investment. John Lewis, an executive partner at Madison Dearborn, became Zilliant’s executive chairman following the closure of the deal and he made his first appearance on B2B Reimagined in July.

John told listeners why he’s so enthusiastic about Zilliant’s value proposition and shared what will he thinks will define the winners of this unprecedented era.

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Episode #59 – Optimizing OMS + Pricing for Wholesale Distribution

With margins being so thin for wholesale distributors, without having control over your pricing, you don't have control over your margin and especially with the sands shifting like they are right now - it's nearly impossible to do that with traditional tools.

Three-time guest Pete Eppele stepped into the host’s chair for the first time, interviewing DataXstream CEO Tim Yates about how the company’s transformative OMS+ platform streamlines order management for wholesale distributors in today’s consumer-driven economy.

Many wholesale distributors have been running SAP for decades. While most of them started simple, their order systems have grown extremely complex over time. At the same time, many are behind the curve on modern approaches to price optimization and management. In an industry with such thin margins, this is a troubling combination, especially in our new age of inflation and supply constraints. Pete and Tim discussed a better approach for wholesalers.

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Episode #60 – Elevating the Pricing Role

In talking with a lot of pricing leaders, people say that they do get some support from their top management, but sometimes their top management sees pricing and revenue management as an ATM - where they just hit a button and all this cash starts flying out. It's our job to let them know that it doesn't work exactly that way. We need tools, we need training, we need to stay current in order to keep the cash flowing.

Kevin Mitchell, president of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS), has been a champion of pricing for most of his life. As he tells it, “I remember as a child carrying boxes of canary yellow pricing newsletters uphill, both ways, through the snow in Phoenix, Arizona.”

On this episode, Kevin shared the three biggest hot button issues that are keeping PPS members up at night and his insights into today’s macroeconomic landscape. He and host Lindsay Duran spent the bulk of the episode describing why the current environment elevates pricing professionals within B2B organizations.

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Episode #61 – Inflation, Value-Based Pricing and Trucking

No one knows when the inflation wheel is going to stop exactly, but they know it's coming. What you don't want is to get caught way ahead of the chain in a continual price increase when the recession hits. Because then you're going to lose market share pretty substantially.

Gene Metheny, partner at Carlisle and Company, joined us to dissect the macroeconomic problems facing B2B companies and what must be done to get ready for the next shift in supply and demand.

Listen in for some real-world examples of how pricing data and analytical measurement are being used to improve visibility throughout the value chain in the trucking industry. Gene also explored the potential for executing value-based pricing in trucking and beyond – by interpolating between the market data that you have and the data you don’t have to derive a value hypothesis.

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Episode #62 – Rush Enterprises Overcomes Supply Chain and Inflation Challenges with Data Science

Once you have a portfolio that's over 5,000 parts and you have thousands of different customers, the matrix starts getting so big that the benefits of having the tools that are available through this type of software really give you results. The ROI is fast, you will be proactive instead of reactive, you can be driving your business instead of reacting to your competitors, and you will be able to implement your strategies faster.

We were honored to welcome on Gonzalo Benitez, pricing and data analytics manager at Rush Enterprises, at the beginning of September. Gonzalo shed some light on how recent economic turbulence has impacted commercial operations for the heavy-duty truck parts distributor. Listen in to learn how data science-driven tools have empowered Gonzalo’s team to work creatively to source alternative products, communicate transparently with customers and execute precise cost pass-through on a consistent basis.

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