Vistaar Pricing Solutions – White Papers to Make You Even Smarter

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Delivering Price Improvement in Complex Organizations (277K PDF file)
By Ed Marx, Vistaar Technologies
During fifteen-plus years in the pricing field, Ed Marx has gained a broad perspective from wide-ranging experiences that extend from the trenches to the executive suite. During this time, he's observed that most pricing practitioners are keenly adept at recognizing and prioritizing pricing opportunities in areas such as organizational changes, pricing analytics, segmentation, policy enforcement and other common tactics. But where many of them stumble, and what can undermine the best-laid plans, is the process of shepherding an initiative through the tangled web of corporate bureaucracy, political landmines and/or pushback from sales organizations. As an unfortunate result, many pricing projects never get out of the gate or end up in a half-baked state that severely reduces the likelihood of achieving target objectives.

Marx has drawn from this experience to create a white paper that provides a roadmap of sorts, to help guide practitioners and organizations through the complex interpersonal and corporate dynamics that are critical to the short-term success and long-term sustainability of pricing initiatives.

Improving Profitability Management in Customer-Centric Organizations (63K PDF file)
By Scott Buckley, Vistaar Technologies
Companies are increasingly recognizing the need to interpret the success of customer-related initiatives in terms of profit contribution. As a result, they are exploring new systems that enable them to do so with more insight and accuracy.

This paper examines the challenges of analyzing profitability with existing systems. It also takes a look at new technology and processes that leading companies are using to improve the way they manage the profit performance of individual deals, customers, segments and products.

Product Portfolio Planning: a Unified Approach (203K PDF file)
By Bala Srinivasa, Vistaar Technologies
Most companies focus the majority of their attention on new product introduction. Existing product lines and platforms are often left behind, to be managed in a disconnected fashion through multiple independent programs. Few organizations effectively manage their entire portfolio of existing products using a unified approach, in a way that maximizes financial and business results.

This white paper presents four key steps your company can take to move towards excellence in product portfolio planning.

Shattering the Myth of Costless Price Changes: Emerging Perspectives on Dynamic Pricing (180K PDF file)
By Mark Bergen et. al.
Price wars are becoming more common, in part because managers tend to view a price change as an easy, quick, and reversible action. Essentially we live with a myth that "prices are easy and costless to change." Yet price changes are not easy, and they are certainly not costless.

There are often huge internal costs associated with communicating, educating and convincing managers about price change within the organization. The costs of communicating with, educating, and convincing customers can be even larger. This paper presents examples and a framework to deal with the dynamics of changing prices, including awareness of customer interpretations of price changes and an understanding of the organizational costs.

Overcoming Roadblocks to Collaborative Pricing (186K PDF file)
By Bala Srinivasa, Vistaar Technologies
Effective price planning, setting and management is not solely up to the pricing group. It is a collaborative process that depends on many other stakeholders within the company. With a collaborative pricing process, these stakeholders can more readily accept and use the recommendations of the pricing group.

In this article, we discuss the four major barriers to this collaborative process. We then explore ways to overcome these barriers through technology that incorporates a process framework, consistent information, a familiar Excel interface, collaborative analysis, and the ability to manage and share assumption changes. (Published in The Journal of Professional Pricing.)