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Overcoming Price Optimization Hurdles: A Lack of Pricing Talent

Is it possible to move forward with a price optimization solution if you don’t have the right people in place yet?

At Revionics we talk a lot about the concept of Pricing Fluency – the alignment of your people, processes, technology and strategy – as a key component of navigating retail today. Yet, sometimes in the pursuit of Pricing Fluency, the limitations of one pillar can actually get in the way of the enhancement of another. In this case, I’m talking about when a lack of pricing talent (people) can hinder the adoption of a price optimization solution (technology).

In truth, this is a scenario we’re used to seeing. We’ve had plenty of retailers approach Revionics to integrate our solution as that key technology pillar, but they lack either the team headcount or skillset (sometimes both) required for generating maximum results. AI-enabled solutions such as ours can be a big leap forward for an organization, so there needs to be the proper support in place for an implementation to be successful in the long run.

So the answer is yes, it is possible to move forward with a price optimization solution if you don’t have the right people in place yet. At least, it is with Revionics. There are two ways we can help if a talent gap is your reality: we educate and elevate the team members where you have them, or we fill in the gaps where you don’t. Let’s look at how we’ve helped other retailers overcome this hurdle in the past.

Boost the proficiency your existing pricing team

Maybe you have a good pricing team in place, but they just don’t have the necessary experience with a price optimization tool in order to derive the most value from it.

Through training with our solution and best practices tailored to your business, we help elevate your pricing strategists to be seen as trusted internal pricing advisors. We’ve worked with retailers in a variety of global markets and industries, so we’ve just about seen it all. Plus, many of our pricing experts come from a retail background, in pricing roles themselves.

We have a dedicated Customer Success team that is committed to just that – your success. Revionics may be a software solution provider, but we give our customers more than just a pricing tool. We fully view ourselves as a guide for our customers on the retail price optimization journey, maintaining ongoing strategic conversations and lending our global expertise to addressing any challenges they face. At the peak of the pandemic, we were even meeting with many of our customers weekly to help them feel secure in the science and use the tool to make the best pricing decisions.

While COVID certainly presented some extreme difficulties for retailers (and still is!), our pricing experts also used the pandemic as an opportunity to further educate our customers and enhance their own pricing optimization knowledge. Part of this was teaching them to understand the implications of the AI model so that they could build confidence in the recommendations. Because of the transparent reporting, clients were able to see how the technology accounted for unprecedented COVID nuances, and what the what-if scenarios and forecasts indicated as next steps. From there they could fine tune their understanding of demand reacting to pricing changes, and then observe tactics that worked in order to build their strategic muscles for the future.

Here’s another notable example – one of our longest standing clients has been with us for more than 10 years, meaning that Revionics has worked with the retailer’s pricing team longer than most of their internal team members have been there! We have a backlog of historical intelligence on their strategies, KPIs, competitive threats, and other pricing factors that makes us an invaluable partner to them.

Cover the personnel gaps in your pricing team

On the other end, perhaps the lack of pricing talent is just that you don’t have enough members in your pricing organization – or none at all. Currently, we work with retailers that have anywhere from 140 to just 1 Revionics system user.

Our technology helps pricing strategists work more efficiently and effectively. We save them from clunky spreadsheets and slow legacy processes, freeing up smaller teams to run faster, or new teams to be made. From our Customer Success team to strategic consulting services, we are no strangers to rolling up our sleeves and working right alongside pricing and non-pricing functions in the organization to help build up stronger pricing strategies and teams.

The start of our journey with Holiday Stationstores is a perfect example of this. At the time Holiday Stationstores engaged with us, they did not have a dedicated pricing team. Instead category managers were tasked with pricing decisions, using manual processes that were difficult to measure, time consuming, reactive, and hardly scalable. Enabled by Revionics’ data science and pricing tools, Holiday Stationstores created a dedicated pricing team and implemented a streamlined process for executing price changes.

Again, it comes down to our model of partnership and our commitment to our clients’ success. From standing in the gap left by furloughed pricing teams at the start of the pandemic, to providing extra resources and strategy insights around inflation, our pricing experts are an extension of your pricing experts.

From a lack of pricing talent to pricing fluency

Technology is just one pillar of Pricing Fluency, but Revionics works with retail organizations to build up the right people, processes and strategies for success as well. To learn more about the partnership quality Revionics brings to the table, download a copy of our case study with Delhaize America.

Or if a lack of pricing talent is holding your organization back from implementing a price optimization solution, reach out today to explore how Revionics can help.