What to Look for in a Price Optimization Solution

Understanding the requirements necessary to derive value from a pricing solution

In the search for an answer to inflation, many retailers are looking to upgrade their pricing systems to something better equipped for today’s economic extremes. Even before costs began to rise, retail’s evolving demands around omnichannel, consumer behavior, and increasing competition caused a digital acceleration in the industry. Whatever your motivations are for seeking a new price optimization solution, here’s everything you need to look for when deciding on new pricing technology.

Feature Requirements

First, let’s cover the features a price optimization solution should have in order to fit your company’s business needs and drive value for both you and your customers.

Flexibility

As quickly as retail is changing these days, any technology upgrade should be agile and flexible, allowing you to keep pace with the market and even get ahead of what’s coming next.

Flexibility is also important when it comes to integration. Probably every retailer has dealt with feeling stuck by the limitations of legacy systems when wanting to integrate new technology. Save yourself the future headache by choosing a new solution now that is built with flexible integration in mind.

Transparency + Reliability

Transparency builds trust, which is essential for change management. Your pricing team will be more open to a solution that provides visibility into the data and the science behind why it is making certain pricing recommendations.

Reliability is also key for building trust. While you want your pricing team to be actively using and learning from a pricing tool, it should also allow them to be largely hands-off-the-wheel, focusing on more strategic decision-making while the system works.

Artificial Intelligence

Any pricing solution you consider should use cutting-edge technology, industry-leading science, and change-ready architecture. If you are building for the future, there should be no question when it comes to AI.

Leading retailers are leveraging AI across business functions to improve operations, meet consumer demands, and adjust to market changes, and that includes the pricing function. Interpretable and actionable AI with predictive and prescriptive capabilities is crucial to solving today’s retail challenges and staying competitive in the long run.

Cloud-native

Cloud-native solutions come with a number of advantages. One, a solution built in the cloud is built with modern architecture, meaning it will be easier to grow, scale, and add functionality. Older systems that have merely been pushed to the cloud will still have infrastructure limitations when it comes to scalability.

Another advantage is security. As hackers get more creative and pervasive, a modern architecture allows for quicker updates to keep ahead of the attacks. Choose a solution provider with top-level security measures so you can have peace of mind and focus on making headlines for delighting customers — not for giving up their personal information.

Vendor Requirements

There’s a saying that when you marry someone, you marry their family too. Well, the same is relatively true when choosing a new technology vendor. You aren’t just choosing their solution; you are choosing the whole company.

While the technology itself is the focal point of the selection process, the vendor vision, culture and leadership should play a role in your evaluation as well.

Vision + Leadership

Find a vendor with a strong vision. If they aren’t constantly looking ahead, you’ll soon find yourself falling behind. You can’t prepare to address tomorrow’s challenges if your technology providers are stuck in yesterday.

Look for the industry leader. Who is truly innovating, and who is merely keeping up? Are they continuing to invest in the system and make changes that drive more value for retailers?

Partnership

A vendor’s job shouldn’t stop once the contract is signed. A partnership between vendor and retailer is essential to customer success. True, long-term value is derived from a price optimization solution provider that learns your business inside and out.

For a vendor to really partner with you, they need to offer support beyond just the system. Mutual success is found in collaborative communication, pushing each other to drive more value, and working together on the price optimization journey.

The Leading Price Optimization Solution

With cutting-edge technology, over 20 years of AI learning, and an unmatched portfolio of top retail customers, Revionics is the global leader of lifecycle price optimization solutions. We help retailers navigate the complexity and uncertainty of pricing with the clarity and confidence found in our deep retail experience, innovative science, and dedicated pricing partners.

Reach out today to explore how Revionics can be your guide for the price optimization journey.