Pricing Leadership

We have been discussing the fact that sales adoption of pricing tools is a difficult problem to solve. Lately, I have been observing a pattern towards bringing pricing into the sales tools that exist today. These solutions utilize SaaS and mobility platforms. Recent SaaS examples I have observed include companies that utilize Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Recent mobility examples include companies that utilize Blackberry devices and Microsoft Excel, in a remote environment.

These companies need pricing to help in the sales processes. This includes quoting tools to help the sales team make the right choices. They need multiple price points, as guidelines to the process. Some want to know, “what is the right offer for my customer”?

What are the technologies required to support these processes? Here are a few that are important:

Real-time Quoting and Pricing
As the combination of possible products, channels, customer segments, and negotiation methodologies explodes, it is infeasible to store all pricing permutations on the CRM tool. Service-Oriented Architecture is critical for pricing. ERP vendors have solved this problem using rules. However, creating a copy of a rule engine in every application you use is problematic for many reasons I will not dive into at this time. Real-time architectures can grow as your business rules change, and help you to maintain a single set of rules. Flexibility is really important, depending on how quickly your business strategy changes.

Composite Application Support
To maintain user interface consistency, composite application architectures are really important. These architectures allow “mash up” style interfaces where components of pricing can be interweaved with other business process components. Salesforce.com has APEX. Microsoft has SharePoint and the Dynamics xRM platform. Single “large” applications are a thing of the past. Composite applications are where the market is heading, and it is heading there fast.

On/Off Premises Integration Support
I have heard from customers that they are uncomfortable having their pricing data “in the cloud”. Can vendors offer a composite sales and pricing experience that meets the best of both worlds? The questions I hear include “can you keep critical pricing information on-premises, integrating with a cloud-based CRM tool?” and “can you make it seamless?”. Required technologies include SaaS integration technologies, such as that offered by Cast Iron Systems, and Single-Sign On technologies, such as Salesforce.com’s delegated LDAP integration.

Mobility
I will save discussion about mobility for a future article. We need to think about the mobile sales force. They are using handheld smart phones, laptops and yes, tablet PC’s. Internet access, such as 3G is becoming more prevalent.

What tools do your salespeople prefer and why?