The European Pricing Platform – Connecting Pricing People are an independent industry organisation, based in Belgium, dedicated to promoting pricing excellence across Europe. On Oct. 27, PROS served as a key sponsor of the ePP’s Manufacturing PricingFuel Day, along with Deloitte, at an all-day event in Munich.

There was a real buzz of excitement and anticipation as the delegates and sponsors concentrated in the reception area. Delegates travelled from Norway, Sweden, the UK, Germany and Holland. As one told me “pricing is a dark art shrouded in both mystery and confusion.” It seemed the common denominator from a participant perspective was the quest for knowledge and education. Where do you start? What does pricing excellence look like? Is anyone really doing pricing excellence? The delegate anticipation was tangible, with everyone keen to better understand how to become profit hunters through pricing excellence.

Professor Oliver Roll, who has a vast background in pricing, served as host for the day. He is professor for international marketing and price management at the University of Applied Sciences in Osnabruck, Germany.

The keynote presentation was delivered by Wolfgang Krueger who heads marketing at Merck, a multi-billion dollar chemical corporation. With more than 45 years of service with Merck, Wolfgang presented a fascinating insight as to best pricing practices at his company, including overcoming cultural, technology and process challenges when deploying a pricing excellence strategy. His 45-minute presentation seemed to last only five minutes; however, the session reached a fevered pitch when the host requested questions from the delegates. Wolfgang was literally bombarded with questions from the floor. The questions came fast and furious from delegates, many of whom represented Europe’s leading corporations.  As I observed the spirited interactions, the feeling I had was similar to early days of the Internet revolution – the desire, excitement and business necessity to engender change.

There were several additional customer best-practice presentations notably from Novozymes, a Danish bio-tech corporation. Again the fast and furious post-presentation debate with delegates was the highlight. Clearly there was a massive hunger to understand more and learn what pricing excellence means; what it does; and what it could possibly do for a business.

Like all conferences, the real business of the day was conducted over lunch and post-conference drinks. The presenters from Novozymes were holding court with delegates, who literally queued to catch some time and share some of the pricing Kool-Aid magic. Quite telling was the fact that as the afternoon session was starting, the buffet lunch had remained mainly untouched, with delegates deeply engrossed in their pricing conversations.

In closing what was a momentous day, Professor Roll thanked the delegates, the sponsors and most of all the customers for presenting.  In a final comment Professor Roll stated:

“It was really a great day. One of the best conferences that I have ever attended.

The atmosphere and the quality of the speakers were just extraordinary.”

For what was the first ePP event I have attended, I left, impressed, amused, fascinated and positive. Pricing clearly is gaining momentum as a business issue in Europe. The companies that “get pricing” are reaping the benefits.

Many times, we run across projects that are faced with a delay for business reasons… such as “all business units aren’t ready”, “we would rather wait until after/just before the next round of pricing”, or “the data looks suspect for this one country/business unit/product group, let’s wait until that’s fixed” – all are common and quite frequently heard during the course of our pricing implementations.

Why would you want to wait? Let’s take a practical approach to this logic: pricing can create profit lifts to revenue.  If your “acceptable” business units or countries equate to 10M USD or 8M EUR, then by not waiting, you could realize 1.1M USD or 1.65M EUR now. Yes, there’s more value to be had later on, and yes, you will go after that value in time.  But DO NOT put on hold the value that’s right at your fingertips, just for an incremental 10, 20, or 30%. Heck, even if the “delayed” portion of the project represents a significant majority of your overall business value, why would you not take what you can get now.

Companies across the globe are realizing the value of pricing and doing whatever they can to reap the benefits from an increased focus on pricing. However, it is truly the leading companies out there that recognize the simple fact that pricing is not just a business function, performed by those that need to be involved. Pricing is a complex business process that must have the correct support and guardrails around it. You wouldn’t implement new SOPs without training, support, and feedback… why should pricing be any different?

True, leading-edge companies already have this figured out as they are investing in pricing for the long-haul. They are looking at the support mechanisms, training programs, and business policies that must be enacted in order to have a successful pricing initiative. This is not simple and it takes various business units agreeing to change for the mutual benefit of the company. After all, if it were simple, the company would have already figured it out and pricing would not have the immense returns that we have seen time and time again.

Think about what you and your company are currently doing to realize ROI in 6 months and even 12 months? There are not many initiatives out there that have the potential impact like pricing. Therefore, this will not be simple.  But if the desire and determination is there, taking an average 4% profit margin to 5.5% in 6 months and sustaining that gain is not far-fetched. In fact, it is probably understating the true gains.

One of the biggest differences I have noticed in the European community as compared to the US is how different two “neighbors” might be.  For example, take Germany and France. They are geographically next door to each other; but they are miles apart in most aspects – and their approach to pricing is no different. If one company operates in both countries, it is expected that each country will have their own approach to pricing. On the flip side, in the US, while California and New York are miles apart (and there are many additional differences in addition to geography), if one company operates in both California and New York, it is much more likely there will be one approach to pricing (if not one, a least similar enough approaches that may be managed centrally). Thus, a “global pricing approach” is not a simple, straightforward strategy in Europe as is tends to be in the US.

That being said, how a company goes about implementing a global pricing strategy must also allow for and expect the complexities that currently exist in managing the business centrally. If for instance the current business environment is very much decentralized, having a central pricing strategy is not reasonable in the short term. Ignore the change management aspects for the moment, the simple logistics of understanding the diverse and disparate pricing methods and go-to-market strategies that currently exist are immense. The long-term plan should account for this and not expect one, global approach to be implemented in the near term.

However, this does not mean that companies, especially those that are very decentralized in their management, cannot achieve great value by taking a global approach to pricing. It just means that their time horizon must be appropriately set. For example, one customer here in Europe has a long-term vision that includes roll-out of a global pricing process to roughly 40% of its worldwide business (represented by countries and regions of countries) by 2015 if not beyond. Pause and read that again… “global process” for 40% of its business. ”How is this truly global?” you might ask. It’s simple: they are not planning to stop at 40% but they are pragmatic in their approach to ultimately reach 100% of their business. Regardless, as this customer has already begun the global process country by country, it is achieving great value already.

Also, setting up a global pricing process should not imply centralization of power. In fact, it can amplify the current independence and power of the remote business units. Another customer here in Europe is rolling out its global process and by doing so, is providing guardrails that its remote businesses must operate within. But at the same time, it is providing much more information to the remote business units; so much that the decisions those remote business units make are now better supported and therefore, they should be able to operate more independently within those guardrails.

In summary, companies, especially those that operate across cultural borders, should view a global pricing process as a journey. There is extreme value to be made along this journey, but it will take time. Prioritize your “low-hanging fruit” to maximize your return, but commit to the long-haul.

Recently, we have seen many companies attempt to implement with little oversight to the overall, “global” picture.  Now, before I continue, notice I did not specify what they were implementing.  It could be as simple as a new approval process or as complex as a new ERP system.  Also, one could easily replace “global” with any other contextual word that refers to “more than one”, but I digress…

Regardless, in these tight times it seems more and more acceptable to identify process improvements and start down the path of a “global” improvement without stopping to think how one gets from A to Z without stopping at B, C, D, etc.  You may be wondering, “how does this apply to the title or a ‘thousand-island paradise’ of data?”  Simple – many companies have data sources that are currently working perfectly, as-designed, as-expected (insert your own adverb here to describe facetious perfection) but have little in common with each other.  Projects, especially pricing projects, that are incredibly dependent upon data, must have a global approach in mind. Companies must have a plan to take a “thousand disparate data sources” and harmonize them.

All that’s needed is a process in mind and a plan in place, not the actual data harmonization.  Incredible value can be realized through a small implementation, and as Lao Tzu famously quoted, “the journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.”  No value will ever be achieved if you wait for perfect data (honestly, I’ve never even seen perfect data). Expect to start small, achieve great results (regardless of how small the results are they are “great!” – socialize the wins!), and use those results to incentivize other areas of your business to join the project bandwagon. Take those “thousand islands of data paradise” and show each, one at a time, how they can improve for the overall health of your business. The results are there to be had!